January 28, 2022 at 03:00PM
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In “The Myth of Closure,” Pauline Boss offers guidance for moving forward amid the painful losses of the moment.
Many people I know are waiting, patiently or otherwise, for life to return to normal. We are eager for the day when we can again live without fear of a deadly virus that lurks like a stalker, disrupting social and cultural events, travel, education and life’s milestones that once missed, can never be retrieved.
And many people remain crippled by despair over the death of loved ones, as well as lost jobs, businesses, housing, income and even sleep. How, so many of us wonder, are we supposed to cope with so many obstacles blocking our way forward?
One way is to call upon an age-old characteristic that enables us to weather adversity: resilience. Resilience is the ability to roll with the punches, “because if you’re brittle, you’ll break,” said Pauline Boss, professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota and author of the recently published book, “The Myth of Closure.” Dr. Boss, a family therapist, educator and researcher, is best known for her pioneering work on “ambiguous loss,” which is also the title of her 1999 book depicting unresolved, and often unresolvable, physical or emotional losses.
“When the pandemic subsides, things will not go back to ‘normal’,” said Dr. Boss, who at 87 has lived through multiple upheavals, starting with World War II. With all that has happened during the pandemic, she wrote, “we can’t expect to go back to the normal we had.”
In an interview, she told me, “Normal implies status quo, but things are always changing, and if you don’t change, you don’t grow. We will never be the same again. The pandemic is epic, a power greater than us, and we have to be flexible, resilient enough to bend in order to survive. And we will survive, but our lives will be forever changed.”
Resilience allows us to adapt to stress and maintain one’s equilibrium when faced with adversity. “When resilient people are confronted with a crisis that takes away their ability to control their lives, they find something they can control,” Dr. Boss said. “At the start of the pandemic, many people turned to baking bread, home cooking and cleaning out drawers as something they could control. These were functional coping mechanisms.”
However, she added, if people are unable to adapt when faced with a problem they can’t solve, “they often turn to absolute solutions that are dysfunctional, and make statements like ‘The pandemic is a hoax’ and ‘There’s no such thing as this virus.’”
Although resilience is often viewed as an inherent personality trait that people either have or lack, studies have shown it is a characteristic that can be acquired. People can adopt behaviors, thoughts and actions that help to build resilience, at any age.
Dr. Boss reassured parents that their children will be all right, despite pandemic-related academic and social disruptions. “Children are naturally resilient, and they will be stronger for having survived this bad thing that happened to them. They’ll bounce back and grow from it.”
More than children, “we need to focus on adults,” she said. “This generation of parents has faced no world war, no global threat” of this scale. Many parents are struggling, though she worries that some may be over-shielding their children, which can erode their natural ability to solve problems and cope with adversity.
Dr. Boss’s sentiments brought to mind the concerns my husband and I had in 1980, when our 10-year-old twin sons were facing enrollment in a public middle school where rampant misbehavior and physical threats were common. The boys declined our offer to send them to private school for those tumultuous three years, saying, “What would we learn about life in private school?”
Moving forward
In her new book, Dr. Boss offers guidelines for increasing one’s resilience to overcome adversity and live well despite painful losses. She quotes Dr. Viktor E. Frankl, an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, author and Holocaust survivor, who wrote, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” She recommends that people use each guideline as needed, in no particular order, depending on the circumstances.
Find meaning. The most challenging guideline for many people is to find meaning, to make sense of a loss, and when this is not possible to take some kind of action. Perhaps seek justice, work for a cause or demonstrate to try to right a wrong. When Dr. Boss’s little brother died from polio, her heartbroken family went door to door for the March of Dimes, raising money to fund research for a vaccine.
Adjust your sense of mastery. Instead of trying to control the pain of loss, let the sorrow flow, carry on as best as you can and eventually the ups and downs will come less and less often. “We do not have power to destroy the virus, but we do have the power to lessen its impact on us,” she wrote.
Rebuild identity. Also helpful is to adopt a new identity in sync with your current circumstances. When Dr. Boss’s husband became terminally ill, for example, her identity shifted over time from being a wife to being a caregiver, and after his death in 2020, gradually trying to think of herself as a widow.
Normalize ambivalence. When you lack clarity about a loss, it’s normal to feel ambivalent about how to act. But Dr. Boss says it’s best not to wait for clarity; hesitation can lead to inaction and puts life on hold. Better to make less-than-perfect decisions than to do nothing.
Revise attachment. Dr. Boss emphasizes that rather than trying to sever your attachment to a lost loved one, the goal should be to keep them present in your heart and mind and gradually rebuild your life in a new way, with a new sense of purpose, new friends or a new project. Accept the reality of the loss and slowly revise your attachment to the person who died. But, she says, “there is no need to seek closure, even if other relationships develop.”
Discover new hope. Begin to hope for something new that enables you to move ahead with your life in a new way. Stop waiting, take action and seek new connections that can minimize isolation and foster support that in turn nurtures your resilience.
Perhaps Dr. Boss’s most valuable advice when faced with pandemic losses: “What we need to hope for is not to go back to what we had, but to see what we can create now and in the future.” She suggests brainstorming with others and being willing to try new things. “Hope for something new and purposeful that will sustain you and give you joy for the rest of your life.”
Following Alabama’s 87-78 win over Baylor Saturday, CBSsports.com speculated that the Crimson Tide could be a tough out in the NCAA Tournament.
