Matador Network's Blog, page 835

Prehistoric Durrington Shafts found

A mysterious network of ancient underground shafts, dating back 4,500 years, has just been discovered near Stonehenge. The circle of shafts was described by archaeologists as the largest prehistoric structure ever found in Britain — no offense, Stonehenge — and spans 1.2 miles in diameter. It appears to have been a boundary guiding people to the sacred Durrington Walls, one of the UK’s largest henge monuments, which sits directly at the center.

The archaeological site of Woodhenge, near Stonehenge (Photo: Andrei Botnari/Shutterstock)

Professor Vincent Gaffney, leading archaeologist on the project, told The Guardian, “This is an unprecedented find of major significance within the UK. Key researchers on Stonehenge and its landscape have been taken aback by the scale of the structure and the fact that it hadn’t been discovered until now so close to Stonehenge.”

Dubbed the “Durrington Shafts,” the discovery also provides evidence that the early inhabitants of Britain had devised a way to count. The planning required to create a structure of this size suggests that a sophisticated tally or counting system was in place.

The shafts, in red, surround Durrington Walls (Photo: EDINA Digimap Ordnance Survey Service)

According to Gaffney, the Durrington Shafts is an example of “the significance of Durrington Walls Henge, the complexity of the monumental structures within the Stonehenge landscape, and the capacity and desire of Neolithic communities to record their cosmological belief systems in ways, and at a scale, that we had never previously anticipated.”

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How to hike a mountain off-trail

There are 1,000,809 mountains in the world, according to mountain tracking app . Some are massive, topping 25,000 feet, while others are small and seemingly approachable — and the vast majority of them, even the smaller mountains, don’t have a trail to the top. For the adventurous, that only adds to their appeal and the desire to reach their summit. Hiking off-trail to a mountain peak is an exciting excursion, but without proper planning and execution it can be downright dangerous. No one wants to find themselves bushwhacking through dense shrubbery or stuck atop a high cliff with no visible way back down.

Matador Network spoke with Brenton Reagan, lead guide at Exum Guides in Jackson Hole, WY, to find out how to properly plan and execute an off-trail mountain summit expedition. If anyone should know, it’s him. Exum Guides has been operating in the Tetons for 90 years and helped to develop what Reagan calls the “American” way of guiding, which aims to educate people on basic mountaineering skills while leading them on an expedition, as opposed to simply escorting clients from point A to point B and back again.

Here are Reagan’s tips for the next time you spot a lesser-traveled peak and can’t resist the urge to bag it.

Understand slope gradient and slope angle.

Photo: xsmirnovx/Shutterstock

The first step to hiking off-trail in the mountains is to understand slope gradient and slope angle, Reagan says. These terms refer to how steep a slope is in specific spots. Knowing this information makes it far easier to safely climb mountains off-trail because the hiker is able to identify the easiest way up and down without “cliffing out” — becoming stuck above a cliff with no easy way down — or finding themself struggling on a slope that’s steeper than expected.

“Slope gradient and slope angle is something that’s super overlooked by people when they’re either looking at a map or figuring out how to get up something,” Reagan says. “[These] really tell you how to approach it. Slope angle is so critical depending on the terrain you’re in. Understanding what’s steep and not steep is the first key to knowing whether or not you can get up.”

Seek the lowest angle slope to the top.

Photo: Lesia Povkh/Shutterstock

Once you know it’s safe to attempt the hike, the easiest way to reach the summit is to find the lowest angle slope to get there.

“We really think we know what steep is and what we can handle walking on as far as steepness,” Reagan says. “But we’re consistently wrong about it. If you tell somebody you’re going to have to walk up a 40-degree slope with loose rocks, that sounds doable because they think, ‘90 degrees is a wall and 40 degrees is less than half of the wall, so why would that be a problem?’ But walking up a 40-degree rock slope is nearly desperate and can be dangerous depending on the size of the rocks.”

If a slope looks steep from afar, it’s going to be even more intense in actuality. The good news is that most mountains approachable for the average hiker don’t necessitate slogging up its steepest slope.

“Understanding the patterns of topography to find the lowest angle way is really cool, and it also gives you a little bit of green knowledge before you go,” Reagan adds.

Have a mapping app on your phone and home computer.

Photo: Kaspars Grinvalds/Shutterstock

Many hikers are familiar with identifying trailheads and other points along a trail on a traditional map but aren’t accustomed to reading a topographic map. Commonly called a topo map, these maps show slope angle and gradient of a mountain through contoured lines, such as the popular National Geographic trail maps available at most outdoor retail shops.

