Daily Archives: May 20, 2021

There is a breathtaking moment near the end of the first episode of High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America, a new four-part Netflix documentary based on the 2011 book by the scholar Jessica B. Harris.

The scene unfolds in Benin, a country Dr. Harris has visited a dozen times in her work chronicling the connection between the foods of West Africa and the United States. She tenderly leads the series host, Stephen Satterfield, to the Cemetery of Slaves. The beachfront memorial marks the mass grave of thousands who died in captivity before they could be loaded into ships at one of the most active slave-trading ports in Africa.

Mr. Satterfield, a reserved 37-year-old who moved from a restaurant career to one in media, begins to cry. Im so glad I can tell them thank you, he says. And Im so glad that finally, I get to bring them home with me. They get to come home.

He breaks down into coughing sobs. Dr. Harris, nearly four decades his senior, holds him and reminds him to breathe. Its OK, sweetie, she says. Walk tall.

To say there has never been a food show like this is not a stretch. Historically, American food TV has largely reduced African American cooking to Southern or soul food. Even when it came to barbecue, producers favored white cooking personalities over Black ones.

The way we talk, entertain, dress, create all of that stuff has been recognized, but not our food, said Adrian Miller, one of the historians featured in the series, who recently published Black Smoke, a book about African Americans and barbecue.

High on the Hog the phrase refers to the location of the best cuts of meat on a pig but has come to connote wealth marks a departure from the days when all the Black folks on these shows were just caricatures, said Tanya Holland, a Bay Area chef and food TV veteran.

Ms. Holland, 55, polished her cooking technique in France, and holds a degree in Russian language and literature. But that made no difference to television executives 20 years ago. In 2000, when the Food Network cast me in Melting Pot, they were like, Can you do a brunch with your girlfriends sitting around going, Hey, girl? she said. Every show, they kept telling me be more sassy.

High on the Hog is an overdue corrective.

The documentary is framed as Mr. Satterfields journey. It begins at the Dantokpa Market in Benin, and ends at Lucilles in Houston, where diners discuss Black culinary excellence over a meal that the chef Chris Williams prepared for Toni Tipton-Martin from Ms. Tipton-Martins book Jubilee: Recipes From Two Centuries of African American Cooking.

In between, Mr. Satterfield travels to the Gullah Geechee rice belt in South Carolina, samples pepper pot made with oxtail in Philadelphia and visits New York to pay homage to Thomas Downing, king of the citys oyster culture in the 19th century, and to the young shuckers carrying on his legacy. In Texas, Mr. Satterfield rides a horse (for the first time), goes to a Black rodeo and learns to make son-of-a-gun stew from offal the way the first Black cowboys did in the 1800s.

And in a segment that may change how a new generation views boxed macaroni and cheese, the foodways teacher and historian Leni Sorensen recreates an early American version of the dish from a recipe developed by James Hemings, an exceptional French-trained chef whom Thomas Jefferson kept enslaved.

It isnt about the mac and cheese, said Karis Jagger, one of the shows producers. Its about survival, and showing how fantastic and brilliant some of these figures were who we just dont know enough about.

The seeds of the show were sown six years ago when the food journalist Jeff Gordinier was reporting an article for The New York Times on African American cooking. Alexander Smalls, the chef and co-owner of the Cecil, in Harlem, told him to read Dr. Harriss book. Mr. Gordinier did, then told a friend, the producer Fabienne Toback.

Ms. Toback read High on the Hog in one sitting, and wept. She and Ms. Jagger, her longtime creative partner, were raw from the 2014 killing of Michael Brown Jr. by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., and were looking for material that had more depth and meaning to them. They quickly asked Dr. Harris for the rights.

She said yes to a couple of scrappy middle-aged Black women, and we were so grateful, Ms. Toback said. We wanted to make something grand, like she is.

Dr. Harris called the women angels. They were just hellbent on getting it produced, she said.

Although her work has been used for other projects, including the food programming and cafeteria menu at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, turning her book over to documentary producers was different. Its like giving your child up for adoption, and you have to trust the adoptive parents, said Dr. Harris, who appears only in the first episode.

Although it took five years to turn what is essentially the first half of her book into a documentary, the timing of its release is perfect, Dr. Harris said.

What we are seeing is extraordinary, she said. This is a social movement writ large, and food is a very big part of it.

To acquaint themselves with new keepers of Black food culture to feature alongside established historians, the producers started their own food blog, Hey, Sistah, and scoured the internet.

That led them to cooks like Jerrelle Guy, a popular food blogger and photographer who wrote the 2018 cookbook Black Girl Baking (and who contributes to New York Times Cooking). In the documentary, as she creates desserts for a Juneteenth celebration, she has a tearful discussion with Mr. Satterfield.

I feel like the kitchen is one of the safest spaces for me, she tells him. It gives me a feeling of empowerment, and I think that is really important for a lot of Black women who maybe dont have a space like that.

The series director, Roger Ross Williams, whose 2010 documentary, Music for Prudence, won an Academy Award, didnt anticipate so many emotional moments.

Each and every episode, we were moved to tears, he said in a phone interview from Mexico City, where he is directing a feature film. And it was not just a couple of people. There were moments when everyone was in tears. We felt the spirit every single day of shooting.

