As the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic keeps people at home and business closed, many galleries across the art world have made the pivot from in-person exhibitions to online viewing rooms (along with much debate about their efficacy and intent). One exhibition that is helping to put the emphasis back on the physical object is the latest show that Andrea Rosen and David Zwirner have collaborated on. Untitled (Fortune Cookie Corner), a worldwide exhibition featuring multiple iterations of a work of the same name, offers viewers a chance to experience a piece by Cuban-born, American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres, albeit in a unique way.

The piece, first created in 1990, is the first of the artists now-famous Candy series, which uses wrapped candy heaped in piles in various formations. This series, as well as his larger body of work, draws on larger issues of loss, time and immortality, topics that feel all too timely due to the current circumstances. In this ambitious and unconventional curatorial undertaking, Rosen asked 1,000 people from across the globe from inside and outside of the art world to participate in helping to activate this exhibition in a new waynamely, by creating a version the work in their home or workspace or any place that is safely accessible to them.

Each participant was sent an invitation containing information about the core elements of the work, as well as a set of guidelines and questions to consider. People were asked to source their own fortune cookies and install between 240 to 1,000 in total that would be placed in a pile in their homes. The parameters of where and how they are arranged are left up to the individual.

Felixs work is perhaps some of the only work that can literally, physically be experienced at this time because of all of the things that he thought about, [particularly] in terms of what is the core of an object, what is the core of an experience? And that it doesnt have to revolve around permanency or aggrandizing something in a singular form, Andrea Rosen told Observer. Rosen explained that she wanted to put emphasis back on the physical aspects of viewing art during a time when people are overtaxed and under-stimulated by digital presentations. Rosen curated the project and is also president of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation.

Because of the way Gonzalez-Torres work functions, it is not confined in the same way other artists work is. Due to its open-endlessness, which is expressly laid out in the invitation that participant receives, it can be installed in more than one place at a time, giving it the chance to have multiple interpretations and interactions. Over the course of the six week show, Rosen also requested that participants document the installation to capture its evolution. Additionally, halfway through, people have been asked to replenish the cookies to the total number they started with.

Since the shows debut on Monday, there have been very ingenious installations of the work. Some participants include Guggenheim curator Nancy Spector, collector Darryl de Prez and Soho House Hong Kong.

In Spectors version of Gonzalez-Torres piece she placed the cookies in a portable lending library space near the home she is currently renting in Maine with the following text: Felix Gonzalez-Torres was the most generous of artists, creating work that gave itself to the public with the possibility of being endlessly regenerated. Yet, his sculptural spills of candy and stacks of printed paper in their depletion over time, rehearse the loss that is inevitable in life. Originally produced during the AIDS crisis, his work resonates with particular poignancy today as we all face the uncertainty of COVID-19.

Another version was installed in a train station in Seoul, South Korea, and was gone within an hour. And another iteration utilizes a newspaper vending machine that has been refashioned to house the cookies, complete with a camera to capture peoples reactions as they take one.

The exhibition is helping to create a breakdown between the personal and the performative and is creating a larger sense of time and space for its participants. Each piece will change over the course of the exhibition and is being captured through digital documentation.

Ultimately, this exhibition invites people to think more deeply about the world around them, their responsibility in it, and how generosity and the human condition can be transformed through these types of interventions. It challenges people to think through larger systems of access and the creation of barriers in societyquestions that are particularly timely, given how Gonzalez-Torres probed the concept of being or feeling isolated, along with his larger social commentary on the AIDS crisis, which also sadly claimed his life in 1996.

At the height of social isolation, when interacting with other people and art is occurring in limited forms, this show of Gonzalez-Torres work is helping people feel connected in a new way. Untitled (Fortune Cookie Corner) is about hope and possibility and it is helping people to feel a part of something that is larger than themselves through a shared experience.

People want to be connected, they want to be engaged.I think if you have the opportunity, especially at this moment, to realize that you are part of something meaningful, its inspiring and I think thats really at the base of Felixs work: using of this sense of generosity to both engage and move people to involvement, said Rosen.

Untitled (Fortune Cookie Corner) is on view until July 5. Viewers are encouraged to follow the hashtag #fgtexhibition to view the work and its progression on Instagram as well as viewing both Andrea Rosens website and David Zwirners website.

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This Felix Gonzalez-Torres Artwork Is Currently Installed at 1,000 Sites Around the World - Observer

Since her death in 1886, Emily Dickinson has haunted us in many forms.

She has been the precocious little dead girl admired by distinguished men; the white-clad, solitary spinster languishing alone in her bedroom; and, in more recent interpretations, the rebellious teenager bent on smashing structures of power with her torrential genius.

As the world continues to endure the ravages of COVID-19, another ghost of Dickinson steps into view. This one, about 40 years old, seems by turns vulnerable and formidable, reclusive and forward. She carries the dead weight of crises beyond her control, but remains unbowed by it.

It was while drafting my dissertation, which explores the meaning of old age in America, that I first encountered this Dickinson. She has been with me ever since.

Most admirers of Dickinsons poetry know that she spent a considerable part of her adult life in what we call self-imposed confinement, rarely venturing outside the family homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts. Less known, perhaps, is that the final 12 years of her life were passed in a state of nearly perpetual mourning.

It began with the death of her father. For all his stern comportment, Edward Dickinson had enjoyed a special relationship with Emily, his middle child. When her surviving letters declare him the oldest and oddest sort of a foreigner, one hears the affectionate annoyance that comes with real devotion. He died in 1874, away from home.

Loss followed loss. Favorite correspondent Samuel Bowles died in 1878. With the passing of Mary Ann Evans, otherwise known as George Eliot, in 1880, Dickinson lost a kindred spirit a mortal who, in her words, had already put on immortality while living. A very different loss was that of Dickinsons mother, Emily Norcross Dickinson, with whom she enjoyed little or no rapport for much of their life together, but who became at least somewhat precious to her daughter on her deathbed. That was in 1882, the same year that took from her literary idol Ralph Waldo Emerson and early mentor Charles Wadsworth.

The following year saw the death of her cherished eight-year-old nephew, Gilbert, from typhoid fever, his illness having spurred one of Dickinsons rare excursions beyond the homestead. The year after that, Judge Otis Phillips Lord, with whom she pursued the only confirmed romantic relationship of her life, finally succumbed to an illness of several years and was wearily dubbed by the poet our latest Lost.

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What impact did so much grief have on the mind of one of Americas greatest visionary artists? Her letters say little enough. Writing to Mrs. Samuel Mack in 1884, however, she frankly admits: The Dyings have been too deep for me, and before I could raise my heart from one, another has come.

The word deep is an arresting choice, making it sound as though Dickinson is drowning in a pile of dead loved ones. Each time she comes up for air, yet another body is added to the great mass.

This is characteristic of Dickinson. If her imagination shrinks from visualizing breadth, it thrives on depth. Some of the most captivating images in her poetry are piles of things that cannot be piled: thunder, mountains, wind. During the Civil War, she uses the same technique to represent soldiers heroic and terrible sacrifice:

In describing her more personal losses of the 1870s, Dickinson seems to imagine yet another pile of human corpses rising before her eyes. Or maybe it is the same pile, her loved ones added to the dead troops whose fate she kept contemplating to the end of her own life. Seen in this light, the Dyings appear not just too deep but unfathomably so.

At the time of this writing, the pile of lives that overshadows our lives is 800,000 deep and getting deeper by the hour. Dickinsons imagery shows how keenly she would have understood what we might feel, dwarfed by a mountain of mortality that will not stop growing. The same anger, exhaustion and sense of futility were her constant companions in later life.

Fortunately, she had other companions. As recent studies have shown, Dickinson was the best kind of social networker, maintaining profoundly generative relationships by correspondence from the family homestead. Her poetic output, though greatly diminished toward the end of her life, never ceases, and its offerings include some of her richest meditations on mortality, suffering and redemption.

These words resonate in the current crisis, during which protecting the daily mind has become a full-time job. News reports, with their updated death tolls, erode our intellectual and spiritual foundations. All seems lost.

But if strain and sorrow are palpable in this poem, so is courage. Dickinsons lonely speaker chooses to express what she has felt, to measure and record the burden of loss that life has thrust upon her. Beliefs, once bandaged, may heal. And while no man has ever been bold enough to confront the deeper Consciousness that so many deaths expose within the human mind, the speaker will not rule out doing so herself. There is still room in this blighted world for the kind of visionary experience from which hope not only springs, but flourishes.

Living in the shadow of death, Dickinson remained enamored of life. This, as much as anything, makes her a hero of our time.

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Emily Dickinson is the unlikely hero of our time - The Conversation US

For the third time in as many seasons, Aaron Donald has opened as the favorite to win NFL Defensive Player of the Year, and awin for Donald would take him from greatnessto footballimmortality. Only two other players have ever won the award three times Lawrence Taylor and J.J. Watt.

Donald, who wonin 2017 and 2018, came into the 2019 season at +150 to complete the three-peat, giving him an implied probability of 40% and making him an overwhelming favorite, but it was New Englands Stephon Gilmore that took home the hardware and dethroned Donald.

Donald played all 16 games in 2019 but his sacks dropped from 20.5 the year before to 12.5. He still led the league with 20 tackles for loss, but the Rams defense struggled as a whole while Gilmore and the Patriots were one of the leagues best units.

This season, oddsmakers are again tagging Donald as the favorite, but his odds are nowhere near as short as last year. This yearyou can get him at +750.

A win would almost certainly cement his legacy as the greatest defensive player of this era, but hell have some stiff competition.

Khalil Mack has the second-shortest odds at +1200, and Gilmore is +1600 to repeat as champion. Chargers safety Derwin James, who is going into his third year in the league, is just behind Gilmore at +2000, and Von Miller has the same odds as James.

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Theres a thing you can always count on in blockbuster movie culture: If a popcorn genre hangs around long enough, after a while its going to merge with another popcorn genre it seemingly has nothing to do with. Thats what happened when Kingsman: Secret Service (2014) fused the setting and attitude of a James Bond thriller with the fanciful bang-bang-ballet-in-the-air action of a superhero movie.

