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orbemnews · 4 years

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St. Louis-area nursing homes find creative ways to keep residents engaged amid pandemic Activity Director Kristi Gard, wearing a poodle skirt for “40s Day,” walks resident Helen Werling back to her room after a small group gathered for a candy trivia game on Wednesday at Oak Hill in Waterloo. “We have a lot of costumes from themed days. Tomorrow we are dressing as snowmen,” Gard said. A snowman sits outside on the window sill of resident Penny Chart’s room on Wednesday at Oak Hill in Waterloo. An aide built Chart a snowman and even brought her a snowball to hold inside since Chart was lamenting she could not play in the snow. A resident of Bethesda Southgate throws a ring at a football goal post during a football party the staff threw for them. The Moolah Shriners Band prepares to entertain the residents of the Sarah Community nursing home in its Naomi House Courtyard in the fall. Every year, the Sarah Community, a nursing home in Bridgeton, hosts its own Oktoberfest. The event usually lasts for five or six hours, with live music, carnival games, a Kona ice truck and loads of barbecue. Despite COVID, recreation director Kelly Potter wanted to make it happen again this fall for the residents. As in normal years, they brought in performers. They laid out food. They even set up a beanbag toss and a makeshift bowling lane. There were a few differences, of course — everyone wore a mask and staff workers wiped down the bean bags between each game — but Potter said it was the “closest to normal we’ve had in a while.” Throughout the pandemic, nursing homes have scrambled to create a sense of normalcy in a non-normal situation. As of Jan. 17, nursing home residents have accounted for nearly 52% of deaths in Missouri, despite representing just 4.5% of the total COVID cases. The risk forced most nursing homes to lock their doors to outsiders early on, and confined many residents to their own facilities, and sometimes, their own rooms. So activity staffers are trying to think outside of the box to keep residents entertained. They’re holding happy hour on roving carts instead of the dining room. They’re bringing musical performers to the window instead of the multipurpose room. And they’re interrupting bean bag competitions with a little sanitization. Bill Cowell spins the roulette wheel for a candy prize with the help of activity aides Wendy Juenger and Becky Hueslman on Wednesday outside his room at Oak Hill in Waterloo. “It’s always great when they came around,” Cowell said. Laurie Skrivan, Post-Dispatch The hope, said Tara Powell, the activity director at Bethesda Southgate in Oakville, is that residents “still feel like they have some kind of a purpose, and they still have life happening around them. … We want them to feel like life and fun is still happening, no matter what’s going on.” The activities At the Sarah Community, staff members begin each day with one-on-ones, going room-to-room, reading books with residents, talking with residents and even giving out manicures. At 9:30 a.m., they broadcast exercise class. At 10:30 a.m., they hold rosary and mass. At 2 p.m., they play a movie. Each week, residents receive activity packets stuffed with crossword puzzles, brain teasers, word searches and coloring sheets to fill their free time. Virginia Clarke participates in art class at the Sarah Community. Jean Mills Like many long-term care facilities, Bethesda Southgate has supplemented these everyday activities with special events, ranging from a hippie dress-up day to an indoor light tour to food truck visits. Recently, they organized a “trip” to “Nashville,” where the staff dressed in western attire and pushed a Nashville-themed cart down the hallways. Some of these activities have moved to online. Vanessa Woods, the owner and founder at Vitality in Motion, teaches dance classes, like ballet and Broadway-style choreography, to seniors on a screen. Woods said dance not only allows residents to work on their balance and strength, it provides a mental “escape” from the pandemic. But some mainstays remain. “Oh they wanted their bingo,” said Kristi Gard, the activity director at Oak Hill in Waterloo. “You can’t have my snowball,” resident Penny Chart jokes to Activity Director Kristi Gard, who was bringing root beer floats to residents at Oak Hill in Waterloo. An aide built Chart a snowman outside her window and brought her the snowball because Chart was lamenting she could not play in the snow. Laurie Skrivan, Post-Dispatch The size, the location, the makeup of the long-term care facility — it doesn’t matter. Bingo is a staple, regardless of the pandemic. Most senior living facilities have shifted to “hallway bingo,” with residents playing from their doors. But this wide variety of events isn’t possible for