True, that is the Crimson Tide team that had just defeated last season’s national champion, the Baylor team that had started out this season as the No. 1 ranked team and was fourth in the nation, the Bears that had won 36 consecutive non-conference games going back to 2019. It is that Bama team that has completed one of the most remarkable accomplishments imaginable, having scheduled and defeated three of last year’s NCAA Final Four teams – Gonzaga and Houston in addition to Baylor.
Also true, that is the Alabama team that has lost to the likes of Iona and Davidson in non-conference play and Missouri and, most recently, Georgia in Southeastern Conference games.
I have friends who plan to go to the SEC Tournament in Tampa in early March, but also are taking golf clubs in the event Alabama is eliminated on opening day.
“Go figure,” one might say. Several more than one might say, “What the hell is going on here?”
Here is where Alabama is.
Eight games into the SEC season, the Crimson Tide is 4-4 in conference play, tied with LSU, Texas A&M, and South Carolina for the 6-9 spots in league standings. There are 10 SEC games (5 home, 5 away) to play prior to the start of the tournament in Tampa, March 9-13. Bama, 14-7 overall, has no more non-conference games on the schedule.
Alabama starts that conference finish this week, playing at No. 1 Auburn at 8 p.m. CST Tuesday (ESPN televising) and then on Saturday hosting Kentucky, coming off a romp over previously fifth-ranked Kansas and sure to be ranked in the nation’s top 10 when the polls come out Monday.
Auburn defeated Alabama, 81-77, in Tuscaloosa earlier this season.
Not to say there won’t be challenges every week, but this week is just another example of Alabama playing the nation’s most difficult schedule. The funny thing is, Coach Nate Oats’s Tide has been competitive against the toughies.
Earlier this season a national column said that the toughest three-game stretch played by any team was Alabama having dispatched Miami by 96-64 in Orlando, Gonzaga by 91-82 in Seattle, and Houston in Tuscaloosa, 83-82.
The toughness of that three-game stretch has now been supplanted by the Tide’s current Baylor-Auburn-Kentucky gauntlet.
January 31, 2022 at 01:00AM
https://247sports.com/college/alabama/Article/Alabama-basketball-has-been-at-its-best-against-top-teams-including-taking-wins-over-three-of-last-seasons-Final-Four-181842210/
(CNN)Actor Howard Hesseman, best known as the hard-rocking disc jockey Dr. Johnny Fever on the sitcom "WKRP in Cincinnati" has died, according to his manager, Robbie Kass.
Hesseman died Saturday afternoon from complications related to colon surgery, Kass told CNN. Hesseman was 81.
In addition to earning two Emmy nominations for his role on "WKRP," Hesseman also appeared on "Head of the Class" and "One Day at a Time," along with guest appearances on "That 70's Show," among others. The Oregon native also hosted "Saturday Night Live" several times.
"He was a groundbreaking talent and lifelong friend and longtime client, whose kindness and generosity was equaled by his influence and admiration to generations of actors and improvisational comedy throughout the world," Kass told CNN in an email on Sunday.
"WKRP," about an eclectic cast of characters at a fictional radio station, ran for four seasons starting in 1978. It also starred Loni Anderson as the receptionist, Gordon Jump as the bumbling station manager and Tim Reid as the smooth-talking DJ Venus Flytrap.
Another cold night is in store for Alabama, and especially the southeast corner of the state.
The National Weather Service in Tallahassee, Fla., has issued a hard freeze warning for five counties in southeast Alabama: Coffee, Dale, Geneva, Henry and Houston.
It will be in effect from 1 a.m. until 7 a.m. CST Sunday.
The weather service said temperatures overnight could fall as low as 20 degrees in those areas.
Forecasters said temperatures that cold “will kill crops, other sensitive vegetation and possibly damage unprotected outdoor plumbing.”
It will be very cold across the rest of Alabama overnight, but some areas will be a bit “warmer.”
The eastern part of the state will be the coldest.
Overnight lows are forecast to be in the mid- to upper 20s in north Alabama, the mid-20s in central Alabama and the mid- to upper 20s in southwest Alabama.
Temperatures are expected to warm up a good bit on Sunday, with highs expected to reach the 50s and 60s.
It is forecast to be much warmer on Sunday in Alabama than it was on Saturday.
RICHMOND — Not two weeks after he swaggered into Virginia’s Executive Mansion with a fusillade of executive actions, Gov. Glenn Youngkin walked across Capitol Square on a more humble mission to the office of a junior state legislator.
Del. Don L. Scott Jr. (D-Portsmouth) had made an emotional speech on the House floor questioning Youngkin’s religious faith over his use of race as a political issue. It was one of several challenges this week to the new Republican governor, whose executive orders had already sparked lawsuits and whose legislative agenda was hitting the roadblock of a Democrat-controlled Senate.
Youngkin’s victory last fall in a blue-trending state vaulted him into the national limelight. But now the political newcomer, who has mostly surrounded himself with advisers unfamiliar with the ways of Richmond, faces the unglamorous work of building relationships and working deals in a divided Capitol.
Youngkin spent much of this week seeking face time with legislators, working out of a tiny office on the third floor of the Capitol so they could easily pop in for what his advisers call “drop-bys.” He hosted a reception at the mansion for freshmen delegates from both parties. He wooed leaders of Virginia’s historically Black colleges and universities, giving them top billing at a campaign-style event touting his plan for partnering institutions of higher education with K-12 schools.
None of the outreach worked instant magic on Senate Democrats, who continued thwarting many of the governor’s legislative priorities that they see as undermining long-sought liberal wins from the past two years, when the party fully controlled the legislature and governor’s mansion.
