Get ready for solar eclipse mania. Destinations in the path of the Aug. 21 eclipse, which will be visible in the U.S. along a narrow path from Oregon to South Carolina, are going wild with plans for festivals, concerts and viewing parties.

 

Hotels in Casper, Wyoming, are charging five times their usual rates. Rooms at Idaho’s Sun Valley Resort have been booked for years.

 

An eclipse tour in Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains National Park sold out in 10 minutes. The Smokies are among 20 National Park sites that will experience the total solar eclipse, from sections of the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina to Wyoming’s Grand Tetons.

“We are expecting record visitation,” said NPS spokesman Jeffrey Olson.

 

Hopkinsville, Kentucky, population 32,000, and Carbondale, Illinois, population 23,000, expect 50,000 visitors each. The destinations, 140 miles apart, will experience about 2 minutes and 40 seconds of total darkness, among eclipse sites with the longest duration. Events in the region include an “Eclipse Con” festival, concerts and tailgate parties.

 

South Carolina’s Clemson University also expects 50,000 people at a campus event that will feature astronomers and other experts. Twenty thousand people will gather in the Ochocho National Forest for Oregon Eclipse 2017, with music, yoga, theater, art installations and more. Wind River Reservation in Wyoming hosts “bring back the sun” ceremonies.

 

A Pink Floyd Tribute band plans a “Dark Side of the Moon” concert in Jefferson City, Missouri. The South Carolina Philharmonic in Columbia offers “Star Wars Musiclipse.” Sylva, North Carolina, has a “Moonlight Madness” run.

 

Eclipse Chasers

 

Sharon Hahs and her husband, Billy, have chased 14 eclipses around the world from Mongolia to South Africa. They’ll see this one from a family farm in Missouri, not far from their St. Louis home.

 

“There is nothing else in our universe that looks like a total solar eclipse,” said Hahs. “The air gets cool. You have 360-degree dusk. Nature sounds really happen: the cock crows, birds get quiet. We even had a horse cross our viewing area to return to the stable.”

 

Michael Allen of Southampton, England, is a “keen amateur astronomer” who considers the eclipse “a once in a lifetime opportunity.” He can’t travel alone because he has cerebral palsy and epilepsy, so his brother Nick is accompanying him on a three-day tour to Nashville with eclipse-viewing at the Kentucky border.

 

Jack Bohannon of Anchorage, Alaska, plans to see the eclipse in Nebraska as the “culmination of a summer-long RV trip” with family.

“We were originally going to book an RV park in the eclipse path in Wyoming, but everywhere was full,” he said.

 

Hotels

 

In small or remote destinations, hotels and campsites in the path of totality are completely sold out. But bigger cities still have openings. As of March 25, Nashville hotels were only 54 percent booked.

 

Don’t assume lodging is sold out because a travel booking site says so. Call hotels directly to ask.

 

Many hotels are offering eclipse packages. Nashville’s Loews Vanderbilt package includes eclipse viewing glasses, commemorative T-shirt, Uber gift card and bar credit. Hotel Jackson in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, has an “eclipse concierge” to help guests plan their $699-a-night stay.

 

Consumers in Oregon have complained about hotels canceling reservations they made long ago, claiming rebranding or new ownership, then charging much higher rates for rebooking.

 

Location and Weather

As the moon moves in front of the sun, daylight will yield to darkness from Oregon to South Carolina along a path 60 to 70 miles wide. The path of totality will also cut across broad swaths of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee, along with corners of Kansas, Georgia and North Carolina, and a tiny chip of Iowa. Totality will first hit Oregon around 10:15 a.m. Pacific time. South Carolina will experience the final moments of total darkness at 2:49 p.m. Eastern time.

 

Some spectators are heading to mountains and forests to experience the eclipse in a natural setting.

 

“Think of an eclipse as an incredible short night,” with “a rapid sunset and then sunrise,” said Sara Morris, an ornithologist and biology professor at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York. “Birds go back to roost. Animals that are active during the day will stop foraging and put themselves in a place of safety.”

 

Destinations that offer easy highway access have an advantage in bad weather: You can drive elsewhere to seek clear skies.

“Clouds are the enemy of eclipse chasers,” said Hahs. “If one can move, one should.”

 

The driest section of the eclipse path is from eastern Oregon to western Nebraska but “even the driest places on Earth experience clouds, fog and rain,” said Brady Phillips at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is developing an online weather map for the eclipse.