High on the Hog was particularly meaningful for him. His mother died two months before production began. Although he was raised outside Philadelphia, his family is Gullah Geechee and settled in Charleston, S.C. He remembers visits to the Lowcountry as a child filled with farm work and okra soup.

Thats why the okra soup that the culinary historian Michael W. Twitty cooked over a fire near a slave cabin on a plantation in South Carolina was by far Mr. Williamss favorite dish in the series.

We know that food is an emotional thing for people, but I think its something completely different for African Americans because of all the pain were holding inside with our history, he said. But it wasnt all sorrow and pain. There was great joy around the table for us as a family.

As a food-show host, Mr. Satterfield is as introspective as Stanley Tucci is effusive or Anthony Bourdain was bold. He turned out to be exactly the host the show called for, Mr. Williams said. Mr. Satterfield is well respected among people committed to social and political change through food, and he had no preconceived ideas about how to anchor a documentary.

I would describe him as wonderfully green, said Shoshana Guy, the NBC journalist who was the series showrunner. When someone is green, its like an unpainted canvas.

Mr. Satterfield, the founder of the media company Whetstone, had no idea he was being recruited when he met with Ms. Toback in Los Angeles. He simply thought she was asking for some help as they prepared to pitch the series to Netflix, which quickly embraced the project. When he realized they wanted him to host, he agreed immediately.

Dr. J for me has always been an intellectual titan, a cultural titan, he said, using a nickname for Dr. Harris. The only thing I can liken it to is if you grew up idolizing Michael Jordan or LeBron, and now you are teammates.

Mr. Satterfield, who recently moved from Oakland, Calif., back to Atlanta, his hometown, is trying not to worry about how the show will be received or the spotlight that will shine on him.

When I think about what I want from the show, peoples imaginations being reconfigured is at the top of the list, he said. Theres a celebratory vibe to this show that feels like an arrival. It feels like a victory for so many of us. It has that emotional quality of liberation.

Originally posted here:

The Making of High on the Hog, Bringing Black Food History to TV - The New York Times

Oklahoma County prosecutors filed charges this week on a woman who allegedly left her dogs to die in a southwest Oklahoma City apartment. Two of the animal cruelty charges dated back to 2019 when Cassandra Leaverton allegedly abandoned two dogs and one of the animals died.

Oklahoma City animal welfare workers were alerted to the most recent case last month.

Residents at an apartment complex near Southwest 59th and Western Avenue had not seen the dogs' owner in several days.

We did find two dogs that were emaciated, very skinny, OKC Animal Welfare Superintendent Jon Gary said. Conditions of the apartment were not sanitary for the animals to be in.

Animal control started looking into Leaverton's history and found a pending case from 2019.

Court records showed Leaverton was accused of leaving two dogs in another apartment. Police described the place as being trashed and covered in feces and urine. It was later determined one of the dogs had internal bleeding which caused its death.

So, we have a pending case and now a new case, Gary said. Thats really what made this rise to the level of felony. Theres a lot of history there.

Leaverton was charged with four counts of felony animal cruelty.

Most of the time they dont end up with any kind of charge because animals are being cared for, Gary said. But these abandonment cases we do work several of them a month. Very few actually rise to the level of this case. This was one of the more severe, when you talk about abandonment.

Gary said thankfully the dogs were rescued in time and now living new lives.

One has been adopted and in a loving home, Gary said. We transferred the other one to one of our partners that we work with.

Leaverton is not currently in custody but there is an active warrant for her arrest.

See more here:

OKC Woman Charged With Animal Cruelty, Accused Of Having History Of Abandoning Dogs - news9.com KWTV

Shafer faces reelection to the party post in June, so he and his allies used the report as a chance to tout his pro-Trump leadership rather than an examination of what went wrong and how the party can win in 2022.

The document only made brief mention of the fact that Republicans lost Georgia for the first time in a presidential race since 1992 and were subsequently swept in the U.S. Senate runoffs.

Much of its pages were framed through the lens of Trumps false claims about Georgia election fraud, blaming Raffensperger for foolish legal settlements and feckless emergency rules.

The Georgia Republican Party, on three separate occasions, sued the Secretary of State to force him to obey the law and do his job, the report states.

12/14/2020 Atlanta, Georgia Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during a press conference at the Georgia State Capitol building in Atlanta, Monday, December 14, 2020. (Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com)

Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com

Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com

Left unmentioned was the fact that Raffensperger and other officials found no evidence of widespread irregularities. Three separate tallies of the results confirmed Bidens victory, an audit of absentee ballot signatures found no cases of fraud, and pro-Trump lawsuits were dismissed from court.

The report provides a window into the ongoing focus from state GOP activists who continue to repeat pro-Trump conspiracy theories about the election despite no proof of any systemic wrongdoing.

It lists five separate lawsuits the state party filed against Raffensperger, each of which failed to yield any substantive victories. (The report asserts that one case led the secretary of state to expand access for poll watchers before asserting without evidence that massive violations of state law remained unchecked.)

Shafers allies defended the document. Joseph Brannan, the state GOP treasurer, called it a great summary of the work done by the grassroots under Shafers leadership that tells the story of the unprecedented level of engagement by the party.

Not surprisingly, it elicited cackles from Democrats.