A marquee administration-backed bill — to ban critical race theory and other “divisive” lessons in public schools — got a thumbs down in a Senate subcommittee and seems fated to die before the full committee next week. One of the governor’s Cabinet picks was hanging by a thread, with Senate leaders vowing to reject former Trump administration official Andrew Wheeler for secretary of natural and historic resources. A Senate bill that sought to ban private employers from mandating coronavirus vaccines on workers died. So did legislation meant to back Youngkin’s effort to rename the state’s director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, making it Diversity, Opportunity and Inclusion.
In the Republican-led House, Minority Leader Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Fairfax) wrapped up the week with a floor speech Friday by accusing Youngkin of “trying to implement a far-right agenda.”
But Youngkin turned some Democratic heads with his unusual visit with Scott, whose remarks had provoked outrage from Republican lawmakers. In his speech Wednesday, Scott accused Youngkin of intentionally sowing division — particularly with his ban of critical race theory, a graduate-level study of systemic racism that has become a catchphrase for what conservatives regard as unduly race-conscious K-12 lessons and teacher training.
“So far, what I’ve seen from his day-one activities is not someone who is a man of faith, not a Christian, but someone who wants to divide the commonwealth,” Scott said.
Del. Lamont Bagby (D-Henrico), the head of the Black Caucus, was returning to his office Wednesday afternoon when he noticed a commotion at Scott’s door and stopped by. Seeing the governor, Bagby and Del. Jeffrey M. Bourne (D-Richmond) decided to sit in, Bagby said.
“It was a healthy conversation where both of them were able to share their perspectives,” Bagby said, declining to specify what was discussed. “I’m hopeful that something productive will come out of the conversation — something helpful to our constituents.”
Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter declined to comment, noting that the conversation was private.
“I’m going to honor my agreement between the governor and I that we would keep it private. It was a good conversation,” Scott said. “I am prayerful that something meaningful will come of it. But if it doesn’t, you’ll hear from me again on the floor.”
Youngkin is an overtly religious man who years ago launched a nondenominational church from his Great Falls home and today starts Cabinet meetings with a prayer. He started that day at an early-morning Bible study in the Pocahontas Building, the high-rise where legislators have their offices. Led by former House speaker William J. Howell (R), the lesson was on forgiveness and the scriptural admonition to settle conflicts through direct conversation.
Howell, who was speaker for 15 years before retiring in 2018, said it was a good move on Youngkin’s part to go see Scott rather than summoning him, as busy governors are often more inclined to do.
“I can probably count on one hand the number of times I called somebody into my office,” Howell said. “I think it shows the person that you care for them and you’re not like a grade school principal calling somebody in.”
But Jerrauld C. “Jay” Jones, a former Democratic delegate from Norfolk, thought the whole episode made Youngkin look thin-skinned.
“Imagine if Ralph marched over to the Pocahontas Building every time a Republican said something about him he didn’t like,” Jones said, referring to former governor Ralph Northam (D). “It sets a bad precedent, and he might end up being in [the] Pocahontas every single day of his administration.”
More than once on the campaign trail, Youngkin questioned the religious faith of Northam, a Democrat prevented by the state constitution from seeking back-to-back terms.
“I don’t know how all of you felt, but when this governor opened up massage parlors and ABC stores and kept my church closed, I knew he didn’t start his mornings like I do, which is in prayer,” Youngkin said, complaining about pandemic restrictions at a rally with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) in May.
Bagby said the 30-to-40-minute meeting inside Room E319 was a positive step and was in keeping with a conversation that he had had with Youngkin over dinner several weeks earlier, before Youngkin was sworn in.
“I shared with him [at dinner] that we need to have face-to-face, frequent conversations and that will, over time, make our relationships and communications healthier,” he said.
Bagby said that he disagreed with many of Youngkin’s executive orders and that he has concerns about his early emphasis on creating publicly funded charter schools and how he rolled out his initiative to create “lab school” partnerships between K-12 school systems and the state’s colleges and universities. But he holds out hope that the administration will keep channels open to talk about how history is taught.
“A lot of this stuff, we just need to have conversations and work and do what you do when you have a split government,” he said. “It’s clear he has work to do and there’s a learning curve.”
Records: High Point (9-12, 3-4), Campbell (12-7) (5-3)
BUIES CREEK, N.C.—The High Point University men's basketball lost a hard-fought battle 77-72 to Campbell on Saturday afternoon. Zack Austin led the way for HPU with a career-high 21 points and seven rebounds on the day, while Alex Holt finished with 18 points, shooting 8-9 from the field.
GG Smith: I want to congratulate Campbell, I thought they played extremely well. They are a very veteran and experienced team. They have guys who have been around a long time in this league and they are really tough to prepare for and guard. I thought defensively our guys were just not locked in for 40 minutes. We let them shoot 60% from the field for the game and that is not a recipe for success. We gave up way too many points in the paint, they made 24 layups in the game which is too many for any game. Overall I thought our guys played hard. We got down by 15 in the second half and fought back to cut it to three with less than two minutes to go. Then Campbell came up with a crucial offensive rebound that we gave up after a free throw and that was kind of what cost us the game in that final moment. I was excited to see Zack Austin shoot a pretty good percentage from the field and I was glad to see Alex Holt come off the bench and give us some quality minutes as well.
Panther Particulars
Holt hit back-to-back buckets to start the offense for the Panthers early in the first half.