It happens again in The Old Guard. Adapted from the 2017 graphic novel by Greg Rucka (who wrote the screenplay), the movie is about a team of crime-fighting immortals whose flesh can repair itself from bullet wounds and knife stabs like something out of an X-Men film. But theyre also a down-and-dirty crew of leather-jacketed renegades who find a way to do maximum damage with machine guns and windpipe-smashing moves like something out of a Jason Statham payback special. You could call them The I-Team (I for immortal). You could also call the film X-Men: The Expendables Edition.

The leader of this posse of ageless commandos is Andromache of Scythia, known as Andy (Charlize Theron), who we meet in Morocco, where shes wearing Ray-Bans and a black T-shirt and a sharply edged dark-brown version of a late-70s David Bowie coif. She looks like a refugee from a motorcycle commercial, which makes you think the film is going to be some convoluted exercise in numbingly abstract action iconography. But The Old Guard, if anything, goes in the opposite direction; its like an immortal-mercenary hangout movie. Chunks of the picture are logy and formulaic (it dawdles on for two hours), but the director, Gina Prince-Bythewood (making a major lane change after Love & Basketball and The Secret Life of Bees), stages the fight scenes with ripe executionary finesse, and she teases out a certain soulful quality in her cast.

According to the films theology of invincibility, each team member was killed at a certain moment in history, only to wake up and learn that from that point on they would be immortal. Andy is the oldest she cant even remember how long shes been at this and Theron, as cuttingly fierce as you want her to be (especially when shes wielding a circular medieval Asian slicing weapon), acts like someone whos bone-tired after a millennia or two of fighting evil; the dream of immortality has become her cross to bear. Matthias Schoenaerts plays Booker, who was killed fighting for Napoleon, as a melancholy loner spinning through history. And Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli are Joe and Nicky, a swarthy duo who died while dueling in the Crusades and have been lovers through the centuries. Thats part of the films rousingly inclusive approach to the action genre.

The other part is the casting of KiKi Layne as Nile, a Marine who gets her throat slashed by a Taliban leader during the war in Afghanistan. One day later, shes all better, marking her as the first new member of the I-Team since 1812. Laynes performance is the most resonant in the film. She plays Nile as a surly, desperate, human-sized outsider whos distinctly unenthused about joining her new warrior colleagues in a life that never ends. Shes so not with the program, and that gives the moment she agrees to get with it a charge of actual drama.

The Old Guard is at once a conventional action thriller; an origin story thats trying, in its utilitarian Netflix way, to launch a badass franchise; and an elegiac late episode of that same franchise. Its a genre movie that, if anything, takes its characters a lot more seriously than the audience does. Floating through the years with hidden identities, Andy and her team are presented to us as stealth saviors who really, really care. Andy, explaining the game of immortality to Nile, says things like, Its not what time steals. Its what it leaves behind. (A line like that can leave the pulse of a movie behind.)

The way The Old Guard works, immortality lasts until it doesnt. The film has a passing-the-baton-to-a-representative-of-the-new-world plot that echoes Terminator: Dark Fate and Logan. The villain, Merrick, runs a pharmaceutical corporation and is played by Harry Melling (from the Harry Potter films) as if he were the evil grandson of Malcolm McLaren. His plan is to kidnap our heroes and learn the secrets of immortality by mining their flesh for its genetic secrets. Merricks middleman, Copley, is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, an actor who never fails to surprise. Here, he goes from villain to soul-haunted collaborator to the films equivalent of a certain character with an eyepatch in a way thats entirely convincing, even as he barely moves a facial muscle. Will The Old Guard be successful enough to spawn a sequel? If it is, the challenge going forward will be to make the prospect of immortality seem like something more than a rerun.

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Charlize Theron in The Old Guard on Netflix: Film Review - Variety

David Joy is not only one of the most brutally authentic writers working in Appalachia today, his evolving novels are quickly becoming a touchstone for a culture that is on the edge of extermination.

His new work follows the continuum. As with earlier books, When These Mountains Burn (Putnam), is populated with broken people making impossible choices that result in tragic outcomes.

But Joys fourth work of fiction is about more than these individuals. The lives of Ray Mathis, his addict son, Ricky, and niece and deputy Leah Green, the small-time thief Denny Rattler and DEA agent Ron Holland intersect in a time and place that Joy knows well the 2016 Tellico fire and the opioid crisis, both consuming Western North Carolina.

Savagely honest, Joys story details retired forester Mathiss decision that, finally, enough is enough as he witnesses his 40-year-old son hit bottom again and again. Ricky steals his dying mothers pain medication, pawns anything worth of value in the family home and puts Ray in a do-or-die situation in which he must decide between his life savings and his sons death at the hands of a dealer.

Fleshing out the outcome of that decision is an excellent crime story, but theres more to that. At its heart, When These Mountains Burn isnt about Ricky, or Ray, the Cherokee Nation or the vengeance that is so critical to the plot. When These Mountains Burn is the story behind the progression of what Joy has called cultural extinction, told through the reflections of its characters as fire burns tens of thousands of acres of land.

Joy recently agreed to speak with Mountain Times about both those reflections and his new novel. The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Tom Mayer: Like another great Appalachia writer, Ron Rash to whom you dedicate this book to as mentor and friend place is critical to your novels. What is it that keeps you coming back to this region in your writings?

David Joy: Ive said this a lot in the past, but its the truth and thats that I just dont know anything else. I write very specifically about Jackson County, N.C., which is where I live. Its a particular part of Appalachia, in that this isnt coal country. This isnt Eastern Kentucky or West Virginia. This isnt even Macon County or Haywood County, our neighbors to the west and east. People get the notion that you can talk about the region as a whole, as this singular thing, and maybe some folks can, but Im not trying to do that. Im trying to capture whats just off the porch. Im writing about one small place and its because I know it well.

TM: You detail the opioid crisis of Western North Carolina and Appalachia with great validity, and you specifically use the words these mountains in the title. Is the problem worse here, or is the novel more of an example to spotlight a national concern?

DJ: A lot of my novels titles have been phrased that way thisworld,thesemountains and it goes back to that first answer in that Im writing about a very specific place. As far as Appalachia as a region with respect to the opioid crisis, yes, absolutely its been worse here. All you have to do is look up a distribution map of where the majority of prescription opioids were sent in this country, and this region, these mountains show up like a bruise. This place was systematically targeted by Purdue Pharma. Thats not something thats up for debate. There was a geography to how these drugs were distributed.There were 42,000 opioid overdose deaths in 2016, and of the five states with the highest number, four of those five were in Appalachia.

TM: You use the Tellico fire as a metaphor in the story following a news report, Ray even muses that maybe it would be better if the whole world burned away into nothing but its also a very real presence. Beyond using the fire as a way to timestamp the story, is wildfire a growing threat? An environmental cause for alarm?

DJ: I set this story very specifically in the fall of 2016 because I think that moment in time, for a lot of us, felt like the world was ending. Thats largely what this book is about is about a group of characters who feel that they are witnessing an end to everything theyve ever known. But, yes, wild fire is absolutely a growing threat. Environmental disaster is a growing, looming, inevitable threat. As climate change continues to create more and more drastic weather patterns, these sorts of extremes are just going to worsen. With regards to the fires specifically, I think weve mismanaged a lot of forests here in the east, and by mismanaged I mean that weve had little to no management for decades. There hasnt been timber harvest. There hasnt been prescribed burns. What weve got is 30 years of fuel built up. So you have an incredibly dry year like we had in 2016, its inevitable. Were sitting on a giant tinderbox.

TM: Certainly one way of reading the novel is about Rays quest for vengeance, the opioid crisis and the environmental damage that threatens life today. But in tying these things together, they drive what youve called cultural extinction. As you write in this book: It wasnt just a matter of economics. It wasnt the drugs. It was an abandonment of values. It was trading work for convenience. It was marking the nearest Starbucks as a place more important than the front porch. Thats a powerful statement. Is this where were headed, or are we already at the point of no return?

DJ: I think were long past the point of no return. Were a generation away from cultural extinction. And thats not just an Appalachian reality, thats a rural reality.

TM: Im wondering, though, where the blame lies for this cultural evolution? Is it solely on a new generation that greedily wants more and with less effort than their parents had, or is that older generation also guilty with its best intentions? Again, from the book: Those who stayed raised their children to do better. They told them to go to college. They told them to get an education so that they could find a good job, one that didnt leave their hands callused, their skin cracked, their bones broken and mended. We dont want you to have to work like we did. That was what they said and it was a noble thought with an ominous end. Instead of remaining rooted to the place that carried their name, they took their names with them when they left. Are we today misguidedly eradicating our own culture?

DJ: Its certainly not a new generation. This isnt a new problem. This is a product of placing dollars ahead of people for 250 years. As far as addressing whats happening specifically where I live, so speaking in terms of Western North Carolina and more specifically Jackson County, its rural gentrification thats directly tied to an unwillingness to recognize tourism as an extractive economy. For decades theyve shoved tourism down our throats like it was our savior, like there would be no consequence. Were being priced out. Were becoming bedroom communities for larger, more urban centers.

And thats something thats just going to worsen as working remotely becomes more commonplace. For a long time Ive been very adamant about rural connectivity, so broadband, being key to leveling the playing field in a growingly online economy. But the truth is, the minute we get that connectivity all weve really done is made it easier for outside wealth to move in. The median price of a home in San Francisco is $1.3 million. Why would someone pay that for a home to fight traffic everyday for an hour if they could live in a place like this on a hundred acres and do their job remotely? In the end, the history of every place is a story of displacement, and right now its mountain people who are experiencing that turning of the tide.

TM: Another powerful statement in the novel comes from your epigraph, I love the helpless people I loved, from the poem by the Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet Maurice Manning. But the next part of that verse and ensuing stanzas you dont include: Thats what a little boy will do, but a grown man will turn it all to sadness and let it soak his heart until he wrings it out and dreams about another kind of love. Ray and other grownups struggle with memories and reflections throughout the novel. At the end of the book in what sets up a passage from there to the end and that made me think I had wandered wonderfully into a Thomas Wolfe novel is this, There was a forever that came from the remembering, and that single thought struck Raymond Mathis as the most beautiful thing his mind had ever conjured. Are our feelings of memories forever tied to the past, or do they shift based the decisions, actions and outcomes we experience today?