 

Safety

 

When the sun is completely blocked by the moon, its rays can’t hurt your eyes. But the period before and after totality is dangerous — even when it seems dark — because viewing even a sliver of the sun as it slips in and out of view can damage retinas. Sunglasses are useless. Viewing through telescopes or cameras without proper filters is also unsafe before and after totality.

 

So be sure to buy eclipse glasses, but don’t spend a lot: $1 glasses with paper filters are fine.
…

Nearly 200 independent movie theaters across the United States on Tuesday screened the film version of George Orwell’s “1984” novel about a dystopian future, in what organizers said was a stand against U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.

The United State of Cinema, which arranged the screenings in 44 U.S. states for one day only, said it was done to “take a stand for our most basic values: freedom of speech, respect for our fellow human beings, and the simple truth that there are no such things as ‘alternative facts.’”

The movie was also to be shown at five venues in Canada, one in England, one in Sweden and one in Croatia.

Movie released in 1984

The 1949 book, which returned to the U.S. best-seller list in January, features a “Big Brother” government that spies on its citizens and forces them into “doublethink,” or simultaneously accepting contradictory versions of the truth.

The movie was released in 1984 and starred John Hurt and Richard Burton.

New York resident Laura Fliegner and her husband attended an afternoon screening of “1984” at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in Manhattan.

“We think it makes a statement. Going to see it again, and remind ourselves what happens when you slide off a slippery slope,” she said.

After the screening, Fliegner said as she left the theater, “It’s all just very chilling.”

Many of the screenings are free

Nicolas Rapold, who helped organize the Lincoln Center screening and panel discussion that followed, said he expected at least 100 people to attend each of three free screenings at the venue.

Some venues charged admission, the proceeds of which were to be given to an organization of each venue’s choice.

The British novel was reprinted in January, decades after it was written, following the Trump administration’s defense of “alternative facts,” a term White House official Kellyanne Conway used during a dispute over the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration.

Adam Birnbaum, director of Film Programming for the Avon Theatre Film Center in Stamford, Connecticut, and co-organizer of the event, said Orwell’s themes were as relevant today as they were nearly 70 years ago.

“Our concern is the idea that the only answer is the one coming from the mouthpiece running the [Trump] administration and that there’s this effort to sort of snuff out anything but that,” Birnbaum said.

Some theaters offer discussions after viewings

He said proceeds of tickets sold at the Avon Theatre would be earmarked for “future educational screenings” of “1984” with the local Stamford public schools.

He said a number of theaters showing “1984” on Tuesday had scheduled post-film audience discussions and that a “vast majority” of the theaters had added showings because they had sold out or were at capacity.

“If nothing else, we hope that people will continue to be voices of opposition to some of the practices that are currently being employed by government,” he said.
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Like Russia’s star Alex Ovechkin, the International Ice Hockey Federation thinks NHL players need not miss the 2018 Winter Olympics — though team owners likely now need a “game-changer” offer on the table.

 “We are continuing to try to find solutions,” the governing body’s general secretary Horst Lichtner told The Associated Press on Tuesday, after the NHL said it would not take part in the games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.  

 

Lichtner spent much of the day in talks with IOC officials and winter sports leaders about the NHL’s announcement late Monday. The league ended negotiations aimed at ensuring it would shut down for the Olympic period in February and let its superstars play in South Korea.

NHL is bluffing?

Ovechkin said Tuesday he would play at the games anyway, suggesting the NHL was bluffing.

Lichtner also said the door is not closed, though he acknowledged that the Switzerland-based IIHF must make a better offer.

“Then we can re-open the discussion, maybe not for ever but to come back with some so-called game changers to the (NHL team) owners which would then probably help to find a better decision than we have now,” he said.

The IIHF had already agreed to meet players’ travel and insurance costs when the IOC ended its long-time commitment to pay. The NHL sought more concessions, but the IOC would not concede a share of marketing rights to a commercial league.

Hockey body focused on 5-year plan

Lichtner said the IIHF was focused on a five-year plan for the sport in Asia, leading up to the 2022 Beijing Winter Games in the coveted Chinese market.

“We have a strategy and that would of course be easier and much nicer if this is with the NHL than without,” the German official said of a plan that includes the Russia-based KHL.

A Chinese delegation is due to attend the annual world championships, staged in May in France and Germany.

Though a two-Olympic deal was part of recent NHL talks, Lichtner did not rule out finding a separate solution to the Beijing Olympics.