HPU entered the halftime break down by nine with a score of 39-30. Austin led the Panthers in the first half scoring nine points, going 3 for 4 from the three-point line.
The Panthers shot 46% from the three-point line in the first half.
Austin slammed it home for the first offensive play for HPU to open up the second half.
January 30, 2022 at 05:15AM
https://highpointpanthers.com/news/2022/1/29/mens-basketball-panthers-fall-to-campbell-in-hard-fought-game-in-buies-creek.aspx
Panthers Fall To Campbell In Hard Fought Game in Buies Creek - HPU Panthers
hard.indah.link MEMPHIS, Tenn. – The Memphis Tiger women's tennis team moved to 4-1 on the season with a 5-2 win over Xavier (Ohio) Friday afternoon in Memphis, Tenn.
"It was a great team win today," Memphis head coach Hayden Perez said. "We started off aggressive in doubles, and that carried over into singles. Our kids were on a mission today, and (assistant coach) Ryan Haymond and I are proud of their determination. There were some tough matches today, and we will need to focus on recovery to be ready for Sunday."
Teixido Garcia, Reayer and Meyer also won their singles matches, with Reayer coming from behind against Anna Roggenburk in the third position. Monique Woog also won in singles, picking up a 6-4, 6-0 victory.
Woog improved to 5-0 in singles on the season, and Teixido Garcia and Meyer are now both 4-0 on the campaign.
The Tigers return to action at Eldon Roark Tennis Center Sunday at 10 a.m. against South Florida.
How to follow the Tigers: For complete information on Memphis Tiger Women's Tennis, visit www.GoTigersGo.com and follow the team's social media channels on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
DENVER | Colorado’s Democratic Secretary of State said Friday she is consulting with the state’s top prosecutor in a case of a Republican election official who allegedly copied his voting system’s hard drive, which then got in the hands of two unauthorized attorneys.
Secretary of State Jena Griswold released a statement alleging that Elbert County Clerk and Recorder Dallas Schroeder made the copies of his election system hard drive while getting direction on the phone from two people who don’t work in his office. Two attorneys Griswold said are “unauthorized” to possess election system information now have those copies.
Griswold said she is consulting with the Colorado Attorney General’s office in the matter. She is ordering Schroeder to provide more information about the breach.
Schroeder did not immediately return a call for comment. Last fall he joined a lawsuit to compel an audit of Colorado’s elections system that was filed by supporters of former President Donald Trump’s lies about widespread election fraud.
He is the second Republican election clerk in Colorado associated with Trump’s election falsehoods to get entangled in a possible breach of state election systems. Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters was barred by a court from running last year’s election and is under investigation in connection to a breach of the system there.
Mississippi’s eight public universities got hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government to keep their doors open during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nearly two years later, it’s hard to get a clear picture of what the universities did with those dollars, despite reporting requirements from the U.S. Department of Education agency tasked with overseeing the funds.
A review by Mississippi Today found several factors contribute to the patchwork transparency and accountability:
Quarterly reports tracking this spending, which are supposed to be maintained on a university’s website, are often not posted online.
Millions of dollars are recorded on the forms in vague categories, such as “campus safety” or “housing,” with no supporting notes describing what the money was actually used for.
Spending totals detailed by the universities do not match what is reported in the database maintained by the federal government, making it hard for students and faculty to determine the true amount spent by their university.
The stakes are high in accounting for these dollars in real time, because they were intended to help colleges, and the students they serve, to endure financial challenges due to the pandemic, said K.B. Melear, a professor of higher education finance at University of Mississippi.
“These monies are incredibly important for Mississippi institutions of higher education, especially now … as we move through the various challenges faced by the pandemic,” he said.
This uneven accounting is likely not unique to Mississippi. Last year, ProPublica explored how the federal government’s limited tracking has frustrated efforts by K-12 officials across the country to follow how their districts spent these COVID funds.
The U.S. Department of Educationdid not return Mississippi Today’s request for comment by press time.
The money in question comes from the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, or HEERF, a dedicated pool of dollars in each of the federal government’s three pandemic stimulus packages.
For their part, Mississippi’s eight public universities received $508 million. The universities were required to put at least half of that into students’ pockets in the form of direct payments.
The remaining funds — around $250 million — could be used for “institutional expenses” due to COVID-19, a broad category that encompasses spending on personal protective equipment, dorm closures, or technology for virtual learning.
Every three months, the Office of Postsecondary Education, a U.S. Department of Education agency, requires colleges and universities to publish quarterly reports in the form of spreadsheets to account for their institutional spending. In theory, this provides a clear picture of how a university has spent its institutional dollars. The spreadsheets contain 16 categories the universities can use to classify their spending, such as “providing or subsidizing the costs of high speed internet to students or faculty to transition to an online environment.”
The universities are supposed to go into further detail about how they’re spending the money in certain categories, but many neglected to do so. For one category, labeled “other uses,” the form instructs universities to provide additional information. Of the $7.6 million allocated to “other uses,” the universities did not provide information for about $3.3 million, according to a Mississippi Today analysis.
In one another, the University of Southern Mississippi recorded spending $6.08 million on “replacing lost revenue” from non-tuition sources in a December 2021 report. That category can encompass anything from spending on a canceled theatrical performance to lost parking lot revenue. But nowhere in the report does USM say what, specifically, it spent that $6 million on.
It can be hard to get a clear picture even when the universities do describe their spending. In a September 2021 report, Mississippi State University said it put $3.8 million toward lost revenue. In the column meant for more detail, MSU simply put “Housing and university florist.”