“If you’ve been reading topo maps for a while, you understand that the closer the lines are, the steeper the gradient is,” Reagan says. “But there are a lot of really cool apps out there that can do that for you digitally, and with color.”

On smartphones, Reagan recommends Gaia GPS. “Gaia is the guide-industry standard for mapping,” he says. The app allows users to easily identify the lowest-angle slope to approach when walking up a mountain. Gaia GPS also allows users to track themselves and mark their trail progress from start to finish for later reference and sharing, and even add photos into their saved trips that are geotagged at the point where they were taken. Additionally, Reagan notes that Strava can be helpful because it allows crowdsourcing of data, which allows users to see routes that others have attempted and use them in their own route planning.

CalTopo is a great program to use for trip planning on your laptop or desktop, Reagan adds. This service also offers both free and paid plans. Paid accounts allow users to collaborate and share routes, import other users’ data into their maps, and access a suite of route planning tools that allow backcountry users to thoroughly plan a hiking or climbing route from start to finish.

“Between CalTopo and Gaia, you’ll have a really good overlay of where you’re going,” Reagan says.

Get a pair of collapsible hiking poles.

Photo: zhukovvvlad/Shutterstock

Hiking a mountain without a trail is the entry-level step into mountaineering. To do this safely, hikers looking to step up their game should properly equip themselves. Reagan encourages buying a pair of collapsible hiking poles such as Distance Z from Black Diamond for added stability.

“It’s a no-brainer for me if you’re going on a hike off-trail to have a set of Z poles, or at least one pole,” Reagan says. “The amount of security it adds is incredible. Even in mountaineering on alpine objectives when I have an ice axe, I still carry a Z pole in my pack for if I’m in slippery terrain or if I’m trying to cross a small creek. If you’re off-trail and going down or up, the amount of support (the pole) gives you is great. And just strap it on your pack when you’re not using it.”

For couples and pairs hiking off-piste, Reagan encourages bringing one pair of poles and having each person use one, saying that carrying both can at times be more annoying than helpful. “I love one pole,” he says. “And if you roll your ankle or something, you also get that little bit of support.”

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Museum visits in the COVID-19 era

There was a time when avoiding crowds in museums was a challenge. Getting to the Egyptian mummies at the British Museum before everyone else was a nearly impossible feat, and managing to get a peek of the Louvre’s Mona Lisa without hundreds of people blocking your view was the stuff of myths. But since mid-March, entire collections sit alone in galleries, undisturbed and unappreciated by the throngs of admirers who usually take so much pleasure in looking at them. A report by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) claims that at least 83.5 percent of the museums in the world have been closed due to COVID-19, and although many are currently reopening, the experience of strolling the galleries of Madrid’s Prado and Bilbao’s Guggenheim won’t be the same for a while.

What museums, art, and the public lost during the pandemic closures

What museum-lovers gained from the closure

When are museums reopening, and how will visiting them be different?

The Louvre, Paris
The Met, NYC
The British Museum, London
The Vatican Museums and Gardens, Rome
MoMa, NYC
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Smithonian museums, galleries, and zoo, Washington DC
The Prado, Madrid
The Guggenheim Museum, NYC
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg



What museums, the public, and artworks have lost during the pandemic closures

Lovers of art and culture will be deprived of a lot more than the freedom to wander museums unmasked and at their own pace.

The ICOM report on COVID-19’s impact on museums explains the economic consequences of the long closure. Among the museums and museum professionals surveyed in 107 countries between April 7 and May 7, 2020, 12.8 percent said that their institution may close permanently, and over 80 percent said programs will be reduced. The closures are predicted to especially affect parts of the world where museums are recent and few and far between, such as African, Asian, and Arab countries. Well-established cultural institutions in Europe and North America are expected to fare better.

But in the United States, specifically, museums have been losing $33 million per day due to the COVID-19 closure, according to a letter by the American Alliance of Museums dating March 2020. The letter estimated that, without financial help, 30 percent of museums, “mostly in small and rural communities,” will remain shuttered.

That means that access to art and culture will be greatly diminished in regions where there is already limited access, depriving locals from opportunities for education and enjoyment. It also means that, for some nations, the only places where objects reflecting their cultural heritage will be displayed will remain the large, well-funded museums of Europe and North America.