“I don’t think we should predict now what will happen until 2022,” he said. “We will always try to do the best for ice hockey — and this is put the best players on the ice and let them play, because they want it.”

Ovechkin plans to play for country

That includes Ovechkin, the Washington Capitals star who said Tuesday that “I’m pretty sure everything is going to be fine.”  

 

“It’s my country,” Ovechkin said in Toronto. “It’s the biggest opportunity in your life to play in the Olympic Games. Somebody going to tell me I don’t go. I don’t care, I just go.”

The IIHF’s Lichtner predicted that others players could follow.

“I actually think there will be some more Ovechkins in this world who want to use the Olympic stage to show their skills,” Lichtner said.
…

Scripps National Spelling Bee winners aced “gesellschaft” and “feldenkrais” to be named co-champions of last year’s competition, but it was the word “tie” that gave organizers a headache.

On Tuesday, the contest revealed new rules aimed at preventing ties after the annual competition ended in a dead heat three years in a row, with joint winners both getting $40,000 cash prizes in 2016.

Organizers said they would prefer to see a clear-cut champion, rather than a shared title.

The 290 young spelling whizzes from across the United States and six foreign countries in this year’s bee will face a new written tiebreaker when they square off May 30-June 1 in a Washington suburb, organizers said.

The written test introduces a fresh hurdle for participants spelling ever-tougher words in the bee, a national institution since 1925.

“During our history, students have expanded their spelling abilities and increased their vocabulary to push our program to be even more challenging,” Paige Kimble, the bee’s executive director, said in a statement.

Tiebreaking test

Ahead of this year’s title round, the finalists will be tested on 12 words, which they will write, and 12 multiple-choice vocabulary questions.

If it is mathematically impossible for one champion to emerge through 25 rounds, bee officials will declare the speller with the highest tiebreaker score the winner. If there is a tie on the test, judges will declare co-champions.

This year’s bee will draw contestants ages 5 to 15 culled from more than 11 million in the spelling program. The winner or winners will receive the cash prize of $40,000.

Last year, Nihar Janga, a fifth-grader from Austin, Texas, and Jairam Hathwar, a seventh-grader from Painted Post, New York, were named co-champions after battling 25 rounds head to head.

To gain the title, Nihar spelled “gesellschaft,” a type of social relationship, and Jairam aced “feldenkrais,” a method of education.
…

Tom Brady’s Super Bowl jersey was stolen again – this time by Rob Gronkowski in full view of 37,000 screaming Red Sox fans.

The New England Patriots quarterback was showing off the recently re-acquired uniform top during the pregame ceremony on opening day at Fenway Park on Monday when Gronkowski ripped it out of his hands. Brady chased him around the infield and playfully tackled him in right field.

The Patriots said it was the same jersey that had been stolen out of their locker room in Houston after the Super Bowl victory over the Atlanta Falcons in February.

“That was awesome seeing those guys out there,” said Boston outfielder Andrew Benintendi, whose three-run homer propelled the Red Sox to a 5-3 victory over the Pirates in a rematch of the first World Series, in 1903. “I grew up watching them and still do. It was cool to see them all out there.”

Brady got the jersey back at owner Robert Kraft’s home in suburban Brookline earlier Monday . “It took an international trip,” Kraft said in the video that was tweeted out on the team’s account.

The Patriots brought all five of their Vince Lombardi trophies out for the first pitch ceremony, coming out from behind a giant American flag draped over the Green Monster. Joining Brady, Gronk and Kraft were James White, who scored the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl in overtime, and fellow running back Dion Lewis.

The other players wore their blue uniform tops, but Brady walked out in the white one from the Super Bowl before he pulled it off and began waving it around.

Gronkowski jumped behind him and snatched it away.

“It was fun. They were kind of making fun of the whole jersey-taking thing,” said Red Sox outfielder Jackie Bradley Jr., who started the winning burst with a fifth-inning triple. “It was good seeing some champions out there. And they definitely know a lot about winning.”

Brady threw out the first pitch to Red Sox star Dustin Pedroia – like the Patriots quarterback, the longest tenured player on his team – before the two embraced. Even the Pirates enjoyed the pregame shenanigans.

“It was pretty hard not to,” said Pittsburgh starter Gerrit Cole. “Tom Brady is on the field, and he’s tackling Gronk. It’s a pretty special environment. I’ll probably forget everything after the fourth inning.”