Even though the quarterly spreadsheets are supposed to be easily accessible on a university’s website, that is often not the case in Mississippi — another barrier to transparency. Mississippi Today had to ask for quarterly reports that were not posted online from the following universities: Alcorn State University, Jackson State University, Mississippi University for Women, University of Mississippi, and University of Southern Mississippi. As of this article’s publication, Mississippi Today is waiting on two reports from Alcorn and Jackson State.
These reporting requirements are lax in part because the federal government’s goal with these stimulus funds was to help students stay in college and help colleges keep their doors open, said Robert Kelchen, a professor of higher education finance at University of Tennessee.
“People were worried about colleges laying off employees or closing,” he said. “The main priority wasn’t necessarily tremendous oversight — it was to get the money out the door and have enough oversight that colleges aren’t ripping off taxpayers.”
To Kelchen’s point, it’s also hard to determine the total amount of HEERF funds spent by Mississippi universities.
The U.S. Department of Education maintains a database, called the “transparency portal,” of all education funds allocated by the three pandemic relief bills. The goal of the database is “to provide the public with transparent, searchable, and understandable data.”
According to the transparency portal, Mississippi universities have spent about $129 million in federal stimulus funds on institutional expenses as of Nov. 30, 2021.
The quarterly reports paint a different picture. Mississippi Today added up the spending reported in spreadsheets from all eight universities. According to Mississippi Today’s analysis, the universities collectively spent $198 million in institutional funds as of Dec. 31, 2021 — a $70 million gap.
The numbers don’t match for individual universities, either. A review of every quarterly report posted by Mississippi University for Women shows the school spent about $2.3 million in institutional funds as of Sept. 30, 2021. The U.S. Department of Education says MUW spent about $1.2 million as of Nov. 31, 2021.
Tyler Wheat, MUW’s communications director, told Mississippi Today that the quarterly reports are submitted to the department and the difference in numbers is primarily due to timing.
“Our quarterly reports on the website are correct,” he said. The U.S. Department of Education database “only shows the amount they have paid in reimbursement” which “are not requested until after the expenses have incurred.”
Ahead of a major five-city show, the artist reflects on the evolution of her practice and her distrust of Amazon.
This past December, I met the abstract artist Rochelle Feinstein at her studio — a 900-square-foot space in an industrial office building in Queens, N.Y. — to discuss her upcoming exhibition, “You Again,” a survey of her work that will be displayed simultaneously in six independent galleries in Paris, Zurich, New York, Miami and Los Angeles, beginning this month at Bridget Donahue in Manhattan. Unlike many painters, the ineffability of personal experience concerns Feinstein less than the cultural conditions that create it. What interests her is, “How can I enter that cultural condition and how can I enter it right now?”
Feinstein, 70, who retired in 2017 from her position as professor emerita of painting and printmaking at the Yale School of Art, has been asking that question for some time, most directly since the late ’80s. Up to that point, she’d tried to synthesize various elements of abstraction and representation in her paintings, giving priority to formal elements such as patina and mark making in an effort to convey inner states of ephemerality. “I was trying to do everything in a painting, which is a big problem,” she said. Having earned some recognition within the art world but little satisfaction, she began using mixed media, grounding her projects explicitly in their material and social contexts. Today, Feinstein’s work is known for its unpredictability and ironic allusions to pop culture and art history. “Image of an Image,” her 2018 retrospective at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, included works inspired by Barry White, Michael Jackson, the 2008 financial crisis and the absurdity of Women’s History Month, whose very existence underscores women’s marginalization.
For “Sad Framed” (2021), Feinstein layered black acrylic paint onto the canvas with a foam brush, evoking veils of mourning. “The situation in America is just untenable,” she said. “I don’t remember this level of misery, lack of care and injustice.” Hannah Yoon
Feinstein attributes a shift in her practice to the death of her father, in 1984, which gave her the clarity to act on her own artistic instincts. “I said, ‘If I can survive my father not acknowledging me at all as a woman, I can survive the art world not acknowledging me,’” she recalled. The revelation was a long time coming for Feinstein, who was born to a working-class family in the Bronx and raised in Queens. Her mother suffered from mental illness that sent her in and out of psychiatric institutions; her father, Feinstein said, “was evil,” and aggressively opposed to his daughter’s education. (She took the name Feinstein from a man she married in her 20s and chose to keep it after they divorced.)
At 17, she was living on her own in a one-room basement apartment and working full time while she completed high school. After she graduated, a string of jobs as a typist led her to the famed advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach, where she was promoted to set stylist. At night, she attended classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology before transferring to the Pratt Institute, eventually receiving an M.F.A. in printmaking from the University of Minnesota. By the time she arrived at Pratt, she knew she wanted to make art — an awareness inspired in large part by reading Marguerite Yourcenar’s 1951 “Memoirs of Hadrian,” a fictionalized autobiography of the Roman emperor. “I realized that painting was part of history,” said Feinstein. Meanwhile, the 1970s had brought a wave of protest art into the public discourse. “I thought that was the premier language at the time,” she recalled. “And I wanted to get in there.”