DJ: I think were nostalgic creatures by nature. What separates us from every other animal on the planet is that above all else we are storytellers. As long as the words are spoken there is no end.Thats a powerful, powerful thing.The story may be as close as we can come to immortality.

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An end to everything: David Joy's new novel, 'When These Mountains Burn,' descends into the depth and threat of Appalachia culture - Watauga Democrat

Adam and Eve were not supposed to die. God originally blessed them in such a way that they would not evensuffer, get sickor grow old.Paragraph 376 of the Catechism of the Catholic Churchattests, "As long as he remained in the divine intimacy, man would not have to suffer or die."

God had originally intendedfor the first parentsand their progeny to live full lives, grow in virtue and finally enterHeaven without ever having to suffer. They did sin, of course, and thus lost thisblessingnot only for themselves but for the entire human race asRomans 5:12 relates,"so death passed upon all men."

God also gave Adam and Eve the supernatural gift ofsanctifying grace, the effect of God'spresence within them.They lost this gift with the first mortal sin.

Along with immortality, Adam and Eve were additionally giventwo other gifts that were calledpreternatural orbeyondnature.The first was the gift of knowledge called infused science. This was like a mentalowner's manual of life that God download into their minds. They thus knew how to live and how toteachthe human raceabout life.

An example of this knowledge is found in Genesis 2:19 where Adam names the animals, which showshefirstunderstood them.Their mindswere also made nimble and prone to learning.

The third preternatural blessing, called the gift of integrity,allowed their emotions to be balanced and reasonable. Paragraph 376 of theCatechism saysthis gift afforded our first parents an "inner harmony" that promotedanexternal "harmony between the first couple and all creation."

God had even blessed nature making itconformabletotheir service. This was shown in Genesis 2:15 where God placed them "into the paradise of pleasure to dress it and to keep it." After they fell from grace, this blessing would be withdrawnand the earth would thenyield "thorns and thistles."

To learn more about the Catholic faith, check out Church Militant's Catholicism series.

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Jurgen Klopp and his Liverpool players have written themselves into Anfield immortality as theyve finally delivered the trophy that all Kopites crave the Premier League.

The manager and stars such as Mo Salah, Jordan Henderson, Virgil van Dijk, Alisson Becker, Roberto Firmino and many more will get the plaudits, and deservedly so.

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However, the success of a football club is not all about the players and manager.

Theres a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes from people who are not in the limelight to help make a club as success.

And talkSPORT.com has identified seven unsung heroes at Liverpool who deserve a shoutout for their contributions towards helping the club win their first league title in 30 years.

Before Klopp arrived at Anfield, Liverpool were a laughing stock in the transfer market. Not any more.

The manager has bought players in the right places but its not just him whos working on the clubs recruitment.

The appointment of Edwards as sporting director in November 2016 proved to be the turning point in Liverpools transfer market dealings.

Edwards has overseen signings such as Mohamed Salah, Andy Robertson, Fabinho, Van Dijk and Alisson and would have also played a role in the likes of Sadio Mane and Georginio Wijnaldum arriving in 2016 in his previous role as technical director.

http://www.liverpoolfc.com

Its been said that a lot of Klopps success has been down to his long-time assistant boss Zeljko Buvac, who was known as the brain in Klopps coaching staff at Borussia Dortmund and Mainz.

So when Buvac left Liverpool at the end of the 2017/18 season, it was seen as a massive blow.

Thankfully for Liverpool, Klopp was already grooming another member of his coaching staff in Lijnders to become his assistant manager.

Liverpool have gone to the next level since and Lijnders has successfully filled the void left by Buvac.

Some might have questioned Klopps sanity when he decided to sign a throw-in coach on a two-year deal in the summer of 2018.

But Gronnemark, who has also worked for Danish clubs Viborg, FC Midtjylland and Silkeborg, is very much part of the Anfield furniture now.

In truth, there has not been been a Rory Delap-style effect but he has been working with the players to retain possession in tricky areas and create chances.

Gronnemark has earned himself a cult figure status at the club and people will be disappointed if his contract isnt renewed in the summer.

Getty - Contributor

Although hes recently left Liverpool to take up the managers gig at Blackpool, Critchleys contribution has been huge.

Hes been the Under-23s coach since 2017, which means he would have played a role in Trent Alexander-Arnolds pathway into the first-team, while the likes of Curtis Jones, Rhian Brewster, Neco Williams and Ki-Jana Hoever have also had a taster of life in the senior side.

Critchley has even taken charge of Liverpool twice this season as Klopp has been unavailable.

The first time was in a Carabao Cup tie in December as Klopp and the senior players were away for the Club World Cup. It didnt go well as Liverpools kids were well-beaten by Aston Villa, losing 5-0.

But the second occasion, where Klopp and the first-team were on their winter break, was one of the standout moments of the season as Liverpools kids claimed an against-the-odds victory against Shrewsbury in an FA Cup replay back in February.

Getty - Contributor

No, hes not Klopps twin! Nevertheless, Kornmayer is a hugely important part of the set-up at Liverpool.

As head of fitness and conditioning, its his role to make sure the Reds are in the correct state to implement Klopps Gegenpress, a very physically demanding playing style that can only be correctly executed with elite fitness levels.

And with Liverpool winning the league at a canter and looking like theyre ready to win more trophies in the future, its safe to say that its mission accomplished at Kornmayers end.

Getty - Contributor

They may not be part of Klopps coaching staff but the legendary Carol Farrell and Caroline Guest definitely deserve a mention.

Theyve been working for the club since 2004 and have served the Liverpool players their breakfast, lunch or dinner with a smile on their faces.

Carol and Caroline are loved by players past and present. Luis Suarez was understood to be asking about them when making a return to Melwood in 2016.

What they do may not seem like a lot but Carol and Caroline help create a family atmosphere at the club and a good environment that helps the players perform better on the pitch.

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Michael Edwards, Pepijn Lijnders and seven unsung heroes who played a major part in Liverpools Premier L - talkSPORT.com

Photography#birds#boats#India#religion#rivers

All images Sankar Sridhar, shared with permission

When Dehli-based photographer Sankar Sridhar visits the Yamuna River in winter, he observes hundreds of gulls, terns, and other birds as they flock to the Ganges tributary that flows through the Indian city. Despite the rivers inability to maintain a thriving ecosystem in that stretch, the avians are spurred by site fidelity as they migrate each year, a ritualistic act Sridhar recently captured in a series titled Long Live the River.

Because the tributary attracts such an influx of avians, its also a site of religiosity and legend. People travel to the water to feed the birds, an act thought to bring good karma, and disperse offerings for their loved ones whove died. My approach to documenting life along a small stretch of this river was driven by the deep connection of rivers and life and divinity in Hindu texts, mythology, and legend. The fact that the Yamuna is considered the only river with the power to grant immortality to humans seemed an irony that could not be overlooked, the photographer says.

Fifteen drains of untreated wastewater from household, municipal, and industrial sources flow into the tributary, saturating it with chemicals, pesticides, heavy metals, and garbage that eliminate aquatic life. However, Sridhar notes that in 2017, officials recorded 24 bird species residing in the rivers wetlands. This finding came as a surprise, given the greatly degraded water quality of the Yamuna, he says.

Using a low shutter speed, Sridhar captures the annual rituals through clouds of Dehlis thick smog, blurring the flying creatures as they swoop over the water. The obscured visitors mar clear shots of boats and the horizons as they appear to linger above the water in shadowy flocks. I aimed to impart a surreal touch to the images by using the boats as the fabled transport into the afterlife while flight-paths of the birds as metaphors as much for the souls of the dead as the mad chaos in our world that blinds us to the damage we do to the environment, he says. Throughout, though, the river remains a giver of life, despite having the life sucked out of her.

An avid outdoor photographer, Sridhar shares his projects focused on Himalayan landscapes and local communities on Behance and Instagram.

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Through a Blur of Migratory Birds, Photographer Sankar Sridhar Captures the Rituals of the Yamuna River - Colossal

In these trying times of much death and many obituaries, one such last month of the non-Corona category caught my eye. Astrologer Bejan Daruwalla of the weekly astrology column Ganesha Speaks fame passed away of pneumonia and lung infection, but not before predicting that the current epidemic would fade away by the end of May. Alas.

My memory of Bejan Daruwalla goes back many years, when the reading of a newspaper on Sundays was a cherished family ritual. In the 80s, coming to modernity necessarily meant being a good, newspaper-reading citizen. As historian and political scientist Benedict Anderson informed us, the modern nation is an imagined community made possible because we imagine ourselves as part of the same nation, through acts such as reading the newspaper. Except that my act of imagination included not just my nation, but the imagined nation of those that shared my Sun Sign.

Along with development and debt, violence and sport, the Olympics, floods and drought, I read my horoscope as predicted by this man with that delicious name destined in other worlds perhaps to launch a thousand speakeasies. In those Sundays of always sepia sunshine, my future shone bright and the world seemed achievable.

Fear & frenzy

In the midst of frenzied, daily discussions on masks, vaccines, ventilators and medicines, when I heard of Daruwallas passing, it seemed to be another sign that the world as we know it is truly coming to an end. I mourned, just a wee bit.

The act of mourning, as most of us well know by now is never about anybody but ourselves and our vanishing sense of memory and temporality. We rely on friends, family, and celebrities, to preserve for us our childhood, our youth, our tremulous possibilities, and the many other lives we could have and have led. Every now and then we turn to them to recover the joie de vivre of an assumed immortality and vigour. And mine seemed connected to this childhood act of reading horoscopes in the newspaper. No more Sun Sign mumbo-jumbo for me, I thought.

The world, however, doesnt seem to agree. Even as a New York Times headline asks if the coronavirus will kill astrology, other reports of robust optimism are noting the increasing rise in those consulting astrologers, tarot readers, numerologists and the like. The business of quelling uncertainty, is apparently not just the domain of epidemiologists and virologists. And why ever not? The promises of modernity, globalisation and progress have produced radical disenchantment, misery and increasing violence travelling through the bodies of the worlds most marginalised citizens. The world erupts in protests as I write, and there is no end in sight. So why not astrology for whatever it can offer as respite and repose?