The Patriots tweeted a video earlier on Monday showing Kraft presenting his star with two No. 12 Super Bowl jerseys that had been missing. (Another had disappeared after the 2015 Super Bowl.)

Kraft thanked the authorities who found the jerseys while searching the property of Mexican media executive Martin Mauricio Ortega. He has not been charged.
…

It’s OK, Carolina, you can open your eyes.

An unwatchable game turned into a beautiful night for the Tar Heels, who turned a free-throw contest into a championship they’ve been waiting an entire year to celebrate.   

 

Justin Jackson delivered the go-ahead 3-point play with 1:40 left Monday and North Carolina pulled away for a 71-65 win over Gonzaga that washed away a year’s worth of heartache.

 

It was, in North Carolina’s words, a redemption tour — filled with extra time on the practice court and the weight room, all fueled by a devastating loss in last year’s title game on Kris Jenkins’ 3-point dagger at the buzzer for Villanova.

Winners struggle from field

 

“I wanted to see this confetti fall on us and we’re the winners,” said Carolina’s Joel Berry II, who led the Heels with 22 points. “We came out here and we competed. It came down to the last second, but we’re national champs now.”

 

Berry, along with most of Roy Williams’ players, returned for another run. To say everything went right for them at this Final Four would not be the truth.

 

The Tar Heels (33-7) followed a terrible shooting night in the semifinal with an equally ice-cold performance in the final — going 4 for 27 from 3-point land and 26 for 73 overall.

 

Gonzaga, helped by 8 straight points from Nigel Williams-Goss, took a 2-point lead with 1:52 left, but the next possession was the game-changer.

 

Jackson took a zinger of a pass under the basket from Theo Pinson and converted the shot, then the ensuing free throw to take the lead for good. Moments later, Williams-Goss twisted his right ankle and could not elevate for a jumper that would’ve given the Bulldogs the lead.

Tar Heels finish strong

 

Isaiah Hicks made a basket to push the lead to 3, then Kennedy Meeks, in foul trouble all night, blocked Williams-Goss’ shot and Jackson got a slam on the other end to put some icing on title No. 6 for the Tar Heels. Williams got his third title, putting him one ahead of his mentor, Dean Smith, and now behind only John Wooden, Adolph Rupp and Mike Krzyzewski.

 

“I think of Coach Smith, there’s no question,” Williams said. “I don’t think I should be mentioned in the same sentence with him. But we got three because I’ve got these guys with me and that’s all I care about right now — my guys.”

Berry recovered from ankle injuries to lead the Tar Heels, but needed 19 shots for his 22 points. Jackson had 16 on a 6-for-19 night and, overall, the Tar Heels actually shot a percentage point worse than they did in Saturday night’s win over Oregon.

Referees are busy

Thank goodness for free throws. They went 15 for 26 from the line and, in many corners, this game will be remembered for these three men: Michael Stephens, Verne Harris and Mike Eades, the referees who called 27 fouls in the second half, completely busted up the flow of the game and sent Meeks, Gonzaga’s 7-footers Przemek Karnowski and Zach Collins and a host of others to the bench in foul trouble.

 

The most bizarre sequence: With 8:02 left, Berry got called for a foul for (maybe) making contact with Karnowski and stripping the ball from the big man’s hands. But as Karnowski was flailing after the ball, he grabbed Berry around the neck and, after a long delay, got called for a flagrant foul of his own.

 

That resulted in four straight free throws, a 52-all tie and booing from every corner of the massive Phoenix University Stadium.

 

 
…

The NHL announced Monday that it will not participate in the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, refusing for the first time in 20 years to halt its season for three weeks so its stars can chase gold for their home countries.

From Alex Ovechkin and Jonathan Toews to Connor McDavid and Henrik Lundqvist, the world’s best players called playing in the Olympics important. The league decided otherwise.

Commissioner Gary Bettman and Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly informed the NHL Players’ Association that the matter was “officially closed” after weeks of speculation.

 

The NHLPA said in a statement that players are “extraordinarily disappointed and adamantly disagree with the NHL’s shortsighted decision.”

The NHL had allowed its players to participate in the past five Olympics dating to 1998, giving the Winter Games pro-level star power akin to the NBA players who participate in the Summer Olympics.

NHL wanted concessions

 

The league said no meaningful dialogue had emerged in talks with the NHLPA, International Olympic Committee and International Ice Hockey Federation.