Beyond the losses for the public, the objects displayed will themselves be impacted by the economical hardship, especially for the institutions that will close. Eighteen percent of the respondents to the ICOM survey reported that their systems are not adequate to guarantee object conservation, and 11 percent believe that the security measures in place were insufficient before the pandemic or that insufficient measures were taken to deal with the situation. The theft of a Van Gogh masterpiece from a shuttered Dutch museum at the end of March is one example of the security issues museums have been facing during the long closures.

What museum-lovers have gained from the closures

Photo: dimbar76/Shutterstock

For those who will be lucky enough to be able to visit a museum this summer, the undeniable benefit from the measures taken by most cultural institutions is the chance to have the place almost to yourself. This advantage may not outweigh COVID-19’s consequences, but it’s not something to ignore; after all, the point of visiting a museum is to admire and learn from its collections, and the only way to do so properly and enjoyably is with time and quiet.

But what we truly gained during the lockdowns is a new appreciation for art and objects.

Museums around the world kept our interest high with virtual visits and funny contests on social media, but not having access to the real thing, not being able to look at the brustroke of a painting or the details of an medieval tapestry, has made us all realize that a screen will never match the pleasure and excitement of the in-person experience.

When are museums reopening, and how will visiting them be different?

Because the handling of the pandemic is different in every country, museums will not all reopen this summer. Those that reopen to the public will welcome fewer visitors and ask of them that they shift their usual behavior to adapt to the new reality of social distancing.

Rest assured that not every cultural institution in the world will go as far as the Florence Cathedral, where the now-limited number of daily visitors will be required to wear a lanyard with an electronic device that will vibrate, light up, and emit a sound, when they stand fewer than six feets from others.

Here are the scheduled opening dates for some of the most-visited museums in the world and the conditions they will impose on visitors to keep everyone safe.

The Louvre, Paris

Photo: toiletroom/Shutterstock

The Louvre is set to reopen on July 6, 2020.
Museum-goers will not be able to show up at the door and purchase a ticket (except outside of peak hours, but we don’t recommend you line up on the off chance). Instead, they will be required to book a time slot online in advance. Note that booking online is two euros (about $2.30), which is more expensive than buying a ticket in-person at the museum, but your choice is now extremely limited.
Visitors older than 11 will need to wear their own mask for the duration of their visit, and everyone will be asked to disinfect their hands upon entry.
Social-distancing rules will be applied in the museum. To avoid overcrowding, there will be an itinerary for visitors to follow thanks to signs placed in the museums, and some of the rooms will be closed to the public (French sculptures of the Middle Ages and Renaissance; decorative arts during the Renaissance, and the 18th and 19th century; arts of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas; lower level of the Islamic Art department; and level two of the French and Northern European painting collections.)

Hours will be reduced to 9:00 AM-6:00 PM every day except Tuesdays when the museum is closed.
Entry will only be permitted through the Pyramid.

The MET, NYC

Photo: Luciano Mortula – LGM/Shutterstock

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s three locations (The MET Fifth Avenue, the Met Breuer, and the Met Cloisters) are scheduled to reopen later this summer though no precise date has been announced.

The museum will be on a reduced schedule, with fewers days of operation per week. Previously, the museum was open every day but New Year’s Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the first Monday in May.
There will be no tours, lectures, or any other events for the rest of the year.

The British Museum, London

Photo: Alex Segre/Shutterstock

There is no current date for the reopening of The British Museum or any other public gallery or museums in the UK.

The Vatican Museums and Gardens, Rome

Photo: cge2010/Shutterstock

The Vatican Museums and Gardens, including The Sistine Chapel, Raphael’s Rooms, the Apostolic Palace, reopened their doors on June 1, 2020.
Visitors must book their timed tickets online in advance. Previously, online booking cost four euros (4.50 USD), but it is now free of charge.
If your booked ticket says 10:00 AM, you won’t be able to enter before that time (we recommend you arrive early anyways), but you will not be permitted entry after 10:15 AM and there’ll be no refund possible.
Opening hours have been reduced to Monday-Thursday from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM with last entry at 6:00 PM, and Friday and Saturday from 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM with last entry at 8:00 PM.
Masks must be worn for the entirety of the visit, and each visitor will have their temperatures taken. If the reading is above the normal 37.5°C (98.6°F), entry will be denied. Disinfectant gel dispensers will be available.

Social distancing will be enforced by the Swiss Guards.
Guided tours and group visits will still be available but must be limited to 15 people who follow the social distancing rules.