many nursing facilities, said Marjorie Moore, executive director at VOYCE, a St. Louis-based nonprofit advocacy organization for long-term care communities. In actuality, most nursing homes are understaffed — 36.9% of Missouri nursing homes at one point during the summer, according to an analysis by AARP — a problem that has only been exacerbated by the pandemic. At Clinton Manor Living Center in New Baden, for example, they’ve had to move multiple activity assistants back to their original jobs in nursing. “Unfortunately, in a lot of cases,” Moore said, “a lot of the creative things that family members may want to do, or nursing home staff want to do, get kicked to the curb because staffing in nursing homes is so low.” Throughout the pandemic, this has often left residents cooped up in their rooms, sometimes with up to three other roommates, and sometimes without a whole activity plan. “We’ve seen a lot of depression,” Moore said. “We’ve seen a lot of people, who went into long-term care with mild dementia get much worse because they’re not getting the sort of social interaction that they need to be able to maintain their health. … It seems like a lot of facilities are really trying. But under a lot of the current conditions, it’s really hard.” Staying connected Nursing homes have found that the best way to combat loneliness isn’t a fancy party or a special dress-up day. It’s pretty simple: Residents want to be connected with their loved ones. A resident of the Clinton Manor listens to a virtual Christmas concert in her room on the tablet. Courtesy Clinton Manor “I think the biggest missing factor, no matter what we did to try to improve quality of life and promote activities, was family,” said Dr. Angela Sanford, an associate professor of geriatric medicine at St. Louis University and the certified medical director at a nursing home, NHC HealthCare Maryland Heights. Before the pandemic, Teva Shirley of Glen Carbon visited her mother at Clinton Manor five to six days per week. Now, she mostly speaks to her mother through FaceTime calls, greetings at the window and the occasional face-to-face visit — when permitted. At Oak Hill, staffers have designed their own indoor visiting area, with plexiglass separating the residents and family members. Marilyn Kilby, 84, is one of the residents who has used the visitation area. One year ago, Kilby, moved from Carbondale to the Oak Hill nursing home so that she could be closer to her daughter. But when the pandemic hit, she had been there for just a few months. She doesn’t know many people in the facility and, for a while, she couldn’t visit with her daughter. Her glasses aren’t working and she can’t get them fixed. Naturally, she has started to feel “lonesome.” That is, until Christmas Eve rolled around and her daughter made a reservation to visit. From across the plexiglass, they talked for 20 minutes. “It was really wonderful,” Kilby said. “It was almost like being with your family.” As COVID cases have continued to rise in the area, regulations have continued to change, making face-to-face visits tricky and sporadic. “A lot of people that don’t work in a nursing home or health care like this, they don’t understand the rules that change on a daily basis,” Potter said. “It’s hard to deal with. Because we don’t obviously want the residents to have to be in their room so much. We would love for them to be able to interact and get out more and things like that. But we can’t — we have rules that we have to follow that, like I said, change daily.” Mike Schmidt visits her mother, Oak Hill resident Dorothy Merchant last fall during a community prayer vigil in front of the facility. Courtesy Oak Hill Nursing homes have seen the negative effects of lessened social interaction in one specific area: Food consumption. Without dining halls full of residents, residents have stopped eating as much. Sanford, who is still finalizing her study results, has found that isolation has caused more weight loss than contracting the virus. “It just isn’t the same when you’re by yourself in a room eating off of a TV tray and Styrofoam plates,” she said. The Oak Hill staff has tried to mitigate the weight loss by creating events like “12 days of ice cream,” where residents receive a different flavor of ice cream each day, from “plain old chocolate” to cinnamon crumb cake. Flashing back with music Most mornings, recreation director Kelly Potter returns to work at the Sarah Community with a voicemail full of movie reviews from the residents. She has found one constant: “Basically anything that has a little bit of music in it is always popular.” Especially during COVID, music has become a source of comfort. A source of remembrance. A chance to mentally break away from the pandemic. Staffers at the Clinton Manor Living Center entertain residents with Christmas carols in December. Courtesy Clinton Manor Living “Music is really deeply tied to memory,” Moore said, “…even before the pandemic music is something that’s constantly brought up as a great activity because it gets people feeling good. … Usually it will bring back good memories of when folks were younger, when they were in their prime.” Some nursing homes have set up courtyard concerts. During the summer, McKnight Place in St. Louis had musicians going window-to-window giving out performances. Clinton Manor has passed around tablets for residents to watch virtual concerts. When asked about some of the ways she has gotten through isolation, Kilby instantly brought up the Christmas carols that the Oak Hill staff played over the PA system. It was something small, taking place for just a few days and 15 minutes at a time. But, weeks later, Kilby is still talking about the carols. “It was, well, it just raised my spirits. And I think it put us in a mood for a good lunch. … It added so much to get to hear those familiar tunes.” Nursing homes have tried to include residents in the musical experience as well. Oak Hill, for instance, has a music therapist that travels among rooms. During residents’ sessions with the therapist, they can sing, dance and even bang on the tambourine. Activity Director Kristi Gard plays waitress behind a diner cart she made to distribute root beers during 40s day at Oak Hill in Waterloo. Laurie Skrivan, Post-Dispatch “Just the act of singing, you take deep breaths and it helps people with respiratory issues,” said Brian Koontz, the administrator at Oak Hill. “Folks who may be battling pneumonia, it helps to expand the lungs to be able to take a breath and sing. There are a lot of physical benefits with that. And then there are a lot of emotional benefits to having a trained music therapist, being able to lift spirits and help people find their joy. A lot of times they’re actually doing respiratory therapy through the music and don’t even know it.” Looking ahead On Dec. 28, long-term care facilities in Missouri received more than 120,000 vaccinations. During the first week of January, Oak Hill residents received their first dosage of vaccinations, with the next batch coming three weeks later. Koontz says he doesn’t know what the guidelines will look like in a month. In the meantime, they’ll continue the socially distanced and masked events until they know for certain that it is safe to gather again. Moore and Chien Hung, program director of the Ombudsman Program at VOYCE, are quick to point out that the problems exemplified during the pandemic — the depression, the isolation, the understaffing — aren’t going anywhere. Even before the pandemic, Moore said, “the loneliness and isolation epidemic in long-term care, and really most all of our elderly, was not something that was new.” Hung added: “It’s not that when residents get vaccines then — done, this isolation is gone, lockdown gone and people start to live their wonderful lives. No, things are never that fabulous. So, I think we have to look at this isolation in a kind of broader kind of context. And that is, that to live in a nursing home itself, with or without COVID, that is actually isolation.” “I had gray poodle skirt in high school. I was a cheerleader,” said Loretta Castens, who admires her new hair ribbon for 40s day on Wednesday at Oak Hill in Waterloo. Photo by Laurie Skrivan, [email protected] But Sanford has seen something different come out of the pandemic. “I think there’s a message of hope and resilience,” said Sanford, “that the nursing home communities banded together and really worked as teams, without resources and with the public being so negative about what was happening behind the walls of the nursing home. Every day, we showed up to take care of patients, and tried to think outside the box and how we could best achieve those with very limited resources.” “We want them to feel like life and fun is still happening, no matter what’s going on.” Tara Powell, the activity director at Bethesda Southgate in Oakville Quote “We’ve seen a lot of depression. We’ve seen a lot of people, who went into long-term care with mild dementia get much worse because they’re not getting the sort of social interaction that they need to be able to maintain their health. … It seems like a lot of facilities are really trying. But under a lot of the current conditions, it’s really hard.” Marjorie Moore, executive director at VOYCE Quote You’re not alone in your parenting struggles. Subscribe for unlimited access to the Post-Dispatch for less than the cost of getting a sitter on a Friday night. Subscribe today: Just $1 a month Get local news delivered to your inbox! Source link Orbem News #benjaminsimon #creative #engaged #Find #full-longform #homes #immunology #kellypotter #local-places #Louisarea #Medicine #nursing #oakhill #Pandemic #physiology #resident #residents #tarapowell #thesarahcommunity #ways #Work