 

Even after the IIHF had agreed to pay for players’ travel and insurance costs when the IOC refused, the NHL had been looking for more concessions that were believed to include marketing opportunities tied to the Games. The league wanted the matter resolved before the playoffs begin April 12.

 

 “The league’s efforts to blame others for its decision is as unfortunate as the decision itself,” the NHLPA said.

 

“NHL players are patriotic and they do not take this lightly. A decent respect for the opinions of the players matters. This is the NHL’s decision, and its alone.”

Babcock ‘disappointed’

Toronto Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock, who led Canada to consecutive Olympic gold medals in 2010 and 2014, told The Associated Press in a text message he was “disappointed.”

Players immediately blasted the decision. Montreal Canadiens goaltender Carey Price, in Sochi under Babcock, called it “very disappointing” and said it was short-changing younger players who hadn’t got to experience it before.

 

“Disappointing news, (the NHL) won’t be part of the Olympics 2018. A huge opportunity to market the game at the biggest stage is wasted,” tweeted Lundqvist, the New York Rangers goaltender who won the 2006 Olympic gold medal with Sweden.

 

“But most of all, disappointing for all the players that can’t be part of the most special adventure in sports.”

Attempting to grow sport internationally?

Former NHL forward Brandon Prust, who’s now playing in Germany, tweeted: “Way to ruin the sport of hockey even more Gary (hash)Olympics.”

“Good to see the NHL and Gary Bettman always looking out for the good of the game,” prominent agent Allan Walsh tweeted. “So much for that grand partnership with the players.”

The NHL and NHLPA teamed up on the return of the World Cup of Hockey last fall and had made strides on growing the sport internationally, including games in China and Sweden later this year.

 

The NHL has not ruled out participating in the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, though the IIHF and IOC had indicated that could be conditional on the NHL going to South Korea. For now, the league is making its 2017-18 schedule without a break for the Olympics.

 

“We have previously made clear that, while the overwhelming majority of our clubs are adamantly opposed to disrupting the 2017-18 NHL season for purposes of accommodating Olympic participation by some NHL players, we were open to hearing from any of the other parties who might have an interest in the issue,” the NHL said.

 

“Instead, the IOC has now expressed the position that the NHL’s participation in Beijing in 2022 is conditioned on our participation in South Korea in 2018. And the NHLPA has now publicly confirmed that it has no interest or intention of engaging in any discussion that might make Olympic participation more attractive to the clubs.”

The IOC and IIHF did not immediately respond to the NHL’s decision.

Time difference a concern

The league has cited the 13-hour difference from Pyeongchang to the Eastern time zone as one of its concerns. There was a 13-hour difference to Nagano in 1998, six to Turin in 2006 and nine to Sochi in 2014. Team owners have long complained that stopping the NHL season every four years wasn’t worth it and they have been wary of injuries to star players.

Still, many players expressed a strong desire to go, and Ovechkin has said he plans to go regardless of NHL participation.

“I think the players know it’s very important for us to represent our countries,” the Washington Capitals star said last month. “Everybody wants to go there.”

Will players be allowed to play?

The NHL has not decided whether to allow teams to make decisions on a case-by-case basis about players participating in the 2018 Olympics.

 

“If Alex Ovechkin and Braden Holtby and Nick Backstrom tell us, ‘We want to go play for our country,’ how am I going to say no?” Capitals owner Ted Leonsis said in February. “I might get fined, I might get punished in some way, but I feel I’m in partnership with Nick and Braden and Alex.”

It was not immediately clear how the United States, Canada and other countries will fill Olympic rosters, though national federations have already begun planning for this possibility. Hockey Canada said Monday that the NHL’s statement was not what it was hoping for but will not change Olympic preparation.

“We knew it was a very real possibility for many months and certainly respect the decision of the NHL,” USA Hockey executive director Dave Ogrean said.

 

“The good news is that because of our grassroots efforts over the course of many years, our player pool is as deep as it has ever been and we fully expect to field a team that will play for a medal.”

Olympic hockey offers ‘unique style of play’

NBC Sports, which televises both the Olympics and the NHL in the U.S., said it was “confident that hockey fans and Olympic viewers will tune in to watch the unique style of play that occurs at the Olympic Winter Games when athletes are competing for their country.”

Months ago, the league offered the NHLPA a deal allowing Olympic participation in exchange for a three-year extension of the collective bargaining agreement.

 

Players turned that down . Carolina Hurricanes defenseman Justin Faulk, who represented the United States in Sochi, said he didn’t think players should give up anything to go in 2018.