In the late ’80s, Feinstein began experimenting with new approaches to painting. “Rather than use a brush, I used palette knives only,” she said. “And if I had leftover paint, the next work would have to start with that paint.”Hannah Yoon
If there is one impulse that unites Feinstein’s oeuvre, it is perhaps this desire to tap into shared lexicons. The grid figures prominently in her work, both as a continuation of the abstract tradition and in recognition of how it shapes modern life, including our inner landscapes. Always, she seeks to find the grid as it exists in the world already, often in unexpected places. The result is sometimes diaristic. In “Brainchild” (1993), for example, titled after a childhood nickname given to her by her mother, Feinstein drew inspiration from a drawer in which her mother kept bits of string used to tie bakery boxes; like so many who lived through the Great Depression, she found such things impossible to discard. Conceiving of the brain’s quadrants as a grid, Feinstein divided a canvas into four parts and filled each with butcher’s twine and ombré-colored yarn glued in coiled formations then painted over them with black, gray and white acrylic paints. The result is not beautiful but absorbing — “I don’t want to make work that’s beautiful,” said Feinstein — interpretable literally as a representation of the brain’s gray matter but also as a tactile portrayal of muted disarray and psychic compartmentalization. The grid is revealed as an organizing principle but also a fragmenting one, resisting wholeness.
It’s difficult to summarize Feinstein’s output, and that’s no accident. “I made a practice of not working serially and not refining,” she said. This approach is clear in “The Wonderfuls,” a collection of more than a dozen 33-inch square works Feinstein began in the last days of 1990, when, determined to use the last of some red and green paints, she wiped them onto a canvas with a squeegee until the painting took on what she considered to be a “hideous” resemblance to holiday plaid. She titled that first work “It’s a Wonderful Life,” an arch reference to the 1946 Christmas film. (“I hate that movie,” Feinstein said. “I don’t think it’s about familial love. I think it’s about money.”) Later works in the series include “Wonderful Sex” (1992), which incorporates a dish towel Feinstein bought at a presidential library in Texas around the time Bill Clinton was making headlines for an alleged affair with Gennifer Flowers, and “Wonderful Country” (1996), a map she made from photos of food cut from grocery store mailers and embedded in resin. The canvases bear little resemblance to one another but operate together as a meditation on the word “wonderful” itself, on its vacuity and overuse in American culture.
A selection of reference images relating to Feinstein’s works about Amazon.Hannah Yoon
A number of pieces Feinstein made for Candice Madey gallery in New York, for her show “You Again,” incorporate the gyre structure of pansies and employ enamel, acrylic, cardboard and canvas.Hannah Yoon
Despite Feinstein’s long career, she and the show’s curators were determined not to approach “You Again” as another retrospective. Instead, Feinstein worked with each of the six galleries to create new pieces that respond in some way to older ones of hers that the galleries hold in their archives. Each venue will display these newer works alongside their forebears (with the exception of Hannah Hoffman Gallery in Los Angeles, where only recent pieces will appear). The exhibition’s title operates both as a nod to its multiplicate structure and, depending on how you say it, a gesture of wry self-reflexivity: You, again?
A feeling of distance — from people, from sensory experience and between expectations and reality — infuses much of Feinstein’s work and in “You Again,” it is expressed partly through her use of cardboard. Around 2017, she became fascinated with Amazon — its totalizing and isolating power — and began incorporating remnants of shipping boxes in her projects. She is interested, too, in what she refers to as “the corporatized rainbow,” the “failed aspirational symbol” that many companies deploy in an effort to capitalize on ideas of diversity and representation. For “Upcycles” (2021), she used yarn and grommets to affix eight irregularly shaped squares of cardboard onto a 60-by-58-inch canvas. The canvas itself is covered in a rainbow of swathlike striations and the cardboard cutouts are painted in the same vibrant acrylic colors but have a muddy appearance because of their brown paper surface. The work is approximately the same size as its predecessor, “Grids Are Us” (1992), which Feinstein made by transferring images of New York-based newspapers onto a linen printing plate, producing an irregular grid of record that must be read backward. Such print media, Feinstein reflected, is now far less ubiquitous than packaging, though both “Upcycles” and “Grids Are Us” are concerned with shifting attitudes toward gay life in America and will be shown together at Bridget Donahue.
For “I Like Amazon and Amazon Likes Me” (2021), to be shown at Hannah Hoffman in Los Angeles, Feinstein scanned cardboard onto linen (left), then used oil paint on canvas to recreate the image by hand (right).Hannah Yoon
When we spoke a second time, this month, Feinstein was preparing to visit Miami to finalize the placement of her work at Nina Johnson. It is important to her that each piece be encountered as an independent experience, not determined by the works around it, even if they share DNA. “I don’t ever like to do compare and contrast,” she said. For this reason, the decentralized format of “You Again” is a fitting one. To look at her works in any of the six galleries is to appreciate them on their — and your — own terms, with an ambient awareness that your context for doing so is incomplete by design, a fact that makes understanding not a prerequisite but an open possibility. As Feinstein says, she requires only two things from art: “I need to learn, and I need to feel. I want to learn something about where I am in this world, at this moment.” Here, she answers T’s Artist’s Questionnaire.
What’s your day like and what’s your work schedule?
When I’m not doing something else, I’m in the studio all day. I try and get here around seven in the morning, to beat the rush hour, and I often stay until after the evening rush hour. So they’re very long days, and I don’t differentiate between weekdays and weekends during the pandemic.
How would you describe your studio?
It has a view — I can see the New York skyline, all of it, from my windows. And it’s big for me. I’ve been in this building for almost 10 years. Previously, I had a studio across the hall that was the size of a broom closet, but then this one opened up about three years ago and I said, “I want it.”