If the Georgia GOP defines success as losing the presidency, both U.S. Senate seats and a House seat, we wish them nothing but success going forward, said Scott Hogan, the executive director of the Democratic Party of Georgia.

1/4/21 - Dalton, GA - President Donald Trump holds a rally in Dalton, GA, to campaign for Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler on the eve of the special election which will determine control of the U.S. Senate. (Curtis Compton / Curtis.Compton@ajc.com)

Credit: Curtis Compton / curtis.compton@ajc.com

Credit: Curtis Compton / curtis.compton@ajc.com

But the outrage over Trumps defeat has also been a boon to Georgia Republicans. A surge of new faces gathered at weekend GOP meetings held in 13 of Georgias 14 congressional districts, where many heard from speakers who echoed Trumps false claims of a rigged election.

The uptick in participation evoked memories of the round of Republican meetings in 2016, when Trump brought legions of new conservative supporters to sleepy party gatherings often dominated by establishment figures or long-standing volunteers.

In west Georgias 3rd Congressional District, former state Sen. Josh McKoon asked for a show of hands and was surprised to find more than half of the 274 delegates had never attended a convention before.

Likewise for Brandon Phillips, chair of the 2nd Congressional District in South Georgia, who posted a picture of dozens of newcomers with the caption: Yall better keep up in Atlanta.

Metro Atlanta conventions held their own, too. Marci McCarthy, the chair of the DeKalb County GOP, said an influx of new faces who are turning their anger into action and advocacy signed up as convention delegates for the first time.

And Brad Carver of the 11th Congressional District, which covers a stretch of northwest Georgias suburbs, said more than half of the delegates who attended Saturdays convention had never shown up to a GOP meeting before this election cycle.

In all, Shafer said there was record turnout for district meetings and that roughly half of the members participated for the first time.

Newcomers to Georgia Republican meetings raise their hands during the 1st District GOP convention on May 15, 2021.

Credit: Brandon Phillips

Credit: Brandon Phillips

Veteran activists welcomed the new members, but they also stressed the need for party unity at a time when Trumps feuds with Republican officials have exacted damage.

Raffensperger is a decided underdog in his 2022 reelection bid, Kemp faces promises of payback from grassroots Republicans angry that he refused to overturn the election results, and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who also drew Trumps fury, announced this week that he wouldnt run for another term.

The only way back to where we need to be is getting everyone back to wearing the Team R logo and behind Gov. Kemp, John Wood said, pointing to the increase in GOP attendance in South Georgia.

That doesnt happen if you dont get out there and do the work, said Wood, a longtime conservative grassroots leader from coastal Georgia. Thats where victory lies.

See the original post:

The Georgia GOP tries to rewrite the 2020 election history - Atlanta Journal Constitution

This Friday, 450 Habersham Central High School seniors and 17 seniors from the Habersham Success Academy will receive their diplomas. Graduation will proceed as normal without strict COVID-19 safety protocol.

County school superintendent Matthew Cooper believes this years graduation may bring the largest graduation crowd in the history of Habersham Central, after he and HCHS Principal Jonathan Stribling made the decision to host a normal graduation.

The last seventeen months have been difficult for education, with the COVID-19 pandemic sending the class of 2020 into virtual learning and causing many graduations across the country to be canceled. Habersham Schools have set themselves apart from many school systems in Georgia, choosing to hold in-person classes in the 2020-2021 school year, with a brief return to online learning in January due to rising COVID-19 cases among faculty and staff.

We had the hope that here in Habersham County we could deal with it [the COVID-19 Pandemic] as good as anyone and better than most, Cooper tells Now Habersham. Over the course of this school year we overcame many challenges. Despite some unknowns, our administrators, teachers, support staff, parents, and students responded time and again with grace and strength. Throughout this year, the Habersham County School System has not wavered in its commitment to our mission of Success for all Students.'

With COVID-19 vaccines readily available throughout the county, and many staff fully vaccinated, a return to normal learning is in the cards. The school system plans to return to school as usual this August. This graduation serves as more than a celebration of the students who overcame the challenges of receiving an education during a global pandemic, it also serves as a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel for the Habersham community.

The HCHS class of 2021 navigated this unique school year with focus, patience, and grace, Stribling says. This graduation promises to be a memorable event for the Class of 2021 and their families.

RELATED

HCHS graduation traffic and livestream information

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HCHS may have "the largest graduation crowd" in its history - Now Habersham

We dont know exactly what Arthur Smith and Dave Ragones offense will look like in 2021 for the Falcons, but there are certain expectations that are quite reasonable to have. There will be more of an emphasis on a consistent ground game, heavy tight end usage, and a passing attack that is based more on efficiency than volume, meaning Matt Ryans attempts might plummet but his effectiveness will hopefully rise.

Theres one other expectation that we havent spent much time on to this point that seems very reasonable to gird your loins for: The running backs not being a major part of the passing game, at least as receivers.

Earlier this offseason, I suggested that part of the appeal of Mike Davis was his versatility, as hes a capable blocker and receiver as well as a runner. Taking over for an injured Christian McCaffrey in 2020, after all, Davis was targeted 70 times (4th on the team) and wound up with 59 receptions for 373 yards and 2 touchdowns. proving to be a reliable pass catching option for Teddy Bridgewater out of the backfield. The Falcons then went out and added Cordarrelle Patterson, who has spent most of his career as a nominal receiver and dabbled in the backfield in Chicago, as a listed running back. Rookie Javian Hawkins, already a darling of the fanbase, has all the tools to be a successful pass catching back in this league even if he didnt get a ton of run as a receiver at Louisville. A coordinator who loves to target backs, like Kyle Shanahan once did with Devonta Freeman and Tevin Coleman in Atlanta, would find plenty to like here.

