Month: October 2017

Looking down from a small, five-seater airplane, Mikah Meyer felt lucky to be getting such a spectacular — and unique — perspective of some of America’s most beautiful and historic land and waterscapes.

Desert beauty

The national parks traveler was flying over and around Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, a unit of the National Park Service that stretches for hundreds of kilometers from the southwestern state of Arizona to southern Utah.

Mikah described the flight, courtesy of the tour company American Aviation, as “an amazing flyover where we got this bird’s-eye view of everything I was about to experience over the next few days.”

The park borders Navajo Indian territory. After the Cherokee, Navajos are the second-largest federally recognized Native American tribe in the United States, with more than 300,000 enrolled tribal members. And, Mikah noted, “as far as land square mileage goes, the Navajo Nation reservation is the largest.”

The “intimate Grand Canyon”

The area Mikah explored includes many sites that are sacred to the Navajos.

One of them – Horseshoe Bend, on the Colorado River –  is about eight kilometers from Grand Canyon National Park. It is named for the horseshoe-shaped area of the river, which winds around ancient sandstone canyons.

“It’s an incredible image,” Mikah said, where visitors can “stand right on the edge and see the entire horseshoe shape.”

Man-made wonders

Flying over Glen Canyon Dam, Mikah had a great view of both the Colorado River and behind it, Lake Powell, the largest man-made lake in North America.

Then it was on to an almost three-hour boat ride around the lake, where the gleaming water appeared against a backdrop of eroded red rock canyons and mesas as he and his tour group wound their way through the narrow waterways leading to the lake.

“You go into these super thin canyons where our large boat barely fit through,” he explained.

“What makes it so incredible is that there really aren’t any trees or anything around it. It was desert rock that was filled with water,” Mikah said. “And so you have this amazing stark contrast between this pure blue, and then these white, orange and red rocks right up against the water, for thousands of miles of shoreline…so the juxtaposition of colors is really incredible.”

Stone rainbow

The boat also gave him access to another important Native American site… Rainbow Bridge National Monument, which is administered by the National Park Service.

Known as one of the world’s largest known natural bridges — its thinnest point at the top is still 13 meters thick — the park service describes it as “a rainbow turned into stone.”

The span has undoubtedly inspired people throughout time — from the neighboring American Indian tribes who consider Rainbow Bridge sacred, to the 85,000 people from around the world who visit it each year.

“Native Americans believe it’s a portal to another world,” Mikah explained. So much so that no one is supposed to walk under or near the ancient structure.

Mikah related a story he read in the park’s brochure that described how former President Theodore Roosevelt, during an expedition with Navajo guides in 1913, “went under the bridge and the guides went around, and he realized he shouldn’t have gone underneath it.”

Maintaining a safe distance during his own visit to the site, Mikah said he felt honored to have had the chance to see it in person.

“We often forget that America is a country of rich, diverse religious traditions and so getting to hear the stories of these numerous Native American tribes that I encounter across the country is really fascinating,” he said.

Airborne attraction

After his Rainbow Bridge experience, Mikah took to the air again, this time in a helicopter. Thanks to Grand Canyon Helicopters, he was able to enjoy a close-up view of Tower Butte – an ancient structure which rises more than 300 meters above Lake Powell — another grand structure sacred to the Navajos.

“Tower Butte is named because it’s a very tall piece of rock that sticks out of kind of nothing,” Mikah explained. “It was something I’d seen from the water earlier in the day, you can see it from the airport, you can see it from the town; it’s a very striking feature from the city.”

But the “coolest” experience, he said, was landing on Tower Butte. “I felt much like a bird or Superman must feel because we were flying just a few hundred feet above things.”

“Apparently there had been two expeditions to try to climb it,” Mikah recounted, “and I think one was unsuccessful and one of them was successful but it was very tedious — so basically helicopter is the way.”

Spiritual cathedral

Not to be missed during his time in Arizona was another natural gem on the Navajo Reservation — Upper Antelope Canyon… which Mikah got to by foot.

Named for the herds of prong-horn antelope that once roamed the area, the ancient sandstone cavern isn’t a National Park Service site, but hundreds of thousands come to marvel at its sheer beauty each year.

Waterfalls of sand

“Upper Antelope Canyon was one of the most stunning canyons I’ve seen on this entire journey,” Mikah said. “The waves of water that must have worked their way through here to make these intricate shapes really is like nothing I’ve seen anywhere else in the country… so the fact that I got to experience it and see this raw, incredible beauty up close with my own eyes was a stunning experience.”

Indeed, Mikah, who’s on a mission to visit all 417 national parks in the U.S., shared that walking in the footsteps of Native Americans in so many areas of the desert landscape, was powerful.

“It was a privilege to be able to experience these sacred Native American sites and I’m thankful that the National Park Service preserves them in a way that allows myself and so many people to experience them.”