“We’re not going to give up something ridiculous,” Faulk said recently. “I’m sure they would take anything that’s ridiculous for the Olympics. It’s kind of like making a bad trade, and they would do it and we’re not going to do it.”
…

Exhibit at London’s Saatchi Gallery is showcasing the worldwide phenomenon.
…

In early September 1930, the Blackfeet Nation of Montana hosted a historic Indian Sign Language Grand Council, gathering leaders of a dozen North American Nations and language groups.

The three-day council held was organized by Hugh L. Scott, a 77-year-old U.S. Army General who had spent a good portion of his career in the American West, where he observed and learned what users called Hand Talk, and what is today more broadly known as Plains Indian Sign Language (PISL). With $5,000 in federal funding, Scott filmed the proceedings and hoped to produce a film dictionary of more than 1,300 signs. He died before he could finish the project. 

Scott’s films disappeared into the National Archives. Recently rediscovered, they are an important resource for those looking to revitalize PISL.

Among them is Ron Garritson, who identifies himself as being of Choctaw and European heritage. He was raised in Billings, Montana, near the Crow Nation.

“I learned how to speak Crow to a degree, and I was really interested in the sign language,” he said. “I saw it being used by the Elders, and I thought it was a beautiful form of communication.  And so I started asking questions.”

Garritson studied Scott’s films, along with works by other ethnographers and now has a vocabulary of about 1,700 signs. He conducts workshops and classes across Montana, in an effort to preserve and spread sign language and native history.

Lingua franca

Prior to contact with Europeans, North American Native peoples were not a unified culture, but hundreds of different cultures and tribes, each with its own political organization, belief system and language. When speakers of one language met those of another, whether in trade, councils or conflict, they communicated in the lingua franca of Hand Talk.  

Scholars dispute exactly when, in their 30,000-year history in North America, tribes developed sign language. It was observed among Florida tribes by 16th Century Spanish colonizers.

“Coronado, as he documented in his journals in 1540, was in Texas and met the Comanche,” said Garritson. “He documented that the Comanches made themselves so well-understood with the use of sign talk that there was almost no need for an interpreter. It was that easy to use and easy to understand.”

While each tribe had its own dialect, tribes were able to communicate easily.  Though universal in North America, Hand Talk was more prominent among the nomadic Plains Nations.

“There were fewer linguistic groups east of the Mississippi River,” said Garritson. “They were mostly woodland tribes, living in permanent villages and were familiar with each other’s languages.  They still used sign language to an extent, but not like it was used out here.”

Hand Talk was also the first language of deaf Natives.

Erasing a culture

By the late 1800s, tens of thousands of Native Americans still used Hand Talk.  That changed when the federal government instituted a policy designed to “civilize” tribal people.

 

Children were removed from their families and sent to government-run boarding schools, where they were forbidden to speak their own languages or practice their own spiritual beliefs. Native Deaf children were sent to deaf residential schools, where they were taught to use American Sign Language (ASL).  

Research has shown that Hand Talk is still being used by a small number of deaf and hearing descendants of the Plains Indian cultures.

“Hand Talk is endangered and dying quickly,” said Melanie McKay-Cody, who identifies herself as Cherokee Deaf and is an expert in anthropological linguistics. 

McKay-Cody is the first deaf researcher to specialize in North American Hand Talk and today works with tribes to help them preserve their signed languages. She is pushing for PISL to be incorporated into mainstream education of the deaf.

“Easier than hollering”

Lanny Real Bird, who is Crow, Arikara and Hidatsa, grew up in a household where PISL was used.

“My grandmother had hearing loss,” he said. “I’d see my father signing with her in the Plains Indian Sign Language.  I picked up basic sign language, enough to say, ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ ‘I’m hungry.”  

As a boy, he played with a young relative who was deaf, who helped expand his signing vocabulary.

Real Bird, a former instructor at Montana’s Little Big Horn College, has worked for 20 years helping tribes preserve their languages, both spoken and signed, and has developed a 400 to 600-sign PISL course, which he teaches at community schools and workshops across the Plains states.

“Right now we’re probably at the basic communications phase,” he said. “So in order to expand, we have to go to another level, from listening to understanding to rudimentary communicating to fluency and literacy.”

Real Bird said it took nearly a decade to convince school systems to incorporate PISL into general language instruction.  

“Later this month, students of the of the Crow Reservation’s Wyola Elementary School will be showcased at the annual Montana Indian Education Conference,” he said.