Nonetheless, it seems likely that Arthur Smith will not exactly prioritize his backs as receiving threats.

History gives us plenty of evidence, as Smith has not prized targeting running backs in the passing game in his work in Tennessee, and with capable tight ends and A.J. Brown at his disposal, its hard to blame him for not doing so. The Titans were actually last in the NFL in running back targets in 2020, and in 2019 they were second-to-last, separated by the Rams by a single target. Under Dirk Koetter, the Falcons were 14th in both in 2019 and 2020, and they got more value out of those targets than they did a completely stagnant run game. If you prioritize an efficient passing game, you dont particularly prioritize passes to running backs, who generally average less per reception than tight ends and far less than receivers.

Ah, you say, but Derrick Henry is not exactly a huge receiving threat! Youd be right about that, and Smith has promised to tailor his offense to his personnel rather than turning Davis into Henry Lite. But in an offense that might feature Julio Jones, Calvin Ridley, Kyle Pitts, Hayden Hurst, Russell Gage, and interesting depth receiving options like Olamide Zaccheaus and Jaeden Graham, I think its fair to argue that tailoring your attack to pump passes to Davis and Patterson would be a mistake. Remember, Smith had Dion Lewis in Tennessee, who caught 59 passes on 67 targets in 2018. Once Smith took over as the teams offensive coordinator in 2019, Lewis got just 32 targets and 19 catches.

Its not an accident that Ryan Tannehill was among the top 5 in the NFL in terms of yards per attempt and air yards per attempt in each of the last two seasons, leading the league in the former in 2019. Smith and this offense are going to prioritize explosive plays, something he talked about all the time in Tennessee and continues to talk about in Atlanta, and that largely means throwing the ball to Atlantas many explosive threats at receiver and tight end.

Im excited about Mike Davis in this offense, and Patteron and Hawkins will bring deeply intriguing speed to this backfield that should only help them be more creative and effective. Unless Arthur Smith has turned over a new and very unexpected leaf, though, dont expect any of these guys to be on the receiving end of a lot of Matt Ryan passes in 2021.

Read more:

Given Arthur Smiths history, we shouldnt expect RBs to get many targets in the Falcons passing game - The Falcoholic

The ethical dimensions of artificial intelligence (AI) image colorization were recently brought to public attention when several historical images were altered using digital algorithms.

Irish artist Matt Loughrey digitally colorized and added smiles to photos of tortured prisoners from Security Prison 21 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which was used by the Khmer Rouge from 1975-79. His photos were published in Vice and prompted outrage on Twitter.

Matt Loughrey in Vice is not colourising S21 photographs. He is falsifying history: pic.twitter.com/z6J99J7BOE

John Vink (@vinkjohn) April 10, 2021

Read more: Colorization Artist Slammed for Adding Smiles to Genocide Victims

Vice removed the altered photos from their website and apologized to the families of the victims and the communities in Cambodia. Meanwhile, the Toronto Stars Heather Mallick described them as thoughtless, ahistorical and self-congratulatory and proclaimed that we must stop trusting photography.

AI colorization refers to the use of digital algorithms to substitute colors into a black-and-white photograph by making an informed guess based on the greyscale root.

When data scientist Samuel Goree tested DeOldify, an AI colourization app, to convert a greyscale copy of Alfred T. Palmers 1943 photograph Operating a hand drill at Vultee Nashville, the result produced an image in which the black female subjects skin was lighter.

Interventions like these are not unique among the history of photographic manipulation the Cottingley Fairies photographs taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths in 1917 are a prime example. But alongside sophisticated internet tools like deepfakes (where a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else), the use of algorithms to alter photographs has provoked renewed anxiety about the authenticity of photography in the digital era.

As a researcher of film and visual culture, I am interested in exploring the convictions behind controversies like these by looking at them through the history of image manipulation. The use of colorization to create revisionist histories of atrocity and synthetic skin tones is concerning, but it does not mark the first time colorization has caused controversy.

In 1992, the clothing brand United Colors of Benetton sparked outrage when it re-purposed a colourized photograph of David Kirby, who had just died of AIDS-related complications, and his family for its advertising campaign.

The face of AIDS was the name given to the photo in the iconic spread in LIFE magazine. Photographs like these were meant, in part, to encourage sympathy and relatability towards sufferers of the most stigmatized illness around.

On National HIV Testing Day, we revisit the deeply moving photos that changed the face of AIDS: http://t.co/ttsBxnf8 | pic.twitter.com/5nGHJTEb

LIFE (@LIFE) June 27, 2012

When the black and white photo was selected for Benettons ad campaign, executives made the decision to colorize it. This was done using a technique that was developed during the early years of photographic production called hand-coloring that required setting pigment down on the image and removing it with cotton around a toothpick.

The two issues that galvanize this strange campaign are its realism and its dignity.

Opposition to colorization often points to the artifice of the practice, but for the Benetton executives, the problem with the Kirby photograph was not that it looked too real, but that its realism seemed incomplete.