Mikah invites you to follow him on his epic journey by visiting him on his website MikahMeyer.com, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

 
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The U.S. National Park Service helps preserve and protect some of America’s most beautiful and historic land and waterscapes for all to enjoy and learn from, including many sacred Native American spaces. National parks traveler Mikah Meyer got a chance to explore some of those sites — from a variety of perspectives – during a trip to Utah and Arizona. He shared highlights with VOA’s Julie Taboh.
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A play parodying the lengths some Cubans will go to in order to earn a few tourist dollars set against the backdrop of socially critical graffiti is adding punch to Havana’s annual theater festival.

The first-time collaboration between veteran theater director Nelda Castillo, 64, and street artist Yulier Rodriguez, 27, underscores unease among some Cubans with the recent influx of tourists on the cash-strapped, Communist-run island.

The interdisciplinary spectacle, “¡Guan melÃn!, ¡tu melÃn!,” is also an example of the innovative ways Cubans are pushing the boundaries of critical expression.

Rodriguez’s eerie murals of creatures that look malnourished and malformed had become ubiquitous throughout Havana over the last three years, reflecting his view of the dark path upon which society was.

But the artist said authorities detained him for two days in August and ordered him to stop painting in public spaces.

Graffiti is seen as vandalism in many countries, although Rodriguez suspects authorities stopped him more because they did not like the content of his work.

“Now I am limited in what I can do in the streets, any space where I can exhibit my work becomes a space of resistance for me,” said Rodriguez.

Castillo, who often collaborates with visual artists, said she invited Rodriguez to paint the walls of the renowned El Ciervo Encantado theater because she knew his graffiti would enrich her play.

“The piece is about the Cubans’ struggle in the street in the context of the new relations with the United States and the influx of American visitors,” she said. “His work is also about that struggle in the street.”

In the play that was first staged last year, a skinny and squat comic duo attempt frantically to entertain tourists arriving on cruise ships with Cuban tunes and to sell them outsized cigars and paper cones of peanuts.

A student with a manic fake smile, rudimentary English and a hypersexualized walk sells chocolate and offers salsa lessons, city tours and cabaret acts “as way to make ends meet.”

In a beleaguered economy which shrank last year and where the average state salary is $30 a month, the tourist sector is a relative gold mine.

Castillo said Rodriguez’s graffiti – eerie, scared and hungry-looking creatures with four eyes, two gaping mouths or a crown of skulls – was like another protagonist in the play.

“Dialogue is always enriching as long as it is coherent,” said Castillo.

The two kept quiet about their collaboration until the day it opened to the public, at the start of the theater festival that runs from Oct. 20-29.

“Fingers crossed no one from up top orders the graffiti to be erased,” said Rodriguez.
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For almost 15 years, environmental activist Patterson Clark has been one of the U.S. National Park Service volunteers who go through forests and remove invasive plants. Because he knew how destructive these plants can be, killing their native host trees, increasing soil erosion, and causing major damage to streams and other wetland areas, Clark had already developed an antagonistic relationship with them.

“One day, when I was pulling a plant, I thought, how can I change my relationship with this plant so it’s not just eradication, taking something’s life?,” he wondered. “Since then, I’ve been harvesting plants, rather than just killing them. Some people who volunteer to pull weeds are called warriors. I don’t consider myself a warrior, I’m more of a gatherer.”

The artist, graphic editor and self-described “weed gatherer” now gives these plants a new life.

“When I first work with a plant, I call that prospecting,” he said. “I’ll sit with the plant, study its nature, cut it, bring it back into the studio, and then start running tests on it to see if it’s good for pigment [or] paper [or] other kinds of fiber.”

White mulberry produces paper

Over the years, Clark has developed a fondness for some of the weeds, like white mulberry.

“It offers paper, the strongest, whitest paper, pretty good lumber, fuel, [and] ash from that fuel is used to create a chemical used to break down the inner bark to make paper,” he says.

That’s a multistep process that takes long hours of work, and a lot of patience. Clark estimates it takes 20 minutes to cut down the plant, 30 minutes to steam it, five minutes to strip the bark, three hours to scrape it, an hour to cook it, 20 minutes to wash it and another hour to beat it. Then, he molds the sheet and lets it dry overnight. He’s rewarded with a stack of unique papers that have become art.

Bushes offer colors

Clark extracts the inks he uses in his paintings and prints from a variety of invasive vines and bushes.

“I take some ivy leaves and put them in ethanol,” he explains. “That’s how we get the green ink. Multiflora rose, the stems give us red ink. Bush honeysuckle, the inner bark provides an aqua color. And the leatherleaf mahonia, the inner bark of that, put it in ethanol, creates a fluorescent yellow color.”

Each print Clark creates includes all the plants he’s collected.

“I also include the landscape where these plants came from,” he says. “Sometimes I will include a volunteer pulling plants, or a tool used to process the plants, but all of these are part of the design.”

Creating art

Clark uses a computer to create his designs.

“I still use digital techniques in this work to expedite the process. Any tool or device that allows me to consume more weeds is good in my book,” he says. “The more weeds I consume, the more space I create for the return of native plants and native animals. So, it’s an environmental practice.”