MoMA, NYC

Photo: littlenySTOCK/Shutterstock

The Museum of Modern Art has not yet announced a date for its reopening, but in early May, MoMA director Glenn Lowry said that the museum will likely reopen between July and September.
According to The Art Newspaper , timed ticketing and a limit to 1,000 visitors at a time are among the measures MoMA is considering.

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Photo: Dennis van de Water/Shutterstock

The Rijksmuseum reopened its doors on June 1, 2020.
Museum-goers are required to book timed-entry tickets online before their visit. The price has been reduced from 20 to 19 euros ($22.45 to $21.30). A maximum of six tickets can be purchased at a time.
All areas of the museum are open except the library.
Disinfectant gels will be available throughout the museum.
There are currently no guided tours or group activities available.

Arrows throughout the museum guide visitors down a one-way route. This is meant to maintain social distance between visitors. The museum has also set up three highlights routes that visitors can follow if they wish to see the best of the museum in an easy and safe manner.
Audio guides are still available and will be disinfected after each use, but the museum’s app provides the same information via your phone and your own headphones.

Smithonian museums, galleries, and zoo, Washington DC

Photo: Andrei Medvedev/Shutterstock

The 17 museums and national zoo belonging to the Smithsonian in Washington DC are currently closed with no opening date announced. The two Smithonian museums in New York City will also remain closed until further notice.

The Prado, Madrid

Photo: Anibal Trejo/Shutterstock

The Prado reopened on Saturday, June 6, 2020.
Like everywhere else, The Prado requires that museum-goers purchase timed tickets online at least 24 hours before their visit. Only 1,800 tickets will be sold daily compared to the 8,000 to 9,000 tickets sold before the pandemic.
The ventilation system in the museum has been upgraded, masks and social distancing will be mandatory, and visitors will have their temperatures checked before entry.

The cloakroom and audio guides are not available at this time.
The Financial Times reports that The Prado will only show around 250 artworks compared to the usual 1,400. Those pieces will be hung differently than usual, closer together to permit a better flow of visitors in search of the highlights.

The Guggenheim Museum, NYC

Photo: Tinnaporn Sathapornnanont/Shutterstock

The Guggenheim Museum is currently closed, and there is no date set for its reopening; however, the museum encourages fans to purchase tickets online in advance. For every advance ticket purchased the Guggenheim will donate a family pass to an essential worker.

State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

Photo: dimbar76/Shutterstock

The State Hermitage Museum is currently closed with no scheduled date for reopening. According to The Art Newspaper , Mikhail Piotrovsky, the director of the State Hermitage Museum, is hoping to model the museum’s reopening on the reopenings of other European museums if the measures prove effective.
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BBQ is as a cultural tradition

The word barbecue is as loaded as the average plateful at a backyard cookout. It’s both a noun and a verb. One theory posits that it derives from barbacoa, the Spanish term for the Taíno technique of slow-grilling meat over hot coals. This would plant barbecue’s etymological roots in the Caribbean, but the act of smoking, pit roasting, and grilling heaps of beef, pork, poultry, and other proteins is grounded in customs that span nearly every continent.

Styles vary around the world, but all barbecue has one thing in common: It’s an excuse for friends and family to gather over food that’s just as much about culture as it is cuisine.

Americans know this as well as anyone. In Texas, brisket is backed by the same rabid enthusiasm that fuels Texas Longhorns tailgates. In Kansas City, burnt ends have contributed as much to the cultural identity as the jazz greats who made the city famous. Even in states with no claims to the United States’ best barbecue dishes, it’s hard to imagine a Fourth of July not anchored by a grill full of burgers and a cooler full of beer.

Like in the US, barbecues are a summer ritual in Australia, where they’re the backdrop to Australia Day celebrations every January. Even Christmas dinner, a meal once defined by British dishes that clashed with the season in the Southern Hemisphere, has come to revolve around the barbie, forging a chosen tradition over an inherited one.

Barbecuing on warm-weather holidays is a theme across the outdoor-barbecuing world. Roasted whole pigs, called lechón, are prepared in the Philippines for Christmas and other special occasions. Pigs are prepared in Tahiti, too, where above-ground spits are swapped for below-ground ovens. There’s even an initiative to rebrand National Heritage Day as National Braai Day in South Africa.

Jan Scannell, who goes by Jan Braai after South Africa’s barbecue style, started the initiative in 2005 to recognize one tradition that unites his countrymen. Archbishop Desmond Tutu supported the cause, calling Scannell’s mission an attempt at “nurturing and embracing a common South African culture, which is shared across all races and genders.”