The colorist, Ann Rhoney, described it as creating an oil painting, and the act of making a photograph more real by turning it into a painting appears to reverse longstanding assumptions about the art practices that are closest to reality.

However, Rhoneys self-stated objective was not to make the photograph more real, but to both capture and create Kirbys dignity. Kirbys father supported the effort, while gay rights organizations called for a boycott of Benetton.

Marina Amaral, a Photoshop colourist working to colourize registration photos from Auschwitz for Faces of Auschwitz, claims her work helps to restore the victims dignity and humanity while Cambodias culture ministry said Loughreys images affected the dignity of the victims.

Disagreements about dignity tend to mirror those about photography and colorization: for some, dignity is inherent to an original, for others, dignity is something you add.

And the examples are abundant. Peter Jacksons decision to colourize historical footage from the First World War for his 2018 film They Shall Not Grow Old drew criticism from historian Luke McKernan for making the past record all the more distant for rejecting what is honest about it. The YouTube channel Neural Love has faced resistance to its upscaling of historical footage using neural networks and algorithms.

Colorization became routinely controversial in the 1980s when computers replaced hand colorists and studios began colorizing a host of classic films to appeal to larger audiences. Objections to the practice ranged from poor quality, the commercial forces behind the practice, and the omission of the qualities of black and white, to the implicit contempt for artists visions, a preference for the originals, and a disregard for history.

Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert famously called the practice Hollywoods New Vandalism. Philosopher Yuriko Saito suggested that disagreements over the value of colorization often turn on an implicit belief in whether a work of art belongs to the artist or to the public.

In the context of historical images, the question becomes: to whom does history belong?

Photographs contribute to our development as moral and ethical subjects. They allow us to see the world from a point of view that does not belong to us, and alterations that make photography and film more familiar and relatable complicate a primary role we have given it as a vehicle for overcoming our egocentricity.

The recent controversies around image colorization point to the similarities between photography and AI. Both are imagined to create representations of the world using the least amount of human intervention. Mechanical and robotic, they satisfy a human desire to interact with the world in a non-humanized way, or to see the world as it would look from outside ourselves, even though we know such images are mediated.

What is fascinating about new techniques of colorization is that they can be understood as photography seeing its own image through AI algorithms. DeOldify is photography taking a photograph of itself. The algorithm creates its own automatic representation of the photograph, which was our first attempt to see the world transparently.

With the increasing accessibility of tools for colorizing photographs and making other alterations, we are re-negotiating the very difficulties first brought about with photography. Our desire for and disagreements about authenticity, mechanization, knowledge, and dignity are reflected in these debates.

The algorithm has become a new way of capturing reality automatically, and it demands a heightened ethical engagement with photos. Controversies around colorization reflect our desire to destroy, repair, and dignify. We dont yet know what a photograph can do, but we will continue to find out.

About the author: Roshaya Rodness is a postdoc fellow at the University of Toronto. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. This article was also published at The Conversation and was licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0.

Image credits: Header: The left photo shows a Kodak booth in Australia in the 1930s. The right photo is colorized using the software program DeOldify. (Museums Victoria/Unsplash, DeOldify)

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The Controversial History of Colorizing Black-and-White Photos - PetaPixel

Credit: The CrossFit Games

For the first time in eleven years, neither Rich Froning nor Mat Fraser will compete in the mens individual division of the CrossFit Games. Commentators and prognosticators (myself included) have suggested that as a result, this years final heat of the mens competition would be the most competitive ever.

Its an easy claim to make, but a bit tougher to support statistically. Jeremy Schwartz of Maxability Sports and CrossFit, took it upon himself to do the research and what follows is a discussion of what he found.

The data: Schwartz took the top ten finishers in the mens field going back to 2007 and applied a uniform scoring system to those athletes. He opted for the Open style scoring system (one point for first, two points for second, etc.). The points awarded are not relative to the other top ten athletes, they are their actual finishing positions from the events at the Games that year relative to all of the athletes who competed in each event.

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The Most Competitive Top Ten Men's Field in Games History? - Morning Chalk Up

In January 1929, Dr. L.E. Bensom of Los Angeles used his vacation to mush to native villages in Alaska. At the close of a particularly hard day on the trail, he found himself with 70 patients on his hands, all suffering from smallpox. There were 100 people in the village with no medical facilities. Bettmann/Getty Images hide caption

Vaccines delivered by drones and by burros. People who shout about the danger of vaccines and refuse to get a jab. Public health campaigns to convince the vaccine hesitant. Public criticism of a failure to provide vaccines for lower-income countries and marginalized populations.

These are all part of the unprecedented world vaccination campaign now going on.

They're also the hot-button topics that go back to the very first vaccine for smallpox in 1796.

Dr. Sergen Saracoglu (left) and nurse Yilzdiz Ayten (center) arrive at the village of Guneyyamac in Turkey on Feb. 15 as part of an expedition to vaccinate residents 65 years and over with Sinovac's CoronaVac COVID-19 vaccine. Bulent Kilic/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Dr. Sergen Saracoglu (left) and nurse Yilzdiz Ayten (center) arrive at the village of Guneyyamac in Turkey on Feb. 15 as part of an expedition to vaccinate residents 65 years and over with Sinovac's CoronaVac COVID-19 vaccine.