There, they will demonstrate their Crow language skills, both spoken and signed. 
…

American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan accepted his Nobel Prize in literature Saturday in Stockholm, members of the Swedish Academy and local media reported.

Dylan received his Nobel diploma and medal during a small ceremony at a hotel near where he performed later Saturday, Klas Ostergren, a member of the Swedish Academy, told The Associated Press.

Academy member Horace Engdahl simply answered “yes” when asked by Swedish public broadcaster SVT whether Dylan had accepted his award.

He performed a concert later Saturday but made no reference to the Nobel award. He plans a second concert Sunday.

‘New poetic expressions’

The academy cited Dylan “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition” in awarding him the 2016 Nobel. He was the first songwriter to be awarded the literature prize. Previous winners include authors Thomas Mann, Samuel Beckett, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Doris Lessing.

The American icon, 75, did not attend the Nobel Prize ceremony December 10, citing other commitments.

In a speech read on his behalf at December’s award ceremony, Dylan expressed his surprise at becoming a Nobel laureate.

“If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think that I’d have about the same odds as standing on the moon,” he said.
…

Acclaimed Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, whose work focused on war atrocities and denounced anti-Semitism and tyrannical dictators, has died. He was 84.

Ginny Hensley, a spokeswoman for Hillcrest Medical Center in Tulsa, confirmed Yevtushenko’s death. Roger Blais, provost at the University of Tulsa, where Yevtushenko was a longtime faculty member, said he was told Yevtushenko had died Saturday morning.

“He died a few minutes ago surrounded by relatives and close friends,” his widow, Maria Novikova, was quoted as saying by the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. She said he’d died peacefully in his sleep of heart failure.

Yevtushenko gained notoriety in the former Soviet Union while in his 20s, with poetry denouncing Josef Stalin. He gained international acclaim as a young revolutionary with “Babi Yar,” the unflinching 1961 poem that told of the slaughter of nearly 34,000 Jews by the Nazis and denounced the anti-Semitism that had spread throughout the Soviet Union.

Heard by huge crowds

At the height of his fame, Yevtushenko read his works in packed soccer stadiums and arenas, including to a crowd of 200,000 in 1991 that came to listen during a failed coup attempt in Russia. He also attracted large audiences on tours of the West.

With his tall, rangy body, chiseled visage and declaratory style, he was a compelling presence on stages when reading his works.

“He’s more like a rock star than some sort of bespectacled, quiet poet,” said former University of Tulsa President Robert Donaldson, who specialized in Soviet policy during his academic years at Harvard.

Until “Babi Yar” was published, the history of the massacre was shrouded in the fog of the Cold War.

“I don’t call it political poetry, I call it human rights poetry, the poetry which defends human conscience as the greatest spiritual value,” Yevtushenko, who had been splitting his time between Oklahoma and Moscow, said during a 2007 interview with The Associated Press at his home in Tulsa.

Yevtushenko said he wrote the poem after visiting the site of the mass killings in Kyiv, Ukraine, and searching for something memorializing what happened there — a sign, a tombstone, some kind of historical marker — but finding nothing.

“I was so shocked. I was absolutely shocked when I saw it, that people didn’t keep a memory about it,” he said.

It took him two hours to write the poem that begins, “No monument stands over Babi Yar. A drop sheer as a crude gravestone. I am afraid.”

Native of Zima

Yevtushenko was born in the Siberian town of Zima, a name that translates to winter. He rose to prominence during Nikita Khrushchev’s rule.

His poetry was outspoken and drew on the passion for poetry that is characteristic of Russia, where poetry is more widely revered than in the West. Some considered it risky, though others said he was only a showpiece dissident whose public views never went beyond the limits of what officials would permit.

Dissident exile poet Joseph Brodsky was especially critical, saying, “He throws stones only in directions that are officially sanctioned and approved.” Brodsky resigned from the American Academy of Arts and Letters when Yevtushenko was made an honorary member.

Donaldson invited Yevtushenko to teach at the university in 1992.

“I like very much the University of Tulsa,” Yevtushenko said in a 1995 interview with the AP. “My students are sons of ranchers, even cowboys, oil engineers. They are different people, but they are very gifted. They are closer to Mother Nature than the big city. They are more sensitive.”

He was also touched after the 1995 bombing of a federal government building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. He recalled one woman in his class who lost a relative in the blast, then commented that Russian women must have endured such suffering all their lives.