Yet the act of barbecuing fosters a festive spirit even when it’s not tied to a specific celebration. In many cultures, barbecuing itself is an occasion.

Photo: Jason Duplissea/Shutterstock

Heimata Hall, a Tahitian chef who now runs a food tour on the island of Moorea, grew up on family barbecues. He credits them with informing his decision to pursue food professionally. Every Sunday, his grandfather would wake up early to prepare the ahima’a pit in his backyard. His uncles would help with the large cuts of meat and fish while his grandmother and aunties prepared sweet potatoes, taro, and po’e, a type of fruit pudding.

The food would then be layered into the ahima’a, with the faster-cooking dishes on top. When it was time to eat, the family would say a prayer of thanks, and after they were finished, they’d break out ukuleles, drums, and guitars, with others reaching for spoons and cans, and spend the next few hours singing and sharing beers during the ensuing tamara’a.

“It was a very joyous time,” Hall says. “You’d have music playing in the background, everybody sitting around, talking story…Food just always brought everybody together.”

Though these Sunday gatherings are growing less regular with every passing generation, according to Hall, somebody, somewhere on the islands, still hosts one every weekend. And, even when not in use, the ahima’a is a reminder of Tahitian values.

“Growing up, I would say every household or at least family had one. Back then all the land was family land. One neighborhood could be one family, and it could consist of 50 people, or 100 people, or more,” says Hall, who also notes the significance of planting banana trees at home.

“A lot of people don’t realize what the banana tree represented for a family,” Hall says. “It was used to feed the people but also used for the underground oven. You need the stumps to put over the rocks to bring the heat down and create steam, and then you put the banana leaves down at the end to help keep the smoke in.”

This low-and-slow cooking style was created by design: It guarantees ample time spent with loved ones. And it’s not unique to French Polynesia.

Like in Tahiti, Sunday is largely viewed as a family day in Argentina. Often this means gathering for an asado, which is a common way to celebrate birthdays, graduations, engagements, and other events as well.

Photo: rocharibeiro/Shutterstock

In the Argentine tradition, time is the key ingredient in barbecue. It’s otherwise unfussy, centered on bread and meat that’s not marinated or accompanied by a slew of side dishes. Asadors keep a close eye on the heat of their parrillas, or grills, cooking at a low temperature over a long time. Food is then served in several rounds.

A proper asado requires endurance, says Rachel Fuller, co-author of The Food of Argentina: Asado, Empanadas, Dulce de Leche, and More. Fuller was born in Australia but lived outside of Buenos Aires, where she met her future husband, for a year.

“Whenever my husband does an Argentinian barbecue for Australians,” she says, “they don’t have the stamina to keep eating all day. Typically, if you’re going to an Argentinian barbecue, it’s going to be five, six hours, maybe longer, all day and all night.”

Fuller attributes more than just the way Argentinians eat to this asado culture. “Argentinians are really good storytellers,” she says, recalling instances from her annual visits to her in-laws in which she found herself wrapt by conversations that were “about absolutely nothing, but everybody keeps going at length, and everybody’s interested.”

“To me, it seems a product of growing up eating asados or drinking mate,” she says, “where you have this concept, or lack of concept, of time. Where you’re walking into something going, ‘This takes as long as it will take,’ and you have all this time and space for sitting around and talking.”

Not all barbecue is as slow as asado, however. Neither do all barbecuing traditions center on fresh air and family. Yet even meals enjoyed in a restaurant setting, with friends or colleagues, on any random day of the week, share glimpses into a culture outside of a strictly culinary context.

Photo: WPixz/Shutterstock

Take Korean barbecue. Unlike in Argentina, where asadors do all the work and guests show their appreciation by joining in a round of applause, diners in Korea cook their own meat over smaller, communal grills. Sauces and sides, called banchan, are plentiful.

Still, etiquette is integral to Korean barbecue: Elders at the table signal when it’s time to eat by taking the first bites. Mesh grills are reserved for beef while pork is to be cooked on a hot plate. Diners tally their orders on a bill as they eat and pay up front when they’re finished. The rules around preparing, sharing, and eating barbecue may be different everywhere, but every barbecuing culture invariably has rules that testify to its values.

Anyone who’s ever barbecued, whether in their home country or abroad, already knows how special it is to share a meal with loved ones over a place’s favorite foods. Recognizing how significant barbecue culture can be is easier to overlook.