In photographs and illustrations from past and present vaccine campaigns, you can see both the similarities and the striking contrasts.

James Colgrove, a professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University, and Sanjoy Bhattacharya, a professor of history at the University of York and director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Global Health Histories, helped us out with historical context to go along with the images.

The vaccine has been created. Now how to get it where it needs to go?

Getting a vaccine from point A to point B has been a logistical problem since the very start with the smallpox vaccines, Bhattacharya says.

Back then, it was a painstaking process. Liquid was usually taken from an open smallpox sore, dried and mixed with water when ready to vaccinate. But transportation delays would sometimes render the vaccine ineffective. (The method had a shelf life of weeks to months not a long time considering the transport options at the time.)

In 1900, a young cow is tied onto a table waiting for the extraction of pox sore to be used for vaccines for smallpox. Berliner Illustrations Gesellschaft/ullstein bild via Getty Images hide caption

The solution? Medical teams would take children (in one case, orphans were used to transport the virus from Spain to its colonies) and animals (such as cows and horses) from village to village or from country to country, harvesting liquid from smallpox or cowpox sores and getting it under the skin of an unvaccinated person. But that was clearly not a sustainable practice, Bhattacharya says, for ethical and scientific reasons.

Many years of innovation followed, including the development of freeze-dried vaccines. The COVID-19 vaccine world is dependent on cold chain technology that uses super freezers to keep vaccines at temperatures as low as minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit while they make their way on planes, trains and automobiles.

Ousseynou Badiane, the head of Senegal's vaccination program, stands in front of newly built cold rooms at Fann Hospital in Dakar, Senegal, in January. These cold rooms may be used to help store the country's stock of COVID-19 vaccines. John Wessels/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Relying on cold storage technology is still not a perfect system.

The challenge has always been the greatest in poor and rural areas. "You have to make sure you have generators to maintain refrigerators," Colgrove says. It is the same problem countries are having with the COVID-19 vaccine today.

Left: A West German Navy vessel hands over vaccines to the U.S. transport General Patch in July 1957 for people sick with the Asiatic flu. The ship was anchored off Bremerhaven, West Germany, after a flu outbreak. Right: Health workers use a speedboat to make their way to vaccinate Quilombo communities against COVID-19 in Oriximin, Brazil, in February. Henry Brueggemann/AP; Tarso Sarraf/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Left: A West German Navy vessel hands over vaccines to the U.S. transport General Patch in July 1957 for people sick with the Asiatic flu. The ship was anchored off Bremerhaven, West Germany, after a flu outbreak. Right: Health workers use a speedboat to make their way to vaccinate Quilombo communities against COVID-19 in Oriximin, Brazil, in February.

Vaccine inequity is "just one part of a larger picture of inequity," Colgrove says. "People have been unvaccinated for the same set of reasons that they have always been deprived of other material goods."

For every vaccine, there's been a campaign against it

"Anti-vaccination movements are as old as vaccines themselves," Bhattacharya says.

What drives people to oppose a vaccine? You have to look at what is happening in a country or community culturally and politically and that is where you'll find your answers. It is usually a combination of factors that create doubts about how safe and effective a vaccine is, Bhattacharya says.

Left: A drawing of a human with a cow head holding a needle menacingly toward a child as he administers a tainted smallpox vaccination was meant to sow distrust of smallpox vaccines. Right: Protesters against COVID-19 vaccinations hold a rally in Sydney in February. Bettman/Getty Images; Brook Mitchell/Getty Images hide caption

Left: A drawing of a human with a cow head holding a needle menacingly toward a child as he administers a tainted smallpox vaccination was meant to sow distrust of smallpox vaccines. Right: Protesters against COVID-19 vaccinations hold a rally in Sydney in February.

But what really gets people riled up, Colgrove says, is when governments mandate vaccinations. "What gets people marching in the stress, forming orgs, creating pamphlets is when governments start to require it. If you don't want the vaccine, but you don't feel like anyone is forcing you to get it, then you just don't get it. Anti-vaccination movements really arose in the mid-19th century when governments started to require it."

There have always been trust issues

A vaccine campaign must address the issues of trust between those giving the vaccines and those receiving it, Bhattacharya says. You can't run it just with logistics. The vaccine campaigns that don't take trust into account end up struggling while the process drags on to get a disease under control.

In the case of polio, Bhattacharya says, it was difficult to convince communities to get the vaccine in places where governments hadn't acted in the communities' interest on other issues.

Boys stand in line to be vaccinated through the smallpox eradication and measles control program in West Africa in 1968. While smallpox has been eradicated, measles remains a leading cause of death among young children, even though a safe and cost-effective vaccine is available, the World Health Organization says. Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images hide caption

Boys stand in line to be vaccinated through the smallpox eradication and measles control program in West Africa in 1968. While smallpox has been eradicated, measles remains a leading cause of death among young children, even though a safe and cost-effective vaccine is available, the World Health Organization says.

People wait to see if they have a reaction after receiving COVID-19 vaccines at a vaccination center in February at Salisbury Cathedral in Salisbury, England. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images hide caption

"It was about [the government] convincing people that the polio vaccination was about their best interests in a context where governments had done little for their general welfare. This was the context in which polio vaccination drives were resisted in northern India, for example," Bhattacharya says. People have said it was superstition about the vaccine that prevented Indians from getting the vaccine, but it was actually about "a fundamental lack of trust."