Lest you think that Im moving eggplant-like from one end of the reason/ unreason binary to another, let me try something else here.

Anthropology, when studying cultural change, ferment, and radical breakdown, occupies itself with understanding cosmologies. Unlike the theoretical physicists, anthropologists understand cosmology as a set of understandings, beliefs, and practices of a culture vis--vis the origin of the universe, and the role that humans are seen to play in the furthering of such a plot. In other words, cosmology refers to the study of a whole and complete structure of meaning, a world.

Lies put to test

At a time like this, when the modern and the non-modern worlds (if there be any benefit at all in thinking in this bifurcated fashion) seem to be struggling, and all the lies of the universe are being put to the test, we need new cosmologies.

And I, for one, can see the possibilities of a common minimum programme as it were, between all cosmologies alike. For they all agree that the myths we have functioned by will not hold us in good stead.

We cannot prosper forever at the cost of the lives of others. The health of all is needed for the health of one. And there will be no future without the insistence and imagination of a future for all.

So now when I read my horoscope, in honour of a future yet to come, I will expand my imagination to include everyone born under the same sign as me, deserving therefore of the same promise of life as mine, and the same hopes, possibilities, futures and lives. In this meeting of cosmologies, the sun and the stars rise for all, and the bell tolls for thee.

Mathangi Krishnamurthy teaches anthropology for a living, and is otherwise invested in names, places, animals, and things.

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Horoscopes in the time of Corona - The Hindu

WATERTOWN The novel coronavirus pandemic has compelled ministers to find innovative ways to serve their congregants.

Sometime toward the end of Lent, I drove past St. Patricks Roman Catholic Church in Watertown. A priest sat in a chair a short distance away from another individual and both men were in the parking lot.

The priest wore vestments, so I presumed he was hearing the mans confession. Social distancing rules forced this sacrament to be conducted outside. They lucked out at that moment by enjoying sunshine instead of enduring rain.

This health care crisis has taken numerous lives and made many others ill. Ministers normally help ease peoples anxieties through in-person visits.

But the threat of infection has rendered this practice unwise. Spiritual guidance must be offered in less-intimate settings.

This no doubt has proven challenging for men and women of the cloth. The divine messages they believe theyre imparting are often best delivered through as few filters as possible. Individuals distressed over the potential of developing COVID-19 want to feel their respective deities will look out for them, and interacting directly with these emissaries is comforting.

However, the need for clerical intervention throughout the history of religious belief remains puzzling. Why would supreme beings that actually exist require priests, rabbis, shamans, rectors, prophets, druids, elders and imams as intermediaries to communicate with the faithful? And is the truth being accurately conveyed by these interpreters of supernatural reality, or have liberties periodically been taken to fulfill other, less-godly objectives?

As I previously wrote, its obvious that virtually every religion has it all wrong. If we take them at their word that they speak on behalf of the one true god (whose teaching is, of course, exclusively authoritative), most of them must be false because there can be only a single one true god.

If you gather four one true gods and they all proclaim paths to righteousness (through their own clerics, of course), at least three of them are lying! If the only thing we can know for sure is that three of these numina are definitely bogus, we can reasonably presume that the fourth may be a figment of the imagination as well.

Evidence of this can be seen by comparing what many religious people believe about the roots of their faith and what has been shown to be true.

The Passover narrative is one of the epic stories of all time. God affirmed a covenant with the Israelites by delivering them from slavery in Egypt and leading them into the Promised Land. The Exodus presented the Israelites as Gods chosen people, a designation that has defined Jewish life ever since.

The problem is there is no archaeological evidence that this event occurred. The reign of Rameses II is very well documented, but theres nothing there suggesting the Israelites were present in Egypt. There also are no signs that the Israelites spent any time much less 40 years in the surrounding areas making their way to the Promised Land.

Whats more intriguing is the historical background of the supreme being portrayed in Hebrew scriptures. The Israelites stood out among ancient cultures as a people devoted to monotheism. This contrasted with the numerous deities of the pagan world.

But theres a hiccup with this story as well. It turns out the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was actually two supreme beings: Yahweh, a Midianite god, and El, a Canaanite deity. Each has its own legends, which were eventually merged together to form the myths of the Judeo/Christian faith.

Scholars have known for centuries that there were two distinct deities worshiped by the Israelites in the Bible, each with a different name, different origins and different traits, according to God: A Human History, written by religious scholar Reza Aslan and published in 2017. The Pentateuch the first five books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) is actually a composite work stitched together from various sources spanning a period of hundreds of years. Look closely and you can occasionally see the seams where two or more different traditions were sewn together.

Aslan wrote that El presided over a divine council of Canaanite gods that included Asherah, the mother goddess and Els consort; Baal, the young storm god known as the Rider of the Clouds; Anat, the warrior deity; Astarte, also called Ishtar; and a host of other, lower deities. El was also unquestionably the original god of Israel. Indeed, the very word Israel means El perseveres.

El served as the dominant god among the Israelites, although certainly not the only one. Aslan wrote that one passage of Hebrew scripture, the Song of Moses, presents El as superior to Yahweh:

When Elyon gave the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of man, he fixed the borders of the people in accordance with the number of the gods; Yahwehs own portion was his people. (Deuteronomy 32:8-9)

A native of the Finger Lakes region of New York understood better than many people how belief in supernatural agents evolved over time. Robert Green Ingersoll, who was born in Dresden in 1833, came to be known as the Great Agnostic due to his insightful and very popular speeches and writings on religious faith.

Ingersoll nicely summarized the truth behind theism in his 1877 essay The Gods: An Honest God is the Noblest Work of Man. Here are a few passages:

Each nation has created a god, and the god has always resembled his creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved, and he was invariably found on the side of those in power. Each god was intensely patriotic and detested all nations but his own. All these gods demanded praise, flattery and worship.

To me, it seems easy to account for these ideas concerning gods and devils. They are a perfectly natural production. Man has created them all under the same circumstances would create them again. Man has not only created all these gods but he has created them out of the materials by which he has been surrounded. Generally, he has modeled them after himself and has given them hands, heads, feet, eyes, ears and organs of speech. Each nation made its gods and devils speak its language not only but put in their mouths the same mistakes in history, geography, astronomy and in all matters of fact generally made by the people. No god was ever in advance of the nation that created him.

The supernatural world reflects not a divine realm that actually exists but our hopes of what is to come. When we talk about a god, were imagining ourselves thats what we aspire to be.

Were frustrated by our limitations, so we conjure omnipotence. We fear death, so we dream up immortality. Were infuriated that justice eludes those who engage in evil, so we concoct hell. Weve had it with the drudgery of everyday life, so we invent a utopian world called heaven.

Its remarkable weve developed a society that allows all these contradictory religions to carry on peacefully. Thats because our constitutional system separates church and state. Civility among all these faith traditions is a direct result of our secular government, which treats them all equally.

However, this also means that people such as Ingersoll can peer behind the curtain and expose the truth about religious belief. Many people seek out ancient wisdom from their preachers, and thats their prerogative. But the reality of life for us humans must win the day during crises.

Its solely up to us to confront our problems and resolve them as best we can. Regardless of what the clerics say, our only chance of progress is to put faith in each other rather than a divine eye in the sky.

Jerry Moore is the editorial page editor for the Watertown Daily Times. Readers may call him at 315-661-2369 or send emails to jmoore@wdt.net.

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Jerry Moore: In gods we trust but is this good? - NNY360

Lahore: Today is Saadat Hasan Mantos 108th birthday. In the last years of his life, he achieved notoriety and also immortality by his satirical pieces on mullahs and his series of Letters to Uncle Sam.

More than a decade after his untimely demise in 1955, his friend and contemporary Mohammad Khalid Akhtar paid the ultimate tribute to his deceased friend by writing a Last Letter to Uncle Sam, a fictional letter written on Mantos pattern, which is a very successful imitation of Mantos style. In it, Akhtar talks about the political character of the superpower United States and its influence, imposition and interference in Pakistan.

Actually, this is a satire on the behaviour of the Pakistani nation and its rulers in the second decade of independence. It was published in Akhtars Adamjee Prize-winning collection Khoya Hua Ufaq (The Lost Horizon), published in 1968.

Since 2020 is Akhtars own birth centenary year, this prescient letter in my original English translation can also be read as evidence of Akhtars own prowess as a satirist and humourist. For others, it may offer a healthy antidote to the relentless and duplicitous dual diet(s) of Dirili: Erturul and piety induced by Maulana Tariq Jameel (discerning readers may note that the resemblance to another irksome Maulana in the letter itself, which is of course entirely fictional) favoured and advocated by our own prime minister of Naya Pakistan during the current Ramazan season. So read on.

Chacha Jan Assalamu Alaikum

You will be very grieved hearing that I passed away recently. Chacha Jan, that threat about dying which I used to give to you in every letter of mine has come true after all. Whether you accept it or not, your inattention and carelessness too has quite a hand in my death. Despite my repeated requests and entreaties, neither did you send John Haig whiskey (to me) from your side nor some million-dollar legs from Hollywood. I think in just my previous letter I had expressed the wish to view these legs in proximity. How loveless you turned out to be, Chacha Jan, you just kept quiet by turning a deaf ear to my request. On the other hand, witness the state of my obedience that I praised you incessantly. Now your dearest nephew has passed away and as I have just said, you are wholly to blame for this indeed.