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mybookplacenet · 5 years

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Featured Artist Interview: Wendy K Gray

Tell us about yourself and your art.: Hi, I'm Wendy K Gray, Voice Over Actor and Creator of Sidewalk Stories! A series of self-published problem-solving books, coloring books, audio books, APPS and songs for kids! Sing the "Stop Think Act" song with Bethany Butterfly and problem-solve at the Magical ACB Sidewalk! Which Sidewalk path will they choose, Option A, B or C? As a professional voice over actor of twenty years I voiced all my audio books, write and sing all the songs and even make all videos on youtube. I don't draw, at least not well. This, I leave to the brilliant, Kate Shannon. I love coloring which is why we made ALL the stories into coloring books. Yes! The exact story book made into a coloring book. What inspired you and your art style? Creating Sidewalk Stories began from the Sidewalk Stories Theme Song I wrote while out walking in the Los Angeles neighborhood I lived in. I sat down on the sidewalk and watched an entire world going on around me. By the time I got home, I was racing into the recording booth to lay down the Theme Song. The characters and stories developed from there and are simply little pieces of me... all from a song I wrote. When searching for a children's illustrator I discovered Kate Shannon on the internet. I saw a drawing of a Moon, in a row boat, smiling, on the water. I knew she was the one for Sidewalk Stories! Do you have any unusual drawing habits? I drew the original sketch I sent to Kate in Ireland. It's embarrassing but she got the idea of the habitat I wanted to create. She is such a pro. I can't believe how fast she is and how expressive she has made the Sidewalk Stories cast. You can follow the entire story in each coloring book, without the words, because of Kates Shannons drawings. What artists have influenced you? I will forever be a fan of Jim Henson, The Muppets, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock and Peyo (the pen name of Pierre Culliford) who created The Smurfs. But also Seth MacFarlane who stepped in eleven years ago to help me get some meetings and pitch Sidewalk Stories as an animated series, which is still my ultimate goal. I think it's wonderful that Adult Coloring has become so popular. My first one was gift, Darice Garden Flowers Do you have any advice for new artists? Practice and be prepared. The best thing we can all do for ourselves is to be ready when opportunity comes knocking. If you love what you do, keep doing it. I get tired sometimes. In fact, eleven years ago I quit working on Sidewalk Stories. It sat on my shelf until 2017 when I was interviewed on Ryan Drean's Podcast about my success as a voice over actor. I didn't know what to talk about, since I am rather private. I wondered, what makes WKG interesting? I talked about Sidewalk Stories and my wild adventures of trying to get the show idea made. Reminiscing about my big dreams of sharing Sidewalk Stories with the world I realized I had lost hope, the death of a dream. I had quit! Now, I am going to finish what I started eleven years ago. Even if I have to pay for it myself. And when Netflix is ready to talk... I will be ready! What do you think makes a good illustrator/designer? For me, as my story is a little different than the other artists on this site, it's being able to understand and envision the story, the brand, the idea. For example, when I send Kate the story I try to be descriptive in my words of what action is taking place but she can see beyond the page of words. Like I said, you can follow the story through her illustrations without the "story" actually being there. That... is a great illustrator! Practice and willingness to try new things has made her even more amazing to work with. What is the best advice you have ever heard? I couldn't wait for success so I went ahead without it. A tidbit from Mary Tyler Moore. What are you reading now? Jodi Picoult - Songs of the Humpback Whale. What's your biggest weakness? Tough one....I should probably take my own advice from Sidewalk Stories and sing the "Stop Think Act" song before I make decisions, approve material, purchases, ect and slow down! What is your favorite book of all time? A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle but a very close second is, Phantom Toll Booth by Norton Juste. How well do you work under pressure? I put a lot of pressure on myself. But when it comes to Sidewalk Stories, I enjoy it! I have been told that I am resilient. When something I try doesn't work out I quickly assess and then move on to the next idea. Don't get my wrong, self-publishing is a ton of work and when it's your own money there is even more pressure to be successful. But worrying about things never helped anyone get anywhere. So I take a break to rejuvenate and gather my energy and hope and I just put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Why did you become a graphic designer/illustrator? Let's change this question to.... Why did you create Sidewalk Stories? This answer is probably they same for any creative person, because I had to. What are you working on now? Just finished loading the first interactive-storybook APP onto google. Next up is the digital coloring book and audio book combined for iBooks and Google APPS. Right now, I am working on the final book in the Sidewalk Stories series. In this adventure, the cheerful and dedicated problem-solver, Bethany Butterfly, decides that retiring from trying to fly is how she will solve her problem of not being able to fly. She quits. Kate Shannon will draw her hanging up her wings, in a new career, and talking with the universe about quitting. What is your method for promoting your work? This is the most difficult part of self-publishing. Not going the traditional route of getting an agent and publisher, I book my own events like Farmers Markets, Art Events, Schools, Libraries ect. I have also done ads on Google, Facebook and Amazon. Sidewalk Stories is about solving problems. Getting it made and getting it out there has been my problem to solve. What has been your most successful graphic design project? Why? "The Lemonade Landing Mat" has the most reviews. Since I see the sales of my books on Amazon I can tell you "How Otis Oaktree Opened His Eyes" is very popular. "Meet Moby Mutt" is right behind. I submitted "Today Is The Day" to Kirkus Reviews so we will see what they have to say. If I had to pick one book I like the best of Kates drawings it would the Otis book. With an Octopus, a Preying Mantis, Mother Nature, and the 1982 hailstorm...it's extraordinary! What's next for you as an artist? It's difficult for me to wait and see what happens with Sidewalk Stories because I am eager for the world to love it! We have two more stories to complete the series, one problem-solving story and a Christmas Sidewalk Stories Starter book for beginner readers. Both will have coloring books, of course! Kate is building the interactive animated "Meet Moby Mutt" for iBooks/Google apps. And has also put out her book and coloring book The Harvest Moon Takes A Dip, the story of the Moon in a boat that caught my eye eleven years ago! I'm continuing to write and voice the stories and music and push forward. Like Mary Tyler Moore said, "I could'n't wait for success so I went ahead without it!" Artist Websites and Profiles Wendy K Gray Website Wendy K Gray Amazon Profile Wendy K Gray's Social Media Links Facebook Profile Twitter Account Instagram Account YouTube Account Read the full article