He cuts his design into a block of wood by laser. Then, he applies his plant-based ink onto the block and presses it onto the handmade paper, repeating the process for each color.

Clark also makes frames for his prints from foraged plants, which attracts a lot of attention and admiration when he shows them in art exhibits.

“I do appreciate the compliments,” he admits, “but one thing I have heard some concern about is the archival quality of these prints. Some of the pigments that I use will last for a long time. Some of the brighter colors, however, if put in really bright light, will eventually fade a little bit. So, I encourage people who buy a print to put it in low light or keep it in a folio. That’s how I’d like these things to be treated.”

With his artistic treatment of invasive species, Patterson Clark is turning them into something that is actually valued.

 
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When the propaganda film, “The Founding of an Army,” hit theaters in China recently, the reaction wasn’t quite what the ruling Communist Party might have hoped for.

Instead of inspiring an outpouring of nationalism and self-sacrifice for the state, it was roundly mocked for trying to lure a younger audience by casting teen idols as revolutionary party leaders.

Viewers more used to seeing the idols play love interests in light-hearted soap operas responded to the film by projecting “modern-day romantic narratives on the founding fathers of the nation,” said Hung Huang, a well-known social commentator based in Beijing. “It was hilarious.”

Limiting Western influence

While China’s resurgent Communist Party once pushed its policies on an unquestioning public, it now struggles to compete for attention with the country’s booming entertainment industry and the celebrity culture it has spawned.

“Chinese people are increasingly ignoring party propaganda and are much more interested in movie stars, who represent a new lifestyle and more exciting aspirations,” said Willy Lam, an expert on Chinese politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

President Xi Jinping, who will cement his authority with his expected endorsement to a second five-year term at this week’s national party congress, has placed a priority on stamping out too much Western influence in Chinese society in part so the party can dictate the values the youth should embrace.

Authorities have responded by taking aim at everything from gossip websites to soap opera story lines to celebrity salaries. Instead of selfish, rich stars, the state is promoting performers who are all about patriotism, purity and other values that support the party’s legitimacy.

​Party values vs. youth interests

The results have at best been mixed and at worst ham-fisted and out of touch.

One problem is that the party’s values often clash with what young Chinese want to watch, according to Hung. Among the more popular shows watched by Chinese youth are those that center on palace intrigue, martial arts fantasies, high school romances or single, independent women.

“While the government could once dictate to young people what they should value and how they should lead their lives, they find themselves completely without the tools to do that now,” she said.

In the 1970s, the state was able to promote people seen as paragons of youthful devotion and selflessness, but Hung said that no longer works because young Chinese — like their counterparts in the West — now prefer to follow celebrity gossip and have the tools with which to do so.

Just this month, teen idol Lu Han, also known as China’s Justin Bieber, announced he had a girlfriend, triggering a flood of shares, responses and 4 million “likes” within a few hours that briefly crashed the country’s popular Weibo microblog service.

A recent commentary in The Global Times, a party newspaper with a nationalistic stance, railed against such celebrity worship, saying China had now surpassed the West in that regard.

That was likely a reason the government-backed China Alliance of Radio, Film and Television moved last month to cap the pay of actors, whose salaries had hit historic highs as young Chinese and a burgeoning middle class increasingly spend on movie tickets and goods.

​Gossip sites closed

In another move earlier this year, authorities closed 60 popular celebrity gossip and social media accounts and called on internet giants such as Tencent and Baidu to “actively propagate core socialist values, and create an ever-healthier environment for the mainstream public opinion.”

The tension between popular culture and state propaganda isn’t new in China. In the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping’s lieutenants railed against spiritual pollution. But it has gained new traction since Xi came to power in 2012 and officials began a wide-ranging crackdown on perceived societal ills from corruption to dissent to — now — entertainment.

“Xi Jinping has been advocating a revision to traditional, Confucian moral standards,” Lam said. “The definition of what is vulgar or morally problematic has been inflated and expanded so that it has become all-encompassing.”

Shows about the pursuit of great wealth and luxury that used to be tolerated under Xi’s predecessor, aren’t anymore.

The government has demanded that broadcasters “resist celebrity worship” and limit the air time dedicated to film and TV stars.

“The party does not want these entertainment programs to compete with news programs and ‘morality shows,’” said Jian Xu, a Chinese media research fellow at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia.

The government has also tried to shape some celebrities into party-sanctioned role models.

Thanks to their wholesome image and uplifting, patriotic lyrics, the TFboys, China’s first home-grown boy band, have risen to fame because of “political opportunities” they’ve been given, Xu said. The band is pursued by adoring fans and has performed twice on the coveted Lunar New Year gala hosted by state broadcaster China Central Television; it has also been promoted by the Communist Youth League.

Stars deviating from the party’s image of purity and moral acceptability, however, have been punished. In a high-profile drug crackdown in 2014, authorities publicly chastised a succession of celebrities caught using drugs, including Jackie Chan’s son, Jaycee Chan, and singer Li Daimo, forcing them to apologize on state television.
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