Keep that in mind, though, and your next barbecue experience will be that much more delicious.

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Space Perspective balloon spaceship

International travel is tough these days, given ever-evolving border restrictions around the world, but there’s one destination where you can avoid all that — outer space. A new startup called Space Perspective is offering adventurers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel to the edge of space, and it’ll only set you back $125,000.

Photo: Space Perspective

This week, Space Perspective announced its new Spaceship Neptune — a 10,000-pound crew capsule surrounded by giant windows, with a minibar and bathroom, that hovers 19 miles over the Atlantic Ocean, right on the edge of space. The capsule, containing eight passengers and one pilot, would launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center while dangling from the end of a high-altitude balloon pumped with hydrogen gas.

Photo: Space Perspective/Facebook

The ascent to 19 miles above Earth would take two hours, and passengers would get another two hours floating above the Atlantic ocean.

Although the flight isn’t a reality just yet, the plan is for Neptune to take flight with a crew for the first time in 2023 and start commercial operations in 2024. Jane Poynter, one of the founders of the experience, told Business Insider, “Our strategic plan has us getting to something on the order of 500 flights a year within a few years after [first] operations,” adding that “We are anticipating that it will be on the order of half, or less than half, of the current Virgin [Galactic] ticket price,” which would put the price at around $125,000.

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Lyft aims for an all-electric fleet

On Wednesday, Lyft promised that by 2030, all vehicles on its platform would be electric in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The electric vehicle initiative will apply to drivers’ personal cars, the company’s Express Drive rental car partner program, the rental car program for riders, and its autonomous vehicle program.

John Zimmer, co-founder and president of Lyft, said in a statement, “Now more than ever, we need to work together to create cleaner, healthier, and more equitable communities. Success breeds success, and if we do this right, it creates a path for others. If other rideshare and delivery companies, automakers and rental car companies make this shift, it can be the catalyst for transforming transportation as a whole.”

Lyft is also planning to collaborate with the Environmental Defense Fund and has joined the Climate Group’s EV100 global electric mobility initiative, in pursuit of its 100 percent electrification goal.

According to Lyft’s press release, “Switching to electric vehicles is not just good for the planet; it’s good for people — riders, drivers, and the communities they serve. By helping to solve one of the biggest pieces of the climate challenge, we believe we can provide direct economic benefits to rideshare drivers and environmental benefits to communities most heavily impacted by smog and asthma.”

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Re-open EU app

Keeping up with the current rules regarding travel can feel like an impossible and overwhelming task. Even though many EU countries are slowly easing their travel restrictions, figuring out where you can go, when, and what you can do there, is still a headache. A new app, developed by the European Union, aims to make it easier, giving travelers the most up-to-date information on each country’s reopening.

The app, called Re-open EU, will give travelers real-time information about Covid-19 restrictions in each of the European Union’s 27 member countries. The app has updates about border rules, health and safety measures, any health certificate requirements, and what services, beaches, shops, museums, and restaurants will be open upon arrival.

According to the app’s website, “This interactive tool provides you with the information that you need to confidently plan your European travel and holidays, while staying healthy and safe. The information is frequently updated and available in 24 languages for your convenience.”

The app is available on both iPhone or Android platforms or via the EU website. Re-open EU is part of the Commission’s Tourism and Transport package, launched to rebuild confidence among travelers in the midst of the pandemic.

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‘Into the Wild’ bus removed

The abandoned Fairbanks bus made famous by the 2007 movie Into the Wild just got airlifted away from its spot on the side of the Teklanika River.

The movie is an adaptation of John Krakaeur’s 1996 novel Into the Wild. The story chronicles real-life adventures of Christopher McCandless. After hitchhiking to Alaska, McCandless stumbled upon the abandoned bus and lived there for about four months before his death. Located on the Stampede Trail, the bus has become a pilgrimage site for fans of the story, but the trek to reach it is treacherous, requiring hikers to ford rivers, and several have died en route.

Photo: Alaska Department of Natural Resources

Due to its dangerous allure, Alaska Guardsmen airlifted the bus off the trail on Thursday for the sake of public safety. In a statement, Commissioner Corri A. Feige said, “After studying the issue closely, prioritizing public safety and considering a variety of alternatives, we decided it was best to remove the bus from its location on the Stampede Trail. We’re fortunate the Alaska Army National Guard could do the job as a training mission to practice airlifting vehicles, at no cost to the public or additional cost to the State.”