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decimatlas · 2 years

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❝ great, he gets carsick. ❞ ( wendy! )

❛ How was I supposed to know cats can get carsick? ❜ Wendy turns to Steve and asks the question through tears. She doesn’t entirely know if her tears are from amusement or distress, but what she does know is that this cat just threw up all over her lap in Steve’s car. After finding the sickly stray cat in her yard and calling the first person to come to mind ( Steve, of course ) – the icing on the cake was getting vomited on. ❛ Open the window. Rodan needs some air. ❜

#interaction: wendy moore.#sluggrr #what a nightmare

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biofunmy · 5 years

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Over 40 Art Shows to See Right Now

Below and Above Canal Street

“The art world should be understood as a complex ecology with many microclimates and some macro ones,” said the curator Okwui Enwezor, who died in March. He could have been describing the geography of New York City galleries. In the 1970s, the climates were macro and few (the Upper East Side, SoHo). In the 1980s, they were joined by the East Village; in the 1990s, by Chelsea; and in the 2000s, by the Lower East Side and Brooklyn. And there are spillovers everywhere. Today, it can be hard to tag a gallery by district, as I learned when visiting a handful that straddle either side of Canal Street, a cross-island axis that runs from SoHo to Chinatown, without claiming full allegiance to either. HOLLAND COTTER

1. 56 Henry, ‘LaKela Brown: Surface Possessions’

This small storefront gallery, in Chinatown, is a distance from Canal Street, but well worth a walk for the local debut of the artist LaKela Brown. The look of her mostly white plaster reliefs is austere. The subject, ornamental bling associated with 1990s hip-hop, is the opposite: door-knocker earrings, rope neck chains and gold teeth. All are artifacts of the pop culture Ms. Brown grew up with in Detroit, her home city. Although the show’s title, “Surface Possessions,” hints at a critical remove from that culture, the work itself, exquisitely done, feels like an honoring gesture. Lining the gallery walls, the reliefs might have been lifted from an ancient royal tomb. Through June 16 at 56 Henry Street; 518-966-2622, 56henry.nyc.

2. apexart, ‘Dire Jank’

For 25 years, the nonprofit apexart has been inviting curators from across the globe to produce thematic group shows in its small space. Many of the curators have been artists, as is the case with Porpentine Charity Heartscape, the digital game designer who assembled the current show, “Dire Jank.” Keeping her checklist short, she has surrounded her own work with that of just three fellow gamers, all but one transgender. The exception, an artist who calls himself Thecatamites (Stephen Murphy), takes a sardonic look at old-school games in a click-heavy conquest narrative that goes nowhere, very slowly. Tabitha Nikolai, self-described as a “trashgender gutter elf” from Salt Lake City, offers a tour through a luxury mansion that houses a Borgesian library, a sexology institute, and opens up onto vistas of cosmic space. Devi McCallion, the rock star of the bunch, delivers a despairing, pulsating plea for environmental awareness in a music video. As for Ms. Heartscape’s work, centered on the risks of queerness, it’s startlingly soul-baring. Where most conventional games are about predation and its thrills, hers are about the evils of predation. I should mention that in the gallery I found the interactive pieces glitch-prone. (Maybe they’re meant to be? After all, jank is gaming talk for, among things, low quality.) But when I reran the show on my laptop everything worked like a charm. Through May 18 at 291 Church Street; 212-431-5270, apexart.org.

3. Alexander and Bonin, ‘Tandem: Gabriel Abrantes and Belén Uriel’

Alexander and Bonin is one of a handful of galleries that recently jumped Chelsea for TriBeCa. (Bortolami, Andrew Kreps and Kaufmann Repetto are others; more are on the way.) With the move, the gallery has gained airy duplex quarters, and filled them ambitiously. On the main floor there’s a large, intriguing photography show called “Exposures,” which uses little-seen work by some house artists to tease the line between documentary and creative nonfiction. Downstairs is the first of what will be five two-artist shows selected by the Lisbon-based curator Luiza Teixeira de Freitas. For the initial offering she’s paired cast-glass sculptures of everyday objects by Belén Uriel with a very funny seven-minute film by the young American-born artist Gabriel Abrantes about the imagined origins of Brancusi’s phallic 1916 sculpture “Princess X.” (Mr. Abrantes’s zany feature-length “Diamantino,” a collaboration with Daniel Schmidt, was a hit at Cannes last year.) Through April 27 at 47 Walker Street; 212-367-7474, alexanderandbonin.com.