God knows whether you even comprehend the meaning of passing away or not; since by sheer good luck you remain immortal. You will never pass away. Chacha Jan! By God, do not pass away even by mistake. Whatever I had heard about Heaven turned out to be lies upon coming here. Here, neither are there the pleasures of the seven freedoms of your master nor is there Hollywood. There is no country even which you could grant military aid to or blow to smithereens with your hydrogen bomb. Your John Haig cannot be had here even in the black market. In the evening, pure wine is indeed distributed among us the inhabitants of Heaven in flasks but the wretched (thing) neither exhilarates nor intoxicates. What to talk of your John Haig; it does not even have the appeal of Pakistani tharra. Your Coca Cola, which I had the chance to drink in Lahore once, is vastly better than this nectar

Chacha Jan! In my poor country, if truth be told, after God and His Prophet, the great belief with which your name is taken, there is no one else. The theologians and mullahs in our mosques, the editors of newspapers, and the leaders of the Muslim League often bring the name of God and His Prophet even now; if you peep in their hearts, dollars will be heard tinkling

Chacha Jan, you will be amazed and happy hearing that here I have kept a beard like yours. Every morning I have my moustache clipped and remain abluted all eight hours. No evil thought enters my mind, though I was famous as a pornographer in my own country. There I always used to be irked by the thought of artistic creation, since coming here I have not written a single short story. Actually Chacha Jan, this art-fart is all nonsense, a face full of light and a heart full of delight is the real thing and along with that if there are dollars in the pocket too, then by God, how very fine? Would that rather than ruining my life and health writing away short stories there I was in the sugar business, or of any other commodity and would be elected to the Constituent Assembly on the basis of money earned from gambling, and performed the Hajj three or four times, so my world and the Hereafter would be reformed.

Chacha Jan! You will consider me to be very happy and cheerful in this new world. On no account. Whether you need to blow up the world with a hydrogen world or not, you know better. Yes, had I arrived after learning the prescription of the hydrogen bomb, I would certainly have blown up this world. The hardship and bitterness in the world that was my lot was much better than the pleasure and comfort and light which is available to me here

Chacha Jan. Just yesterday while strolling near the Raised Fountain, I ran into Mirza. This is not that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiani who had declared prophethood at one time (and whose sign I could not find here even after much search) This is another Mirza. Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib. Why would you have heard his name. His fathers name is off my mind right now. What we know is that for a hundred generations the ancestral occupation was soldiery. This gentleman has been a very great poet of our unfortunate Urdu language. The man turned out to be fun; he immediately became informal, said, Amaan Saadat! What is this Paradise. We used to hear a lot of praises of it in the world; neither can one make out any human at a distance nor anyone possesses a taste for reciting and hearing poetry. Well, yes do ask someone to arrange for a bottle of Scotch either Old Tom or something else. I will write a voucher to Mithradas Mahajan. The mind has been dulled drinking away the pure draught and well, yes, have you seen my full-moon-faced damsel anywhere?

Chacha jan! I hold the satisfaction of that Mirza Ghalib very dear, so please if not for me, but for him indeed send a case of fine whiskey; if its champagne, that too will not make a difference. Both of us have damaged livers; do pay attention. Where else would one find a sympathizer and friend like you in this age?

Yes Chacha Jan! A few days before my death you were making some SEATO, MEDO, etc. I have a strong hope that you will have been successful in this objective. Even in old age your spirit is young; it is impossible that you have a hand in anything and it is not accomplished. Give a request on my behalf to Mr Dulles that this part of paradise should also be included in your SEATO or MEDO. Leave it to me how to appease the agents here. The thing is that we indeed have here an abundance of are houris, but they dont possess that which your Hollywood actresses do. These houris are very much pure-quality and luminous. Then in this paradise, may God be good to you, there is neither newspaper, not magazine or radio; others apart, even a pen and inkpot are non-existent. This pen and inkpot, with which I am writing you this letter, I have asked my recording angels for it with a hundred excuses. They are unemployed these days and waiting for the Day of Judgment with the manuscript of my worldly actions in hand; your nephew has been kept in paradise for an interim period. The dominant guess is that he will be transferred from here and sent somewhere else.

Listen to the situation of my death. Do you know that when I passed away, my wife was so worried for an honourable manner of shrouding and burial for me, there was not even a bit of money worth the lowest value in the house. It was a few publisher gentlemen, may God be good to them, who had published the books of this distressed one, who with absolute generosity gave the expenses of the washer and the grave out of their own pocket. Still, the state of helplessness and despair in which the funeral of such a great short story writer was taken out was not at all worth seeing or hearing. Chacha Jan!..

Chacha Jan! Are you not bored. Actually I greatly enjoy talking to you. This is my last letter addressed to you. It is a strange headache writing and sending a letter from paradise. I have already presented the state of the pen and ink pot, there is no satisfactory arrangement for mail too, in fact it is non-existent in the first place. No comfort of your land of the seven freedoms is available here. I have enticed and pacified a gentleman with many entreaties into readiness to deliver this letter to your blessed hand; his name is His Excellency Azrael. He is a very famous sage, it is entirely possible that you have heard his name. Hayen Chacha Jan whats this. Why did you turn pale at the mention of Azrael. You are indeed immortal and now then you have to increase the seven freedoms to sixty freedoms; shape SEATO, MEDO, NATO, etc.; invent the cobalt bomb. God forbid how can you die now?

Chacha Jan! Listen to another joke. There is a sage in India, Maulana Abdul Majid Daryabadi. A few days ago I heard he came to meet our respected Governor General Ghulam Mohammad in some connection. He publishes the journal Sidq. Your Honour is a writer of great rank and an acknowledged scholar and the author of numerous scholarly and learned articles and books; these books can only be read by those gentlemen whose hearts have light and eyes have delight (or the opposite) within them. And whose eyes have the swath of prejudice and religious madness over them. Maulana Daryabadi spontaneously became agitated over the sorrow and mourning which occurred over my passing and he expressed strong surprise at this in his journal Sidq in that why is the death of an ordinary pornographer being mourned to such an extent.

See Chacha Jan! How enlightened and writer-friendly gentlemen reside in our land. Are Ernest Hemingway, Caldwell, Thomas Wolfe and every such artist who exposes the lies with truth and dare and carries the world forward in your country called a pornographer in the same manner! Here even the Father Adam is singular in the first place. Believe me, if the incompetent nephew had a hands length beard, clipped moustache, a husband of three wives and a father of two dozen children; the author of some Behishti Zevar kind of a book instead of lewd and nude stories; and he had by the grace of Allah allotted himself five houses, two orchards and ten shops arriving in Pakistan, the same Maulana Abadi would be expressing unlimited pain at his death and deemed it a great catastrophe for the country and nation.

Well Chacha Jan, now I do not feel sad what opinion people like Maulana Daryabadi have about me. This will indeed be decided by the coming generation and yes Chacha Jan, the thought has certainly been put into your mind by some enemy that this nephew of yours is communist. Had I been in the land of your seven freedoms, it was very likely that you would have deemed me truly communist or a fellow-traveler at the indication of Mr McCarthy. Alas that I died, dissolving away in poverty and illness. At your place, undoubtedly I would have died with great pleasure seated in the high, comfortable chair in your incomparable slaughterhouse though by the grace of God our Pakistan also has seven freedoms, but here a slaughterhouse like yours has not been constructed now By God I am not a communist. You are a strange simpleton that you thought me to be a communist deceived by my enemies. Oh God, remove this suspicion from your heart. If you dont believe me, you can verify this from your consulate in Pakistan that I have never talked with such affection and love with your enemy Malenkov as I did with you. This is entirely a slander that I had made Malenkov my maternal uncle. Just a single patron and sympathizer like you is enough for me (And now I have also heard that Malenkov, admitting his own incompetence, has resigned from the premiership of Russia)

Chacha Jan, by the One God who has no partner, I was only your nephew in the world; even now I am only your nephew indeed. Though because of your suspicion you kept putting off every demand and request of mine with a smile. But there wasnt even a hairs breadth of a difference in my obedience and sincerity. Though chacha jan! Why are you so perplexed by communists? Just enjoy yourself in your seven freedoms. Those wretches neither have your whiskey nor the million dollar legs havent you been a student of history?

Dont you know that culture and civilisation never remain the same?

You may try a million times. Hydrogen bombs have never destroyed humans.

This letter has become very lengthy. Still I wanted to talk further with you but here the ink has finished; there His Excellency Azrael is mounted on my head like a string-legged saint that hurry up I have other things to do.

There is absolutely no need of delivering a written response to this letter to Mr Azrael. Willy-nilly, your time will be wasted. Yes do definitely hand over a case of John Haig to him and if this is not possible, at least grant a prescription for its distillation.

Your deceased nephew,

Saadat Hasan Manto

* Raza Naeem is a Pakistani social scientist, book critic and award-winning translator and dramatic reader who has been writing, translating and speaking about Saadat Hasan Manto since 2012. He is currently based in Lahore, where he is also the president of the Progressive Writers Association. He can be reached at: razanaeem@hotmail.com.

Read more from the original source:
Reading Manto's Last Letter to Uncle Sam, on his 108th Birthday - The Wire

Former Manchester United European Cup Winner Tony Dunne has died aged 78.

The Republic of Ireland full back was a member of Sir Matt Busby's 1968 European Cup side who became the first English team to win the trophy, beating Benfica 4-1 at Wembley.

Dublin born Dunne joined United from Shelbourne for 5,000 in 1960 and helped shaped United's future in the years after the Munich air disaster of 1958.

A brave, speedy defender Dunne was originally signed as cover for Noel Cantwell and Shay Brennan and his career took off after appearing in the 1963 FA Cup Final win over Leicester City at Wembley.

The Irish international also helped United win the League title in 1965 and 1967 before his crowning glory as a member of the victorious 1968 European Cup winning side who achieved immortality at Old Trafford.

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Dunne won 33 caps for the Republic of Ireland - captaining his country on four occasions in a 13-year international career following his debut against Austria in 1962 - and was Irish Footballer of the Year in 1969.

He will be remembered as one of United's greatest full backs.

Dunne scored just two goals in his 535 games for United, a tally of appearances bettered by only Ryan Giggs, Bobby Charlton, Bill Foulkes, Paul Scholes, Gary Neville, Wayne Rooney and Alex Stepney.

He left for Bolton Wanderers in 1973, helping the Trotters to the second division title in 1978 under the managership of former United player Ian Greaves.

Dunne joined Detroit Express in the North American Soccer League in the twilight of his playing career.

He would return to Bolton as assistant manager in 1979 after hanging up his boots, before replacing Foulkes as manager of Norwegian side Steinkjer FK in 1982.

Dunne's former club Shels paid tribute on social media, tweeting: "Shelbourne FC is saddened to send our condolences to the family and friends of former FAI Cup winning Shels player Tony Dunne after his passing.