It's all about the advertising

To get the word out and make a convincing argument about the vaccine, it's all about marketing and messaging. Advertising techniques were first used in the 1920s for diphtheria immunizations, Colgrove says. (Think images of smiling babies with warnings in red ink that diphtheria kills.)

A 1963 poster featuring the CDC's national symbol of public health, "Wellbee," encourages the public to take an oral polio vaccine. CDC/PHIL/Corbis via Getty Images hide caption

The way a vaccine is given is also critical. The first oral vaccine in the 1960s for polio replaced the hypodermic needle. It certainly made it much easier to sell to those who might be hesitant or fearful of needles, Colgrove says.

"Needle phobia is a big deal, and orally administered vaccines are more acceptable to many people. Also you don't have to worry about the injection equipment [which was helpful for mass vaccinations]," Colgrove says. "In fact one of the reasons the global polio eradication ended up being so successful was they used the oral vaccine as opposed to the injected vaccine." The oral vaccine also did a better job of protecting against the virus.

The West makes the vaccines and the rules. That's actually kind of new

The West wasn't always the main player in vaccine production although it was always on the path to be. Following World War II, several newly independent (decolonized) countries were keen to develop their own vaccine production capabilities. Two examples are India and Pakistan, Bhattacharya says.

"Countries like India and Pakistan were able to play Cold War foes [the U.S. and Soviet Union] against each other to get access to new vaccine production technologies, assistance in setting up new vaccine production units," he adds.

So how did the West ultimately get control? In that post-World War II era in the West, people started to realize there was money to be made in all pharmaceuticals (not just vaccines), and "the business landscape changed," Colgrove says.

Marie Josette Francou (right), a Red Cross nurse, vaccinates a child against cholera in 1953 in Indochina (now Vietnam). Intercontinentale/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

What had been a cottage industry of small pharmaceutical companies, individual investigators and physician scientists started producing more products along with vaccines, Colgrove says. They evolved into the mega companies that exist today.

That said, other countries are still in the vaccination business albeit with mixed results including Russia's Sputnik V, China's Sinovac and outlier Cuba.

Workers wait to open a secure door in the packaging area of Sinopharm's COVID-19 vaccine during a media tour organized by the State Council Information Office in February in Beijing. Sinopharm is one of China's largest state-owned biotech companies. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images hide caption

The power and politics behind vaccines

Politicians love their mottos and the vaccination effort is no different. In the U.S., government officials called it Operation Warp Speed and now the "We Can Do This" campaign. In Germany, it's "Vaccinate, Vaccinate, Vaccinate." In Israel, it's "Getting Back to Life."

So, how much of vaccine production and distribution is about political power and money?

Bhattacharya says pretty much all of it. "Pandemic responses, including the vaccination programs that underpin them, are always political," he says. "Those who claim that they know the means of accentuating 'global solidarity' are no less political; they just have different political goals."

Left: Thousands of New Yorkers, on an appeal by government officials, came to city hospitals and health stations to get vaccinated against smallpox. Here a crowd lines up outside a Bronx hospital in April 1947. Right: In an aerial view from a drone, cars line up for a mass COVID-19 vaccination event in January in Denver. Bettmann/Getty Images; Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images hide caption

And the money? Most vaccines wouldn't exist if Big Pharma didn't make a profit off them, Colgrove says.

One of the criticisms is that we have vaccines for diseases that burden rich countries but not for those that plague poor countries such as malaria and dengue fever. "If those diseases were a problem in Europe and the U.S., we would probably have vaccines for them now."

That's the contradiction of the pharma industry, Colgrove says. "On the one hand they produce these drugs for the benefit of everyone, but their mission is to make profits for their shareholders."

What will the world say about the COVID-19 vaccination effort in 100 years?

People will not remember the details, Colgrove says. Take, for example, the polio vaccine rollout, he says. If you ask people today, they would say it was a huge success, but they forget it was total chaos for a while.

"There were a lot of problems with the initial distribution during the period when the demand exceeded the supply. The polio vaccine was developed by a nonprofit foundation. The U.S. government had very little involvement because the Eisenhower administration saw involvement as the opening for socialized medicine.

"There was also lots of confusion and uncertainty about who should get the vaccine first and supplies were limited. There were stories of rich people pulling strings to get their kids vaccinated first."

Sanitation worker Ramesh Solanki cleans the streets outside India's Palghar railway station. "I get up every morning at 5:30, and I see news about the vaccines on TV," he says. "I don't know about any controversies. I just know I'm proud to be part of this." As a sanitation worker, he was among the first Indians eligible to get the coronavirus vaccine. Viraj Nayar for NPR hide caption

Sanitation worker Ramesh Solanki cleans the streets outside India's Palghar railway station. "I get up every morning at 5:30, and I see news about the vaccines on TV," he says. "I don't know about any controversies. I just know I'm proud to be part of this." As a sanitation worker, he was among the first Indians eligible to get the coronavirus vaccine.

When it came to the COVID-19 vaccine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention knew there were limited supplies so it was able to prioritize certain populations such as health care workers and older people, Colgrove says. "But I think the way people will remember the COVID rollout will depend on what happens in the coming months and years."