4. Sapar Contemporary, ‘Ming Fay: Beyond Nature’

You get a foretaste of Chinatown in TriBeCa with the exhibition “Ming Fay: Beyond Nature” at Sapar Contemporary. Mr. Fay, who was born in Shanghai in 1943 and came to the United States in 1961, specializes in super-realist sculptures of vegetal forms — fruit, nuts, seedpods — modeled on what he finds in Chinatown’s street markets. What he adds is scale: everything in his botanical universe measures in feet, not inches — sweet peppers the size of satellites, maple seeds as big as drones. He magnifies other forms too: seashells, bird skulls (and shrinks a few in the case of some unexceptional bronze human figures). The show, organized by Alexandra Chang, looks like a glimpse into a wonderland in which Mr. Fay seems to say, nature really is. Through June 1 at 9 North Moore Street; saparcontemporary.com.

5. Bridget Donahue, ‘Jessi Reaves: II’

In her second solo show at Bridget Donahue, Jessi Reaves complicates the kind of work that made her a standout in the 2017 Whitney Biennial. Her medium is assemblage; her material is recycled furniture; her method is to puzzle that furniture together, intact or cut up, into sculptures. The joining is ingenious; the look bulky but agile. What’s most distinctive, though, is the complex mood the work generates. There’s nostalgia built into the domestic middlebrow furniture Ms. Reaves chooses; violence implied in the way she strips it of practical use; and something like solicitude in the way she gives trashed things a funky new purpose. Through May 12 at 99 Bowery, second floor; 646-896-1368, bridgetdonahue.nyc.

6. Front Room Gallery, ‘Sasha Bezzubov: Albedo Zone’

In his 2001-7 photographic series “Things Fall Apart,” Sasha Bezzubov chronicled the effects of natural disasters — hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunami — on landscapes in Asia and the United States. The series that followed, titled “Albedo Zone” and now on view at Front Room, refers to a scientific theory about climate change that has triggered such disasters. Ideally, the theory says, the earth’s surface reflects, rather than absorbs, sunlight, with ice being a protective reflector and water, an absorber. At present, global melting, caused by human carelessness, has thrown the balance dangerously off, a reality Mr. Bezzubov documents in black-and-white images of water and ice shot in Alaska. From a distance, the large-format photographs look abstract. Once you know the story behind them, they take on a very specific urgency. Through May 5 at 48 Hester Street; 718-782-2556, frontroomles.com.

7. Fierman, ‘Circus of Books’

Even smaller than 56 Henry, this storefront is packed to the ceiling with another cultural homage, this one to an excellent big group show. It’s organized by the artist Rachel Mason, whose parents until recently ran two adult bookshops in Los Angeles. Both were called “Circus of Books” and both served, since the pre-Stonewall 1960s, as unofficial social centers for the local gay community. The show evokes that community with work by nearly 60 artists, most gay, some well known (Ron Athey, Kathe Burkhart, Vaginal Davis, Tom of Finland), others (Chivas Clem, Scott Hug, Jimmy Wright) on and off the radar. Stacks of vintage porn magazines add a sex shop vibe, but it’s the art, installed salon-style, that holds the eye and kicks off still-important communal conversations in art and social history. Through May 6 at 127 Henry Street; 917-593-4086, fierman.nyc.

Some other exhibitions to visit while you’re in the area: Alan Sturm (through May 26) at Situations Gallery, 127 Henry Street, situations.us; Azza El Siddique (through June 2) at Helena Anrather, 28 Elizabeth Street, helenaanrather.com; Wendy Red Star (April 28-June 2) at Sargent’s Daughters, 179 East Broadway, sargentsdaughters.com; Katarzyna Kozyra (through June 1) at Postmasters Gallery, 54 Franklin Street, postmastersart.com.

The arc of the Lower East Side gallery scene bends toward youth. It is probably home to the greatest number of starting-out dealers showing the works of emerging artists in New York. This gives the art scene in this neighborhood and the ones developing around it — in NoHo, East Village South, Chinatown or Little Italy — a certain lightness of being. We’re often looking at first, not necessarily mature or final, artistic statements. It helps that the area lacks the dwarfing juggernaut of big-name, property-proud galleries and blue-chip artists that give Chelsea or the Upper East Side their weight. Most of the shows reviewed here emphasize youth in various forms. ROBERTA SMITH

1. Rachel Uffner Gallery, ‘Arcmanoro Niles: My Heart is Like Paper: Let the Old Ways Die’

The new work in Arcmanoro Niles’s third solo show in New York in three years and his second at Rachel Uffner comes with the vulnerable overall title “My Heart is Like Paper: Let the Old Ways Die.” The works depict members of a family, including the artist at home, usually lost in thought, even sad as suggested by titles like “Longing for Change (“I’ve Given up on Being Well),” or “Does a Broken Home Become a Broken Family.” The paintings are dark in mood, which Mr. Niles’s distinctive palette elevates with a dark, glorifying radiance that evokes a modern Byzantium. The brown skin of his figures often hints at gold, and their hair is rendered in dense coats of hot pink glitter, suggesting halos. The paintings have an unexpected gravity and grandeur that is almost religious. “My Heart is Like Paper” shows the artist alone in a gold-and-pink bathroom, wearing an orange undershirt. He is a man who has come to a turning point, a momentous choice. I’m not sure what the ghostly sex scenes outlined in red, or the gremlin-like stuffed dolls wielding knives, add, but they add something. Through April 28 at 170 Suffolk Street; 212-274-0064, racheluffnergallery.com.