"Tony had a glittering career winning a European Cup with Man United and 33 caps for Ireland. RIP Tony."

And Dunne's ex-Man Utd team-mate Alex Stepney said: "Very sad to hear that my good friend and United fullback Tony Dunne has passed away. My love to all the family. Tony was a class act. RIP."

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View original post here:
Manchester United and Ireland legend Tony Dunne passes away aged 78 - Dublin Live

Craving snacks during the long months of self-isolation? A never-endingpile of fortune cookies from the late Cuban American artistFlix Gonzlez-Torresmight be coming soon to a location near you.

Most of the worlds art galleries are closed, but David Zwirner and Andrea Rosen are forging ahead with an ambitious and outside-the-box exhibition of Gonzlez-Torress 1990 work Untitled (Fortune Cookie Corner). It is the first work in the artists Candy seriesthe rest feature wrapped candiesmeant invoke both the experience of loss and a sense of immortality.

Theres no telling where you might encounter the mound of Chinese desserts, all free for the taking. Rosen, who is curating the show, has asked 1,000 peoplearound the world to install the work in a location of their choosinghomes, art institutions, and public spaces are all fair game.

This may sound unconventional, butGonzlez-Torress work isnt bound by the same restrictions as that of other artists. The owner needs to follow specific but open-ended parameters in manifesting the work, which can be installed in more than one place at a timemaking it perfect for our current moment, when much of the world is under indefinite lockdown.

This is one of the only works in the world that can travel and be accessible right now, Rosen told Artnet News. Theres so many people right now trying to do incredible online projects. Felix can actually afford people aphysical experience with an artworkand not just looking at it, but thinking about it, and their involvement and what it means to them.

Theres also an undeniable poignancy to staging the work right now, givenGonzlez-Torress activism against AIDS, the disease that claimed his life in 1996. But perhaps more importantly, sharing the experience of manifesting the work, normally reserved for the owner and select curators, aims to help combat the sense of loneliness and isolation that so many are feeling at this time.

What is important about this moment is how global it is, Rosen added. It make people acknowledge that significant criseswhether that be a war, a genocide, or the AIDS epidemichave often been depersonalized for those people who are not affected. This moment is an opportunity to realize what it feels like to be one site, one globe, oneworldeverything thats happening affects us all.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (USA Today) (1990). Candies individually wrapped in red, silver, and blue cellophane, endless supply. Installation view of Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Specific Objects without Specific Form, Museum Fr Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany, 2011. The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York.

In 2017, Rosen closed her gallerys physical spaceto focus on representing the Gonzlez-Torres estateher very first show, back in 1990, featured the artists workteaming up with Zwirner to do so.The new exhibition will open two days after theFlix Gonzlez-Torres Foundation debuts a new website.

Rosen has inviteda diverse group of participants to take part, including friends of Gonzlez-Torres, artists, curators, colleagues, and even the author of this piece.Each participant has received a detailed set of instructions explaining how to install the work, which is on loan from a private collection. The piles are to feature between 240 and 1,000 fortune cookies. (The original installation was approximately 10,000 cookies.) Each participant is responsible for sourcing their ownyou can buy 350 cookies on Amazon for less than $30and is asked to buy enough to completely replenish the pile once during the duration of the show.

One of the specific choices, Rosen explained, is that halfway through, everyone has to regenerate it to the original size. So everyone has the opportunity to experience both the potential loss within the piece, and also the notions of rebuilding and regeneration that is a very important part of the work.

Some may find their pile unchanged over the course of the show. For others, perhaps not a single cookie will remain. There will be very different representations of how it shifts and changes in size and shape every day, Rosen said. But regardless, at the exhibitions end, the cookies will cease to be considered a work of art (and some participants will be left with an extremely large supply of fortune cookies to munch on).

Participants are also instructed to document the manifestation of the work in photo and video, from the installation process to interactions with the work over the exhibitions six-week run.

The piece is never stagnant. Its never in the past. Its always the present, said Rosen. Its alive.

Flix Gonzlez-Torres: Untitled (Fortune Cookie Corner) will be on view at 1,000 to-be-announced locations across the world, May 25July 5, 2020.

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Want a Gigantic Pile of Cookies in Your Home? 1,000 People Are Being Asked to Hoard Fortune Cookies as Part of an Ambitious Global Art Show - artnet...

At this point, there are likely only two things standing between Francis Ngannou and heavyweight immortality.

One: A second shot at becoming UFC champion.

And two: Just a little bit of takedown defense.

As MMA anticipates an elusive third title fight between reigning champ Stipe Miocic and Daniel Cormier, Ngannou continues to prove hes the 265-pound divisions true it fighter. His blistering 20-second knockout of a previously undefeated and surging Jairzinho Rozenstruik on Saturdays UFC 249 pay-per-view main card yet another fight that lasted barely long enough for Ngannou to break a sweat was just the latest testament to that fact.

This particular addition to the 33-year-old sluggers collection of stupefying KOs took all of a single, sweeping left hand against the fence, delivered as Ngannou (15-3) charged heedlessly into the teeth of the decorated kickboxers offense. Rozenstruik (10-1)...

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And now he waits: Can we please get Francis Ngannou another title shot already? - The Athletic

SUN-GAZETTEFILEPHOTOLoyalsock players celebrate after winning the 2013 PIAAClass AA state championship against Beaver, 5-4, at PennState. It was the programs second state title and first since 2008.

EDITORS NOTE: This is a series looking back at the Top 10 high school baseball teams, coaches, games and players from the last decade.

Those watching Loyalsock warm up throughout the 2013 season could have used a translator when trying to decipher what the letters and numbers on their shirts represented.

QC68.8.

What read more like an obscure radio stations calling card was actually a message. The QC represented quiet confidence and the 68.8 stood for the distance between home plate at Loyalsock and Penn States Medlar Field at Lubrano Park. The message was clear: Loyalsock was on a mission to reach the state final.

And they did. Loyalsock won the Class AA state championship as well, capturing the programs second state crown since 2008 and joining Montoursville as the only area teams to ever win baseball state titles.

The road to high school baseball immortality, though, felt at times like it stretched out 68.8 light years instead of miles. Loyalsock overcame one of its best players leaving it at midseason, a series of injuries and a painful district final loss to reach its ultimate destination and goal. Nothing came easy and maybe that is why it meant to much then and likely means even more now.

It really is a dream come true, Loyalsock coach Jeremy Eck said while holding his son Elijah following the dramatic 5-4 state championship win against Beaver. Every one of these guys has so much heart and theyre all gamers.

This journey really began in 2012 when seven decorated freshmen who would go on to help Loyalsock win 90 games and two state titles in four year arrived. That team went 22-3 and captured a district championship before losing to Philipsburg-Osceola in the first round of states. With all those players back as well as talented senior captain Ethan Moore, Phil Krizan, Caleb Robbins, Bailey Young and Rocco Lupo, to name a few, Loyalsock appeared poised to take the next step.

And following a 9-5 early-season loss against South Williamsport, Loyalsock certainly looked the part of state title contender, winning 13 straight games. Kyle Datres and Luke Glavin already had committed to pitch at North Carolina and Duke, respectively and formed a dynamic duo. Datres, though, was limited early in the season because his basketball season went deep into March. Moore stepped in brilliantly filled a huge void, allowing just one run that season and going 4-0 with a 0.34 ERA. Moore opened the season with 26 2/3 straight scoreless innings and Loyalsock backed its pitching with a potent offense which helped it outscore opponents by five runs per game. Datres, Robbie Klein and Jimmy Webb all hit over .400 and Tommy Baggett drove in 26 runs. Moore delivered a series of big hits in key situations, showcasing his leadership all year as the teams only senior starter.

There were thorns in the roses, however. In addition to a player leaving the team, Loyalsock also suffered a big blow when it lost center fielder Nick DiFrancesco to a season-ending injury. Moore was nearly lost for the year as well, but fought through a painful back injury. Other players were banged up as well and Milton hit a walkoff grand slam to stun Loyalsock, 10-7, in its regular-season finale.

It seemed that game was a sign of things to come because districts was a grind. The state title journey was nearly over before it started when Towanda built a 3-0 first-inning lead. Despite managing just four hits, Loyalsock escaped with a 2-1 victory before facing rival Montoursville in the semifinals. In a battle of heavyweights, Loyalsock again found a way to beat an excellent team. Webb cut down the lead runner at home from right field in the top of the seventh, Datres threw a three-hitter and Robbie Klein drew a walk-off walk as Loyalsock won, 2-1, and clinched a state tournament berth.

Loyalsock was just getting by and, ironically, it might have been a loss in its next game which ignited the state championship push. The Lancers had swept the regular-season series from Hughesville but the Spartans denied them a second straight title, winning an epic district final, 7-5, in nine innings. Loyalsock overcame a 5-1 seventh-inning deficit to force extra innings but Hughesville was the one celebrating at Bowman Field and the loss took an already motivated team to another level.

Instead of the loss breaking Loyalsock apart, it pulled it closer together. A band of brothers then started their march toward Penn State, outscoring three straight district champions who were a combined 61-8 by a 23-6 margin, starting with a 6-0 win of one-loss District 2 champion Lakeland.

It just shows that anything is possible if you work together, Moore said following the Eastern final. Thats what were doing and its a great feeling. Im so proud to be on this team.

It shows what kind of team we have. Were fighters, said Webb, who finished his scholastic career with an area decade-high 151 hits. No matter what happened during the year someone always stepped up and weve never given up.

That showed in the quarterfinals against District 3 champion Delone Catholic. Loyalsock trailed, 5-1, in the third inning before scoring three times in the fourth and pulling within one. The game was then suspended two days due to rain and Moores two-run double ignited a big fifth-inning rally as Loyalsock won, 9-5.

It was a actually a blessing in disguise because (two days earlier) we didnt come ready to play and we got off to a terrible start and we knew if things continued that way it wasnt going to be pretty for us so we came back and turned things right around, Datres said after throwing four scoreless innings of relief. We talk to each other every day about how much we want it. We wanted it more than them and it showed.