From left: Part of the diptych “Abstract Vibes” (2021); “Endpapers I” (2021); and “Upcycles” (2021).Hannah Yoon
When you start a new piece, where do you begin?
With language, usually.
How do you know when you’re done?
There’s nothing left to do.
What’s the first work you ever sold, and how much did you sell it for?
It was really stupid. I was unemployed at the time, and I couldn’t pay my rent, but I was making these beautiful woodblock prints in my apartment. I mean, they were amazing and very involved. Somebody told me that the Museum of Modern Art was accepting pieces for review by what was then called the Prints and Illustrated Books Department, and that you could bring work in and meet the committee. I said, “All right, I’ll do that. Maybe I’ll get my rent money.” They loved the piece I submitted and asked how much it was. And I’m such an idiot: I told them my rent was $143 and so that was my price — $143.75. That was around 1982 and the piece is still in the museum’s collection. It’s hilarious.
How many assistants do you have?
I don’t have any full-time or even part-time assistants. But I do have a crew of people whom I love and trust and whom, whenever I’m really in a pickle, I can call. I don’t work with anybody as a rule, but I’m very grateful for those people saying, “If you need us, just let us know.”
Tests for recent works hang on the studio wall. “I never know in the beginning where something is going but when I get to the middle, I can kind of see where the end might be,” Feinstein said.Hannah Yoon
When did you first feel comfortable saying you’re a professional artist?
I never thought of myself as professional. I think this question is very of the moment, though, because artists have become professionalized. It’s just the way it is. But I think I really thought I was an artist when I got a check from Alice Neel for a contest I’d entered. I won second prize, but she said, “You should have been first.” So I thought, “Oh, I’m an artist. Another artist recognized me.” I think I was at Pratt then, so I was maybe 27 years old.
Do you talk to other artists?
Oh, a lot.
What’s your worst habit?
Is insomnia a habit? It’s something I’m almost constantly fighting, though sometimes I just relent and stay up all night. I stopped drinking a lot of coffee, and I stopped smoking around 25 years ago. Hmm. I haven’t had sex in a long time. So I don’t know if my habits really exist now.
Speaking of insomnia: When Terry Gross interviewed Mel Brooks last year, she asked him if there was anything that, at his age, really troubles him, and he said he’s pretty lucky but he has insomnia. And what he does is what I do. He puts his sleep mask on and he turns on any show that he knows is going to bore him to sleep. I put on anything that has 10 seasons. Now I’m onto “Dexter,” which I don’t really watch but play to put me to sleep. I’m like a 95-year-old man.
The ocher, sienna and umber oil paints the artist used for “I Like Amazon and Amazon Likes Me” (2021).Hannah Yoon
Feinstein selected seven specific colors of acrylic paint to create the rainbow motif that appears in many of the new works in “You Again.”Hannah Yoon
What are you reading right now?
I’ve never bought more books in my life than I have during the pandemic, but I’m reading very few of them. At the moment, I have Clarice Lispector’s “Complete Stories” (2015) by my bed. It’s amazing but I’m not really reading it. Sarah Schulman’s book “Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993” (2021) is great too because I can open it anywhere and find something interesting to read. During the pandemic, the amount of time for which I can truly focus on something has been really off.
What’s your favorite artwork by someone else?
Oh, that’s easy. It’s “Ceci Est la Couleur de Mes Rêves” (“This Is the Color of My Dreams”), a Joan Miró painting from 1925. It’s a complex, gorgeous, very spare piece. There’s a daub of blue paint in one corner, which he squished into the surface over a background of very, very light colors, and he’s painted the word “photo” above it. It’s like he’s talking about old media and photography and painting coming together, and he’s using the word to stand in for a photo. I first saw it in around 2006 and it still yields a lot from me. It’s a piece about dreaming, about imagination and about projecting imagination onto the painting itself.
A view of Feinstein’s studio, which is located in the same borough of New York in which she was raised.Hannah Yoon
What do you do to procrastinate?
I read the news. I’ll start with the New York Post and TMZ — the headlines are always about a celebrity or somebody having a baby, but I need to know what everyone thinks — and then I’ll go to The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Times and The Atlantic.
What’s the weirdest object in your studio?
You want to see? They’re really the weirdest things. [Feinstein extracts two battery-operated cat dolls. One has black stripes on its faux fur and the other has orange. Both wear red and green tartan bow ties and measure about 10 inches tall. She places them on a table and turns them on, and they dance in unison to a low-fi recording of Shania Twain’s 2002 song “I’m Gonna Getcha Good!”] I love these guys. Look at the empathy in their faces! I got them in Rome. I’d done a talk there that was organized by a university program and afterward we went to this really touristy restaurant. This guy came in and he took this thing out and put it on our table. Everyone said, “Go away!” But I said, “Wait a minute. What, what is it?” He showed me and I bought two of them. They really helped me the whole time I was in Rome.
January 27, 2022 at 11:10PM
https://www.duboiscountyherald.com/sports/jeeps-seeking-other-side-of-hard/article_a3391595-3117-52db-ad55-f0577ddc64f9.html
Jeeps seeking other side of hard | Sports | duboiscountyherald.com - The Herald
How does a TikTok star make a living? In a zillion different ways.
This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection ofpast columns.
On a typical morning, Chrissy Chlapecka lets the dog outside, spends an hour on professional makeup and hair and carefully selects an outfit. Then Chlapecka, a 21-year-old Chicagoan, starts work as an internet creator.