2. Pierogi, ‘Sharon Horvath: Where Owls Stare at Painting’s Busted Eyeballs’

Some shows aren’t so much about youth as youthfulness, an ageless state. This seems to be the condition of Sharon Horvath’s show at Pierogi, “Where Owls Stare at Painting’s Busted Eyeballs.” Whatever the title means the artist is showing a substantial number of beautiful new paintings, which often conjure vistas in outer space, including “Out There Or In Here,” her largest canvas to date, whose green and black forms seem to show the enormous wraparound control board of a cockpit. In addition, she has transported virtually her entire studio to the gallery, laying out in vitrines everything she uses to make or inspire her art. It is a great deal of material, much of which is from her parents, who were artists, and her sister. This is a dense novelistic show that lays before us the important ways memories and especially family memories can figure in art-making. Through May 5 at 155 Suffolk Street; 646-429-9073, pierogi2000.com.

3. Bureau, ‘Julia Rommel: Candy Jail’

In Julia Rommel’s fourth show at Bureau, “Candy Jail,” she continues her brand of corrupted formalism, exploring ways to revivify Minimalist abstraction with a non-Minimalist, piecemeal sense of process. Ms. Rommel works on her paintings in stages, as they are stapled to ever-larger stretchers. This gives them an almost cinematic sense of growth and expansion. The monochromatic surfaces of earlier, smaller paintings shift about, becoming squares or rectangles within larger compositions — except that their edges are weirdly raised. The new efforts have more layers, which makes them less legible, as does the increase in arbitrary brushwork that is not related to the central process. There is sometimes an echo of the work of Richard Diebenkorn that she needs to resolve. But Ms. Rommel’s color is as beautiful as ever, especially in simpler works like “Volvo 240,” where two orange squares both divided by and edged in green rivet the eyes. Through May 5 at 178 Norfolk Street; 212-227-2783, bureau-inc.com.

4. Chapter NY, ‘Aria Dean: (meta)models or how i got my groove back’

Aria Dean, who graduated from Oberlin College in 2015, is having her second show in New York. Her works weave the gallery space into a web of intersecting, sometimes contradictory languages and perspectives, as suggested by the show’s title “(meta)models or how I got my groove back.” (Not to mention the double remove of “meta” and “models.”) A video monitor in the middle of the gallery shows a camera dancing around a pedestal made of mirrored, or two-way glass, familiar to viewers of police procedurals. This pedestal sits on a New York sidewalk, providing chaotic, fragmented views of houses, cars and pavement. It’s a “non-site” — recalling Robert Smithson’s 1970s use of mirrors in small, temporary earthworks — except urban, in danger of being broken, a pedestal awaiting an artwork. We hear what appear to be three young men, identified as D.J.’s (it’s actually a single actor), move effortlessly between street talk and a kind of Beckettian theory-talk — riddling observations about a nothing that can be something but is ultimately a void, a form of invisibility. (The dialogue borrows from, among others, the writings of Heidegger, Robert Morris and Fred Moten.) Around the screen, on the floor or attached to the wall, four vaguely figurative shapes cut from the mirrored glass add to the disorientation. They are blank nothings but they also suggest leaping ghosts, Saturday morning cartoons (Casper) and the silhouettes of the bodies of murder victims, outlined in chalk on the street. Through May 5 at 249 East Houston Street; 646-850-7486, chapter-ny.com.

5. Lyles & King, ‘Mira Schor: California Paintings: 1971-1973’

Youth in art doesn’t always mean newly made. It can also be an older artist’s early work that virtually no one has ever seen. So it is with “Mira Schor: California Paintings, 1971-73,” a stunning show of gouache on paper works that this leading feminist painter made while in graduate school at the California Institute of the Arts. She started out in Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro’s legendary feminist art program, but left to make these richly colored highly personal paintings about loneliness, longing and sexual awakening in which she frequently starred. The many works here have the flat, matte colors, deep space and lush greenery of Rajput painting and also call to mind the solitary women in the work of Leonora Carrington and Joan Brown. Historically, they form an unexpected addition to the early 1970s Conceptual offshoot known as Story Art, and also point to the return to painting the figure that transpired in the late 1970s and is once more ascendant. Through May 19 at 106 Forsyth Street; 646-484-5478, lylesandking.com.