“This was the greatest compliment for me,” he said.

Blais, the university provost, said Yevtushenko remained an active professor at the time of his death. His poetry classes were perennially popular and featured football players and teenagers from small towns reading from the stage.

“He had a hard time giving bad grades to students because he liked the students so much,” Blais said.

Lauded in Russia

Yevtushenko’s death inspired tributes from his homeland.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on the Russian social media site Vkontakte: “He knew how to find the key to the souls of people, to find surprisingly accurate words that were in harmony with many.”

A spokesman for President Vladimir Putin said the poet’s legacy would remain “part of Russian culture.”

Natalia Solzhenitsyna, widow of the novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, said on Russian state television that Yevtushenko “lived by his own formula.”

“A poet in Russia is more than a poet,” she said. “And he really was more than a poet — he was a citizen with a pronounced civic position.”
…

Rodney Crowell’s tender lyrics about a woman with “hair two shades of foxtail red” in a song that features ex-wife Rosanne Cash makes it an easy leap to assume that he’s singing about her. It’s not like the thought didn’t cross her mind.

 

“If I’m totally honest,” she said. “Yeah, a little bit.”

 

But Crowell, whose new album “Close Ties” is sure to be one of the year’s cornerstone releases in the Americana genre, insists he had others in mind while writing “It Ain’t Over Yet.” He was thinking about old friends Susanna and Guy Clark, who both died in recent years.

 

That’s fortunate, since he sings: “Takes the right kind of woman to help you put it all in place. It only happened once in my life, but man you should have seen.” It might have made for awkward dinner conversation with Crowell’s current wife, Claudia Church.

 

“Rosanne was a wonderful period in my life,” Crowell said, “but the ‘one’ woman is the one I’m with now.”

 

Susanna Clark was a straight-talking muse for many aspiring Nashville songwriters in the 1970s who figured if she liked one of their songs, they must be on to something, Crowell explained.

 

Crowell understands why people might think he was talking about Cash, who appears on record with her for only the second time since their 12-year marriage broke up in 1992 (he sang backup on a song on her most recent album). They were once Country music’s First Couple, taking turns at the top of the charts, and for both their artistry has deepened as the spotlight moved on.

 

They’re both also of the school that appreciate listeners who can take their own meanings from songs.

 

Another song on “Close Ties,” out Friday, was actually written with Cash in mind. More specifically, “Forgive Me Annabelle” is about Crowell’s own actions during their breakup. After an inevitably bitter period, they’re friends now.

 

“I passed through a period where I simply did not like myself,” Crowell said. “If you don’t like yourself, you’re not liking anybody else. You’re pretty miserable. And that’s what the narrator is apologizing for. It’s saying, ‘Forgive me for who I was then.’ But, of course, I was already forgiven.”

 

Crowell recalls pawing through some albums at home and coming upon his own “Diamonds and Dirt” from 1988, which yielded five No. 1 Country singles. He and his wife laughed at the mullet-haired guy on the cover.

 

“I wanted to be like Dwight Yoakam,” he said. “He definitely owned ‘cool’ at that moment.”

 

He’s fueled by a “look back with bemusement” attitude now. After taking five years off at the turn of the century, Crowell returned as a focused writer, digging deep into his heart and leaving few wasted words. He learned to take his art more seriously than himself. In “I Don’t Care Anymore” he sings: “All those party dolls and favors that I savored from day one add up to next to nothing after all is said and done.”

 

The funny “Nashville 1972” recalls his first meeting, at age 22, with Willie Nelson. At a party, of course. “There was hippies and reefer and God knows what all, I was drinking pretty hard,” he sings. “I played him this shitty song I wrote and puked out in the yard.”

 

Like most people his age, 66, Crowell is affected by loved ones lost — the Clarks, Townes Van Zandt, Leonard Cohen — and it’s reflected in his music. He’s also recently rewritten some of his old songs, notably “Shame on the Moon,” a 1982 hit for Bob Seger, where he wanted another crack at a verse he didn’t like.

 

“He’s actually writing the best songs of his life after 45 years, or however long it is,” Cash said. “His level of commitment has deepened, and as his level of commitment has deepened, his songs have gotten better. That’s very inspiring. He’s not a dilettante. He’s not just out there showing up at the next gig. He’s completely devoted to his work and his songwriting and it shows.

 

“As Leonard Cohen said, he’s completely employed in the tower of song.”
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