An extra day of rain made Datres eligible to pitch in the Eastern Final against a Salisbury team which had romped its way to 25 wins. Salisbury featured three pitchers who had ERAs under 2.00, a stacked lineup and were coming off a 9-5 quarterfinal win against Hughesville. It appeared it would be all hands on deck for pitching duties, but Glavin delivered the performance of his young career, throwing a complete-game three-hitter as Loyalsock routed Salisbury, 8-1, and captured the Eastern Region championship. Every Lancer produced at least one hit, symbolizing how complete this team had become.

A lot of people were lost this season and were still a little banged up, but it was a great team win, Moore said afterward. What it took today was heart and desire and we definitely had that.

They had a seasons worth of it against Beaver (20-1) in the state final. This was a back and forth game against a team which had not allowed a run in three straight state tournament games and it was a microcosm of the entire year. Datres pitched another gem but Salisbury tied the game with two outs in the seventh. Unfazed, Loyalsock attacked in the bottom of the inning when Robbie Klein was hit by a pitch and Robbins ran, going to second on a perfectly-placed Moore bunt. Baggett was intentionally walked and the stage was set for Bailey Young to deliver arguably the most memorable hit in program history. Young lived every high school players dream and smashed a walk-off single. Loyalsock had traveled those 68.8 miles and Robbins sprinted the final 180 feet like he was wearing a jet pack.

After all the ups and downs, Loyalsock had become Pennsylvanias Class AA king.

Were a family and when you get to this point you have to be a family. You cant just have a bunch of guys trying to get it done, Eck said. You have to come together as one unit and were doing that right now. I love these guys. They give me everything they have. Me and the coaches would do anything for these kids and its great to get this opportunity.

And they would earn another one just a year later. But again, Loyalsock would travel a long and winding road there.

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Decade's best No. 2: Lancers set out on mission in 2013 to win baseball state title and did just that | News, Sports, Jobs - Williamsport Sun-Gazette

Doctor Who's Timeless Child retcon actually rewrites the 20th anniversary special. CurrentDoctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall promised season 12 would change everything, and he wasn't understating the case. The season 12 finale revealed the Doctor is not a Time Lord at all, but rather is the "Timeless Child," a being who may well predate the universe itself.

The retcon works surprisingly well with elements of classicDoctor Who, particularly some Tom Baker stories and the plans of script editor Andrew Cartmel in the 1980s. Yet, it causes a number of major continuity problems when it comes the modern relaunch, clashing with stories from the Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi era. As a result, the fanbase is rather divided about whether the Timeless Child is a good idea or not; it's probably best toreserve judgment and see what Chibnall builds on this foundation.

Related:Frozen 2's Elsa Twist Has The Same Problem As Doctor Who's Timeless Child

The Timeless Child retcon also subtly rewritesDoctor Who's 20th anniversary story, "The Five Doctors." This was a multi-Doctor adventure unitingRichard Hurndall's version of the First Doctor, Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor, Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor, and Peter Davison's Fifth Doctor; production sleight of hand also allowed the show to incorporate Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor. The concept was a simple one: the Doctors, some of their key allies, and their oldest enemies had all been scooped out of time in order to participate in the so-called "Game of Rassilon." The man behind at all was Borusa, the Doctor's old teacher and Lord President of Gallifrey, who sought the prize of "perpetual bodily regeneration", i.e. immortality. In the end, it turned out this was all a trap set by Rassilon to identify any Time Lord psychopathic enough to believe they deserved eternal life.

"The Five Doctors" is widely regarded as one of the bestDoctor Who stories of all time; although the script is stepped in fan-service, it all serves a purpose, and the overarching narrative works perfectly. Curiously, though, the Timeless Child retcon adds another dimension to it. According toDoctor Who season 12, the Timeless Child has an unlimited number of regenerations, and it became the base genetic code for the entire Time Lord race. These proto-Time Lords - presumably including Rassilon - believed immortality was too dangerous, and they artificially imposed a cap on the number of regenerations a Time Lord could go through.

Viewed through the lens of the Timeless Child retcon, the entire Game of Rassilon is a deliberate trick on Rassilon's part. He believed future Time Lords could still seek immortality; they could potentially unlock this either by studying the Timeless Child or editing their own genes. The legend of the Game of Rassilon would distract any Time Lord who sought eternal life, leading them away from the Timeless Child, and thus into Rassilon's trap.

Here, of course, is the irony: when Borusa decided to claim the prize of immortality, he chose the Doctor as his pawn. He had unwittingly singled out the Timeless Child himself, the one being who possessed the secret of unlimited regenerations. Had he but looked at the Doctor, rather than at the Game of Rassilon, then Borusa may well have achieved his goal.

More:Classic Doctor Who May Have Revealed The Timeless Child's Fate

Star Trek Theory: Kirk Is The Reason Picard Stayed as Enterprise Captain

Tom Bacon is one of Screen Rant's staff writers, and he's frankly amused that his childhood is back - and this time it's cool. Tom's focus tends to be on the various superhero franchises, as well as Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Star Trek; he's also an avid comic book reader. Over the years, Tom has built a strong relationship with aspects of the various fan communities, and is a Moderator on some of Facebook's largest MCU and X-Men groups. Previously, he's written entertainment news and articles for Movie Pilot.A graduate of Edge Hill University in the United Kingdom, Tom is still strongly connected with his alma mater; in fact, in his spare time he's a voluntary chaplain there. He's heavily involved with his local church, and anyone who checks him out on Twitter will quickly learn that he's interested in British politics as well.

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Doctor Whos Timeless Child Retcon Rewrites the 20th Anniversary Special - Screen Rant

This Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most famous goals in hockey history, the one thats memorialized on the walls of countless bars, bedrooms, and offices in Boston and beyond.

It was on May 10, 1970 that Bobby Orr scored the goal, the one that saw him fly through the air and into sporting immortality, the one that gave the Bruins their fourth Stanley Cup, their first in nearly 30 years.

The NHL Networks latest original production, The 1970 Bruins: Big, Bad & Bobby, tells the story of that team through the eyes of the players, coaches, and fans who lived it.

If you grew up in New England and werent old enough to live it, youve heard the stories. You may have heard them from your father or mother, grandfather or grandmother. Regardless of who was telling the stories, we all remember hearing about the big, bad Bruins.

It was these Bruins teams that earned that moniker, one that still lives with the franchise to this day.

In a fun, hour-long documentary, the NHL Network tells the story of how that team came together, why they were so good, and how the team revolutionized hockey in Massachusetts and created a bond with the city that has never been broken.

The highlights of the documentary are the comments and insights from the players themselves. Guys like Orr, Gerry Cheevers, Phil Esposito, Ken Hodge, Derek Sanderson, and Harry Sinden clearly have such strong memories of those years, and that really comes to life in their stories.

In fact, the best moments of the documentary occur as Esposito, Cheevers, Orr, and Sanderson sit around a table and talk with each other. No moderator, no on-screen prompts, just some hockey legends shooting the breeze.

The documentary has its cliche Boston moments, but mostly focuses on the players who were there and the personalities who came of age loving these Bruins teams.

Jackie MacMullan, who has made her name as a basketball writer, has a ton of great anecdotes about growing up cheering for these teams, and tells a story that is familiar to a lot of lucky kids of that era: how Sunday night Bruins games became her thing with her father.

Another great line comes from Charlestown native and NFL Hall-of-Famer Howie Long, who says that when he was growing up, he dreamed of being a hockey player, not a football player.

The documentary is filled with footage from the games of the 60s and 70s, and I dont know what the NHL Network did to restore it, but it looks fantastic. The colors are bright, the images are clear, and you feel like youre right back there watching along.

1970 begins by telling the story of the hapless Bruins teams of the pre-Orr era, describing how the Bruins were little more than a laughingstock before Orr came around. We then follow the team through their couple of kicks at the can that came up short before the famed 1969-1970 campaign.

The perfect summary of the Bruins teams of that era comes from Orr, who, prior to one of his early seasons in Boston, said (paraphrasing) that this year, no guy on our team is going to get in a fight alone.

That spirit still lives on in many Bruins fans to this day, with plenty of people pining for the return of those big, bad days. Still, nothing will compare to these squads, loaded with Hall of Famers and playing with the support of a city that embraced hockey like never before.

Its a fun ride for fans both young and old. Whether you were there to witness it or have only heard the stories, 1970 is a must-watch item for Bruins fans.

Sandersons bad boy ways. Orr effortlessly carving up NHL defenses. Cheevers iconic mask. Esposito piling up goals.

The Bruins of the 60s and 70s inspired connections with the city and their fans that live on to this day.

1970 does a great job bringing those connections to a whole new generation.

The 1970 Bruins: Big, Bad & Bobby premiers Sunday night at 8 PM on NHL Network. In Canada, it will be simulcast on Sportsnet. You can watch the trailer below.

Originally posted here:
Review: Big, Bad & Bobby offers a fun, behind-the-scenes look at a legendary team - Stanley Cup of Chowder

Screengrab via PlayApex

Revenants rampage in Apex Legends could be a side effect of his immortality. The latest teaser hints that the simulacrums excessive resurrections may have corrupted his systems over time.

The teaser shows a research note on Project 617, Hammond Robotics callsign for Revenant. The note states that although the simulacrum is operational, each data transfer can slowly degrade his programming and possibly lead to a system-wide corruption.

We hypothesize this corruption will compound at an exponential rate; It is likely that the subject will experience significant program collapse if transference is repeated indefinitely, the note reads.

The research note lines up with established facts about Revenant. Previous teasers show a Hammond Robotics employee stating that the simulacrum crossed the line a hundred rezzes ago, evidencing the repeating nature of his comebacks.

The date of the research notes also provides an approximate timeframe for the experiment. Apex Legends likely takes place two or three decades after the tests, which would line up with Revenants character trailer.

Revenants corruption disabled a part of his programming called the ego retention system. It tricks simulacra into seeing human versions of themselves instead of their synthetic appearance, and Revenants rampage is tied to a failure in that part of his programming.

Popular season four motifs such as Revenant and Hammond Robotics will make a comeback in Apexs fifth season, titled Fortunes Favor. Loba, the next legend, lost her parents by the hands of Revenant and will seize the opportunity for her revenge.