Photo: Alaska Department of Natural Resources

The statement also cites travelers’ deaths and injuries as a reason for its removal. “Numerous travelers have sought to reach the bus by retracing McCandless’ steps,” it says, “and many have died, been injured or required search-and-rescue services while hiking in harsh weather or crossing the rain- and meltwater-swollen Teklanika or Savage rivers. Since 2010 two people have drowned on their way to or from the bus, prompting numerous calls to reduce or eliminate the hazard.”

The bus will be secured while the Department of Natural Resources determines a location for its permanent placement.

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Soul Fire bringing social justice

In 2010, Leah Penniman co-founded Soul Fire Farm on an 80-acre plot in Petersburg, New York, with a three-tenet mission: create equity in land ownership, reverse the damage caused by industrial agriculture, and distribute fresh produce to people living under food apartheid. The farm is run by Afro-Indigenous people using ancient farming techniques, and equipped aspiring Black and Brown farmers to do the same. The ultimate goal is to ensure that by 2050 Black farmers own “100,000 farms on 10 million acres of rural and urban land.” Here, Penniman expands on the principles that guide Soul Fire Farm and explains why racial equity in agriculture is possible, and necessary. As told to Assistant Food and Drink Editor Elisabeth Sherman.

It took hundreds of years to create a food system that’s really rooted in racism. We have 98 percent of the rural land that’s white owned, which has a whole history of land theft and USDA discrimination. And lynchings by the KKK that resulted in the land being lost. So we have a situation where being a farm manager is the whitest profession, but being a foreign worker is the brownest profession, and there aren’t equal protections under the law for farm workers.

We have a situation where, as consumers, if you’re Black or Brown, you’re much more likely to go hungry, to suffer from diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure, and other diet-related illnesses. It’s really throughout the entire food system that we see this disparity.

The ways we’re working on it directly is that our farm does doorstep delivery of free and low-cost food to people living under food apartheid in Black and Brown communities. We build gardens for folks to grow their own food in these same communities. We are training and supporting the next generation of Black and Brown farmers through our on-farm and remote courses, and then providing scholarships, job placement, and land matching to our graduates. And then, of course, we organize for systems to change.

Photo: Soul Fire Farm

I would say among our top priorities would be passing the Fairness for Farm Workers Act so that farm workers have equal protection under the law. And then figuring out how to flip the subsidies in the farm bill so that it’s not corporate commodity agriculture that’s getting billions of dollars, but instead it’s these smaller producers of fruits and vegetables and what they call “specialty crops” that are getting resources to get their farms off the ground and sustain their farms.

We really believe that it’s impossible to talk about uprooting racism in the food system without full consideration of the sovereignty and rights of indigenous people. Even though as a majority Black organization we are involuntary settlers on this land, we still benefit from settler privilege. We need to make sure that as we do our own work to reclaim our belonging to the land, our ability to have our farms and to feed our communities, that we’re not replicating colonizer patterns.

We were able to start to build a friendship with some folks out of the Mohican Nation in Wisconsin who made a visit. There’s a number of things they asked us to do. One is to organize to stop the pipeline that’s going through Coney Island. We also preserve certain seeds that grow better in the higher light conditions here than they do in Wisconsin, so we’re working on that and remitting proceeds from any seed sales back to the Mohican Nation. Another thing they asked is to have a place where, when they do come out East once every year or couple of years, they could gather on the lands to have their ceremonies and reflection time.

Photo: Soul Fire Farm

We have a multi-year waiting list for our programs for people who want to farm and haven’t been able to find a program that meets their needs. A lot of Black and Brown folks, when they try to do farm training, they either find that it’s outside of their communities, too expensive, culturally irrelevant, or sometimes outright racist. We had one young person say that they tried to do an internship on a farm, and they were only two days into it when they were picking beans with the white farmer and the farmer said, “So, why is it that Black men are always absentee dads?”

It’s so easy to replicate historical systems of oppression on a farm where you have a white landowner and unpaid Black people bending over and doing the stoop work. That can be very traumatizing. And so making sure that we’re not creating a system that replicates this really dangerous dynamic is crucial, and those are the types of things we keep in mind.