No one can deny the incredible feat of making vaccines in a year. But Bhattacharya points to another legacy.

Bhattacharya says it's unfortunate, but this vaccination effort will be all about profits, not humanity the world was let down when it comes to equity and access to the vaccine.

Two men, wearing personal protective equipment, visit the grave of a relative in a public cemetery, reserved for suspected COVID-19 victims, in December in Jakarta, Indonesia. Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images hide caption

"I think our descendants will look back with some shame at the efforts of so many private vaccine producers to make immense profit from human misery and anxiety."

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A History Of Vaccine Rollouts, From Smallpox To COVID-19 : Goats and Soda - NPR

Good morning.

It was 1904 when Ahn Chang-Ho, the revered Korean independence activist and Korean immigrant leader, left San Francisco for Riverside.

Drawn by the booming citrus industry that made the city one of Californias richest at the time, Ahn started an employment agency to help other Koreans find work nearby. Slowly, a settlement grew from a few dozen to a few hundred residents. At its height, almost 1,000 people were living in what was known as Pachappa Camp, named for the street where it was started.

Life there was difficult: The settlement was segregated. The wooden shacks that housed its residents had initially been built by railroad construction workers in the 1880s, and deafeningly loud trains would regularly rumble past. There was no running water or electricity.

Much of that wasnt unusual in the communities where Californias first Asian residents lived. Japanese immigrants toiled in the fields and lumber mills of the American West at the turn of the 20th century. Chinese immigrant workers endured treacherous conditions as they built the Transcontinental Railroad through mountains and desert.

But Pachappa Camp was unique, said Prof. Edward T. Chang, a professor of ethnic studies and the founding director of the Young Oak Kim Center for Korean American Studies at the University of California, Riverside.

For one thing, he told me recently, it was a family settlement as opposed to the mostly bachelor societies formed by other immigrant laborers. Men and women lived together at Pachappa Camp.

The biggest thing that set Pachappa Camp apart, however, was the fact that it was a distinctly Korean community the first in the United States, predating the founding of Los Angeless Koreatown by the businessman Hi Duk Lee by more than half a century.

And while Ahns life and legacy have been deeply studied, extensively documented and honored, his role in founding a Korean community in Riverside was virtually unknown until about five years ago, when Chang stumbled across a 1908 map issued by an insurance company. It had a caption labeling a Korean settlement in Riverside.

I thought, Korean settlement? In Riverside? he said.

Chang said it was known that Ahn spent some time in Riverside. He had seen an image of Ahn picking oranges there. And a 1913 episode known as the Hemet Valley Incident which involved Korean fruit pickers Chang later determined had come from Riverside has been widely cited as a pivotal moment for the Korean national identity.

But what Ahn was doing in the Inland Empire for more than five years before he moved his family to Los Angeles in 1913 was a puzzle. That puzzle turned into what Chang described as the most gratifying research of his career.

People said its like destiny, he said. Ive been teaching in Riverside for almost 30 years, and I didnt know anything about it.

As it turned out, Pachappa Camp was also a place where Ahn honed many of the democratic ideas that he brought back to Korea, which had been a monarchy and was occupied by Japan.

I was able to trace the birth of whole democratic institutions to here in Riverside, Chang said. I was uncovering all of this and I was so shocked.

With the help of graduate student interns from Korea who translated documents from older Korean, Chang last month published a book of his findings, Pachappa Camp: The First Koreatown in the United States.

Chang himself moved to Los Angeles from Korea with his family as an 18-year-old in 1974. He enlisted in the Army in part to force himself to learn English, and eventually became one of the first scholars in the nation to get a Ph.D. in ethnic studies from U.C. Berkeley.

He said that it had been powerful for him to be able to help strengthen the historical foundations of Asian-American identity and poignant to see parallels between history and the fraught present.

In Pachappa Camp, residents abided by strict rules: Women wore white. No smoking or drinking was allowed.

That kind of self-regulation, Chang said, stemmed from pride. But it also came from an impulse to prove worthiness of a place in America, to be model citizens, in the face of violence and discrimination. Ahn left San Francisco in the first place in part because anti-Asian violence and discrimination prevented him from making a living.

Chang said that it was frustrating that it took a surge in anti-Asian hate to bring the issue to the fore. Still, he said, Asian-American invisibility in the national dialogue on race is finally being cracked.

If there was ever a perfect time to make a life change, this is it, The Timess Well columnist Tara Parker-Pope wrote this week.

Behavioral scientists have long said that times of disruption and transition are also opportunities for growth. And, well, I dont need to tell you weve all experienced a lot of disruption lately.

So on Monday, Tara will kick off Wells Fresh Start Challenge, sending readers daily texts with tips for mindful living, forging deeper connections with friends and family, and building healthy habits. To sign up, just text Hi (or any word) to 917-809-4995 for a link to join. If you dont want to receive texts, you can still join in online.

Just bookmark this page, and youll find a new challenge posted daily.

A programming note: I will be out on vacation for the next couple of weeks, but my colleagues will keep you up to date on everything you need to know.

California Today goes live at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com. Were you forwarded this email? Sign up for California Today here and read every edition online here.

Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, graduated from U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.

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Uncovering the History of Americas First Koreatown - The New York Times