Chlapecka posts at least one short video a day on Instagram and TikTok, where she has a combined 4.5 million followers. Nothing dramatic happens in the videos. But Chlapecka is who you might imagine if Lady Gaga were your favorite barista dishing out advice and zingers. (In fact, Chlapecka used to be a barista.)
In a few seconds of video recorded at home or in a mall, she seems at ease. Chlapecka invites viewers — particularly gay people and women — to feel good about themselves with an online personality that Chlapecka described as “an encouraging big sister type.” (Readers, please note that Chlapecka’s videos are not necessarily family-friendly.)
But this is also work. In addition to daily posts, Chlapecka records rough cuts of videos to save for the days when the creative juices might not be flowing. In line at the grocery store, she jots down concept ideas. Chlapecka weighs in on pitches for promotional videos to incorporate certain products or song clips that companies hope will take off. She also told me about hosting a gig at a comedy club and creating strategies to build a bigger fan base on YouTube and sell merchandise to fans.
For many people like Chlapecka, who try to make a living from entertaining or sharing information online, their job is part Hollywood producer, part small-business owner and all hustle.
“Some people really underestimate the work that creators do,” Chlapecka told me. “I wish they would understand more that this is a real career — and it’s a serious career — and a form of entertainment.”
Chlapecka knows that some people believe she’s just goofing around on the internet. But it takes skill and perseverance to come up with fresh ideas day after day, establish rapport with online followers and stay on top of the constantly changing algorithms and tastes of internet users.
This week, On Tech has focused on the economics of the internet creator economy. No one person is representative of the millions who try to earn a living from their online creations. But Chlapecka offers a glimpse at what this work is like and how creators earn money. This job may not look like yours or mine, but it can be gratifying and maddening like most work.
As with many online personalities, the biggest chunk of Chlapecka’s income comes from companies that pay to have their products or songs featured in videos. Brands typically provide a big-picture concept and leave it up to Chlapecka to do the rest.
Chlapecka has also earned money from Cameo, a service for people to pay for personalized videos from celebrities and sports stars. She has experimented with selling subscriptions to followers on Twitter and the digital creator service Fanhouse. Chlapecka also collects money from TikTok’s fund for video makers, which she described as “not enough to pay rent, but it is nice.”
Chlapecka wouldn’t say how much money she makes. But until about a year ago, she was working at Starbucks and a vintage store and making TikTok videos on the side. Now online work is a full-time job.
She said she felt fulfilled by “the power that social media has given me and the fans who love me — and I love them back.” Chlapecka also relishes FaceTime conversations with other online creators who trade how-to tips and sympathy for difficult days. It’s their version of drinks with co-workers to moan about a bad boss.
Like many other creators, Chlapecka is harassed and threatened online, she said. Social media stars succeed by creating intimacy with followers, but Chlapecka said that hecklers act as though the person they see through a smartphone screen doesn’t have feelings.
“People behind the camera are human beings, and we deserve to have boundaries and respect,” she said.
Chlapecka said that she understood how the grind of being constantly online burned many people out. She hopes that creators’ work can be sustainable, but she also imagines that online fandom may open doors for pursuits in TV and music.
This is the life of creators, a staple of the digital economy. They fill the apps that consume our leisure hours. It’s a career aspiration for young people that didn’t exist a generation ago. It can be all-consuming, invasive and precarious — and also, fun.
More from On Tech on the internet creator economy:
Your smartphone might be permanently connected to you like a digital baby. But your phone number doesn’t have to be, saysBrian X. Chen, the consumer technology columnist for The New York Times.
Your phone number is an incredibly sensitive piece of data. It’s a unique string of digits linked to other highly personal information found in public records including your full name, home address, the names of your relatives and even your criminal record (if you have one).
A phone number also is likely to stay attached to you for many years because it’s such a hassle to get a new one and share it with all of your contacts. (I, for one, have had the same cellphone number for more than 15 years.)
That’s why everyone can benefit from having a burner phone number that you share with people and entities you don’t fully trust. The simplest free option is to sign up for a Google Voice account. There, you pick an area code and choose from a list of phone numbers. You can even set it up to forward calls and text messages to your real phone number.
I recently had a number of situations in which a burner phone number came in handy:
A retail store cashier asked me for my phone number to join a membership program and get a discount. To avoid getting spam from the retailer, I provided my burner.
I put an ad on Craigslist to sell something. Instead of publicly posting my real number for people to call and ask questions, I shared the Google Voice digits.
I downloaded a free app that asked for my phone number when I signed up. It felt unnecessary to share that information with the app because it didn’t require my phone number to work. I provided my burner instead.
The beauty of a burner is that if someone abuses it, you can get rid of it and create a new set of digits. Who wouldn’t want one?
Before we go …
Rock pioneer vs. podcaster: The musician Neil Young called on Spotify to choose between hosting his songs or Joe Rogan, the popular podcast host who has been accused of spreading misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines. Spotify sided with Rogan, my colleague Ben Sisario reports.
What does that screaming ace sound like? The Australian Open is testing audio technology that translates the travel of balls and other tennis action into soundscapes for fans who are blind or have limited vision, my colleague Amanda Morris explains.
Saying no to Elon Musk: Jack Sweeney, a 19-year-old college student, programmed software that sifts through complex data about private jet flights and tweets the details about Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, and other prominent people. Sweeney told Protocol that Musk offered him $5,000 to stop the tweets tracking his jet trips, but Sweeney declined.
Hugs to this
This dog is very excited about meeting a new friend. Stick around for the moment when the older dog shares its toy.
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