Photo: Soul Fire Farm

It has been really important for me to learn about Afro-Indigenious farming practices because, as a Black farmer, so many of the messages I got growing up were that the only relationship between Black people and the land was through slavery. We can trace composting back to the work of Cleopatra from 50 to 30 BCE and her protection of earthworms, as well as to the women of Ghana, who developed African dark earth, which is a super rich dark compost. We certainly use those composting techniques and things like the raised beds of the Ovambo people, the polycultures of the Caribbean, as well as certain seed varieties that we keep like the moyamensing tomato, a number of Mohican varieties of maize, and some okra that is important to the Black community.

The Reparations Map came out of the Northeast Farmers of Color Network, and we started building the map in 2017. We had potlucks and started building community with each other. We pretty quickly realized that the biggest barrier that folks had to their farm’s success was secure access to land. People were wage earners on someone else’s farm, or renting land on short-term leases. So that’s why we formed the Land Trust, and the Land Trust can actually receive donations of land, make them tax deductible for the donor, and redistribute them.

But there’s also this more distributed tool of the Reparations Map where Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, and Latinx farmers put up their project on the map and ask for what they need. And then people who have generous hearts and open minds can donate directly. We’ve had dozens of people receive resources through the Reparations Map, which is very, very exciting.

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Positive environment news June 2020

Last week’s Climate Win focused on Environmental Justice, a movement that addresses environmental hazards and how they disproportionately affect disadvantaged communities. We have more on that this week, with a dose of good news, with our look at “peaker plants.”

Across the US more than 1,000 part-time power plants, or peaker plants, are used only when the country’s energy demands peak. This happens when air conditioning units turn on for the summer, for example. Though they’re used only some of the time, most of these plants are incredibly inefficient and spew higher amounts of harmful toxins into the air than even the regular natural gas power plants used to power 38 percent of the country.

“Peaker plants are also typically disproportionately located in disadvantaged communities, where vulnerable populations already experience high levels of health and environmental burdens,” the non-profit group Physicians, Scientists, and Engineers for Health Energy (PSE) says on its website. The group goes on to say, “In this screening analysis, we identify peaker power plants across nine states that may be prime candidates for replacement based on operational and grid characteristics, and whose replacement may yield the greatest health, environment and equity co-benefits.”

How can we shut these inefficient “peaker plants” down and not only stop harming the communities where they are located but replace the energy they generate with power from renewable sources? The answer may lie in a common household item you’ve likely used your entire life: batteries.

Now, we’re not saying that the Energizer Bunny is going to drum his way to the rescue here. We’re talking large-scale battery storage, with batteries specifically designed to store excess solar and wind power for use at a later time. Technology in this sector has progressed rapidly in recent years, not only making the batteries more powerful in terms of energy storage but also making them more competitive price-wise to energy providers looking to retire their aging fossil-fuel-powered plants.

The PSE identified “peaker plants” in nine states including Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and Texas. It then put together plan proposals to retire those plants and replace them with battery storage that can be distributed to power suppliers during times of peak need.

As an added bonus, all this clean power would actually be up to 10 percent cheaper for the consumer, in part because there’s no finite amount of sun or wind power to be harvested. “Renewable energy and energy storage systems are beginning to emerge as competitive replacements for this fossil fuel infrastructure,” the PSE notes.

If you live in one of the nine states covered in the study, select your state from the data analysis here and email that page to your representatives in the state capitol. The ability to win a fight on both environmental and economic angles just might “peak” their interest.

Other climate wins this week:

Reducing the amount of time you stare at your cellphone screen could help plant trees around the world. The Forest app was developed to help users reduce screen time. Each time a user wants to stay away from the screen, they plant a “tree” in the app. If they reach their goal, it grows — if they check their phone in the interim, it dies. As the user collects coins through successful grows, they can donate them to the app’s partner, Trees for the Future, to help fund their reforestation efforts around the globe.
Ireland announced a massive shift in how its government will approach sustainability. Three of the country’s main political parties are near an agreement to govern together under a coalition, and part of their long-term plan is to reduce carbon emissions by seven percent per year while simultaneously building up green transit infrastructure — with a heavy emphasis on bike transit in urban areas. Existing roadways will be analyzed to see where space could be turned over to cyclists and pedestrians, and the federal Bike to Work program may even incentivize companies to purchase e-bikes and cargo bikes.
Should you find yourself at Wal-Mart, pay attention to the grey vests worn by employees. As of last summer, staffers have been donning these vests instead of the signature blue-with-yellow-trim vests. The biggest difference, other than the color, is that the new vests are made of recycled plastic bottles. The company announced the plan last summer and has since rolled it out across the country.

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