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Apex teaser hints that resurrecting may have corrupted Revenant - Dot Esports

ByLonnie Aarssen, Professor of Biology, Queens University, Ontario, via The Conversation

Homo sapiens means wise human, but the name no longer suits us. As an evolutionary biologist who writes about Darwinian interpretations of human motivations and cultures, I propose that at some point we became what we are today: Homo absurdus, a human that spends its whole life trying to convince itself that its existence is not absurd.

As French philosopher Albert Camus put it: Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is. Thanks to this entrenched absurdity, the 21st century is riding on a runaway train of converging catastrophes in the Anthropocene.

Discovery of self

The critical juncture in the lineage toward Homo absurdus was described by evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky: A being who knows that he will die arose from ancestors who did not know. But evolution at some point also built into this human mind a deeply ingrained sentiment that one has not just a material life (the physical body), but also a distinct and separate mental life (the inner self).

Theodosius Dobzhansky. Wikicommons

Human self-awareness led to the evolution of cognitive skills that were game-changers for gene transmission success. In our degree of endowment for these skills, our ancestors had the edge over all other hominids.

But the trade-off for this was self-impermanence anxiety a recurrent fear that, in bringing eventual material death, time inevitably also annihilates all that one has done and all that one has been, and that soon it will be as though one had never existed at all.

Buffering for a troubled mind

However, natural selection also gave our ancestors primal impulses that served to buffer the worry of self-impermanence. These involve two novel and uniquely human fundamental drives: escape from self and extension of self.

Both are reflected in a prescient passage from the great Russian author, Leo Tolstoy:

For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite.

Extension of self connecting the finite with the infinite involves what I call legacy drive: the desire to leave something appreciable behind that will endure beyond mortal existence.

Delusions of symbolic immortality involve three principal domains:

Parenthood: Shaping the minds of offspring to mirror the defining characteristics of ones own selfhood (i.e. values, beliefs, attitudes, conscience, ego, skills, virtues, etc.);

Accomplishment: Earning recognition, status, or fame through talents or deeds that evoke admiration, trust, respect, or astonishment from others;

Identifying with or belonging to something larger-than-self: Membership or belief in a particular cultural world view, one based, for example, on concepts like patriotism, political ideology or religiosity/spiritualism.

Escape from self

For those less driven to produce a legacy, there is escape from self Tolstoys not seeing the infinite. Most commonly, this is achieved through distractions, deployed through what I call leisure drive, an intrinsic disposition to be easily drawn to indulgence in opportunities for enjoyment.

Typically, these involve motivations that hack into the brains pleasure modules and have deep evolutionary roots associated with meeting core needs (e.g. survival, social affiliation, mating, endearment, kinship) that rewarded ancestral gene transmission success.

Modern domains of leisure drive are manifested in many cultural norms and products designed to trigger these pleasure modules like toys, stories, games, aesthetics, social entertainment, consumerism, humour, recreational sex, yoga, meditation, inebriation and psychedelics.

The essential consequence of these distractions lies in arresting the mind firmly in the immediate present, thus temporarily but effectively shielding it from the dread of the infinite, wherein the self ceases to be.

For some, placing the mind firmly in the present may be accomplished by simply keeping busy with purposeful toil or mundane routine. As American philosopher Eric Hoffer put it: A busy life is the nearest thing to a purposeful life.

Work hard, play hard

The delusions of legacy drive and the distractions of leisure drive both help to mitigate the worry of self-impermanence. Strong selection for these drives thus propelled copies of our ancestors genes into future generations.

But self-impermanence anxiety has always lurked stubbornly beneath the surface, repeatedly demanding more and better delusions and distractions. And so, from a long history of striving for an untroubled mind, the effects of natural selection ramped up in momentum, I suggest, like a runaway train.

These drives to work hard and play even harder have fuelled the frenzied and relentless march of progress that we call civilization. With this, our cultural evolution has generated a large menu of available delusions for chasing after legacy, and distractions for chasing after leisure. And this has given us a world of environmental catastrophes that are annihilating other species and their habitats at an unprecedented rate.

Sustained genetic selection for legacy and leisure drives then has generated two dire consequences for humanity: A civilization now moving ever faster toward collapse on a global scale, and an evolved psychology that is now breeding an escalation of human despair anxiety disorders, depression and suicide.

In other words, the growing demands of these drives (resulting from biological evolution) are starting to exceed the supply rate of available domains (generated by cultural evolution) for satisfying them. It becomes harder and harder, therefore, to meet an ever-increasing need for distractions and delusions, including those needed to buffer the mounting eco-anxiety from living in a collapsing civilization.

Living with Homo absurdus

How can we manage our human predicament, now that we are Homo absurdus?

I have suggested that a new model for cultural evolution might come to our rescue involving a kind of biosocial management, based on facilitating and implementing a deeper and more broadly public understanding of, and empathy for, the evolutionary roots of human motivations, especially those associated with our responses to self-impermanence anxiety.

Homo sapiens means wise human, but the name no longer suits us. As an evolutionary biologist who writes about Darwinian interpretations of human motivations and cultures, I propose that at some point we became what we are today: Homo absurdus, a human that spends its whole life trying to convince itself that its existence is not absurd.

We must learn how to successfully regulate our frenetic drive to convince ourselves that our existence is not absurd. And this requires that we at least understand how we came to be so driven.

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Op/Ed: Dealing with the absurdity of human existence in the face of converging catastrophes - Rossland Telegraph

Samantha Bonnette Published 1:41 a.m. CT May 3, 2020

Samantha Bonnette

These times they are a changin! Just last week, we were thinking about plans to reopen, but with the governors extended stay at home order, it looks like well be staying home a little longer. But dont worry; plans are underway to implement curbside pickup service at select Shreve Memorial Library branches beginning Monday, May 18. Youll soon be able to return your library books and check out new ones. More details are coming soon. Until then, I encourage you to take advantage of the many digital services available through the librarys e-branch.

This week, we are celebrating Childrens Book Week. The annual celebration takes place May 4 through May 10. Childrens Book Week is the longest-running national literacy initiative in the country. This years Childrens Book Week theme is Read. Dream. Share. We encourage you all to celebrate the joy of reading at home and join in the celebration by using hashtag #BookWeek2020atHome on social media.

The librarys e-branch has great resources to find childrens books online. TumbleBooks Library is one of my favorites! With TumbleBooks, you can enjoy animated, talking picture books and a different story each day with its Story Book of the Day feature. Children can see a storybook come to life, read-along with a storybook classic, or read an e-book all by themselves. You can access TumbleBooks Library through the Shreve Memorial Library e-branch or download the app to your smartphone or tablet.

Another great digital resource for childrens books is Overdrive Kids Zone. Available through Overdrive, an online resource of e-books, audiobooks, and movies, Overdrive Kids Zone is an area made exclusively for kids and teens. In the Kids Zone, you will find Overdrives collection of childrens e-books and audiobooks all in one place. Login to Overdrive or the Libby app, click Kids, and enter the Kids Zone. Once there you can download these e-books and audiobooks to your smartphone, tablet or computer.

Whatever you do, I hope that you find time to share the joy of reading with others. Be sure to follow @shrevememorial on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for virtual storytimes, craft programs, and future updates including our reopening plans. Until we meet again, always remember to dream, discover, do!

Childrens Book Week Titles on Overdrive

In celebration of Childrens Book Week, below are titles from authors who were scheduled to be at the 2020 Shreve Memorial Library Childrens Book Festival. Unfortunately, the festival, planned for May 9, 2020, was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These titles are available on Overdrive.

Boy + Bot by Ame Dyckman (fiction, e-book)

One day, a boy and a robot meet in the woods. They play. They have fun. But when Bot gets switched off, Boy thinks hes sick. The usual remedies applesauce, reading a story dont help, so Boy tucks the sick Bot in, then falls asleep. Bot is worried when he powers on and finds his friend powered off. He takes Boy home with him and tries all his remedies: oil, reading an instruction manual. Nothing revives the malfunctioning Boy! Can the Inventor help fix him? Using the perfect blend of sweetness and humor, this story of an adorable duo will win the hearts of the very youngest readers.

Whoosh! written by Chris Barton; illustrated by Don Tate (nonfiction, e-book)

A cool idea with a big splash. You know the Super Soaker. Its one of the top twenty toys of all time. And it was invented entirely by accident. Trying to create a new cooling system for rockets, impressive inventor Lonnie Johnson instead created the mechanics for the iconic toy. A love for rockets, robots, inventions, and a mind for creativity began early in Lonnie Johnsons life. Growing up in a house full of brothers and sisters, persistence and a passion for problem solving became the cornerstone for a career as an engineer and his work with NASA. But it is his invention of the Super Soaker water gun that has made his most memorable splash with kids and adults.

The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer L. Holm (fiction, e-book)

Galileo. Newton. Salk. Oppenheimer. Science can change the world but can it go too far? Eleven-year-old Ellie has never liked change. She misses fifth grade. She misses her old best friend. She even misses her dearly departed goldfish. Then one day a strange boy shows up. Hes bossy. Hes cranky. And weirdly enough he looks a lot like Ellies grandfather, a scientist whos always been slightly obsessed with immortality. Could this pimply boy really be Grandpa Melvin? Has he finally found the secret to eternal youth? With a lighthearted touch and plenty of humor, Jennifer Holm celebrates the wonder of science and explores fascinating questions about life and death, family and friendship, immortality and possibility.

Shreve Memorial Library transforms Caddo Parish lives with resources, services and support to create a better world. Focusing on service priority areas of creating and maintaining young readers, stimulating imagination, providing lifelong learning, information fluency, and ready references, and informing citizens, Shreve Memorial Librarys 21-branch system is maintained by a parish-wide property tax millage to support the informational, educational and recreational needs of its constituents. For more information, visit http://www.shreve-lib.org, like on Facebook, and follow @shrevememorial on Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest. Remember to dream, discover, do Shreve Memorial Library and you!

Read or Share this story: https://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/2020/05/03/read-dream-share-childrens-book-week-may-4-10/3072677001/

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Read. Dream. Share. Children's Book Week is May 4-10 - Shreveport Times