6. Simone Subal Gallery, ‘Cameron Clayborn: Through the Wrong Tongue’

The sculptures and wall pieces in Cameron Clayborn’s New York solo debut have both historical and contemporary references. His preferred materials are leather-like vinyl and glittered vinyl sewn into stuffing-filled shapes that evoke the soft forms of Post-Minimalist sculpture of the 1970s. But he often adds gleaming sharp-pointed hardware associated with late ’80s Neo-Geo art. He pushes this combination into the present with subtle and not-so-subtle suggestions of gender, drag, race and violence. The show’s first artwork puts you on alert: “Roompiercer With Tool” might be described as a phallus of two different skin tones hanging from a sharp, shiny spike. “Toolholder” is a drape of glitter vinyl, the color of white flesh, hanging from steel clamps. In the crux of the vinyl rests a solid steel lozenge about four inches long. It suggests a man in drag, distilled to abstraction. Not everything in this show is as effective or as promising as these works, but much of it is. Stay tuned. Through May 12 at 131 Bowery, second floor; 917-409-0612, simonesubal.com.

The cockamamie real estate market has turned the good old Upper East Side into the most stimulating gallery neighborhood in New York — and as downtown stultifies and Chelsea wilts in the shadow of Hudson Yards, the old blue-blood quarter has grown manifold. Up here the big-ticket dealers in grand townhouses exhibit alongside younger galleries in walk-ups and outposts of international dealers; the last few years have welcomed Nara Roesler and Mendes Wood of São Paulo, Almine Rech of Paris, Simon Lee of London and Kurimanzutto of Mexico City. That’s not to mention the dealers in antiquities, Asian art and rare books.

On 57th Street you’ll find things to see in the gallery-rich Fuller Building, along with stalwarts like Pace and Marian Goodman (where Tino Sehgal, the Greta Garbo of philosophical performance art, opens a new show on May 3). Start there and work your way up Madison Avenue, where the galleries cluster from the mid-60s to 79th Street. If you haven’t had your fill yet, turn left and head for the Metropolitan Museum of Art; if you’re worn out, rejuvenation awaits in the hotel bars. JASON FARAGO

1. Throckmorton Fine Art, ‘Graciela Iturbide 1969-2019’

This uncommon gallery, founded in 1980, deals both in Buddhist and pre-Columbian antiquities and in contemporary photography from Latin America, all of it shown in an unpretentious space where classical music tinkles in the background. Up now is a show of Graciela Iturbide, one of Mexico’s greatest photographers, whose black-and-white images of women, children and animals combine the slippery identifications of ethnography with the glamorous precision of the film still. (Her work is also on view at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, through May 12.) Ms. Iturbide shot these pictures everywhere from Madagascar to East Los Angeles, but the most compelling are her photographs from Juchitán, Oaxaca — above all “Our Lady of the Iguanas” (1979), in which a Zapotec woman stares confidently into the middle distance, her head crowned, Medusa-like, by a collection of reptiles. Through May 18 at 145 East 57th Street, third floor; 212-223-1059, throckmorton-nyc.com.

2. Van Doren Waxter, ‘Moira Dryer: Paintings & Works on Paper’

Here is a show of an abstract painter ahead of her time, and whose stylistic promiscuity belied a deep rigor. Moira Dryer, a Canadian artist who came to New York in the 1970s, made her most successful works by applying wavy stripes of black, teal, jonquil, and oxblood red to wood supports; the thin application of pigment, which in places spills top to bottom in trickles or floods, emphasizes the objecthood of the wooden paintings and the artist’s careful balancing act between design and chance. This show also includes a few lovely gouaches, alive with the Mediterranean colors of Matisse, that testify to Dryer’s artistic omnivorousness and ability to surprise. Her death in 1992, at 34, deprived art history of what was already a superb career, but her example saturates the studios of New York’s contemporary painters. Through May 24 at 23 East 73rd Street, second and third floors; 212-445-0444, vandorenwaxter.com.

3. L. Parker Stephenson Photographs, ‘Claude Tolmer: Photographiques’

East Midtown and the Upper East Side bulge with photography galleries, and this one-room space at the top of a Madison Avenue walk-up is a hidden gem. Up now is a stellar show of vintage prints by the French modernist photographer Claude Tolmer (1911-1991), whose images of the 1930s include dense, high-contrast visions of airplane propellers and merry-go-rounds; spectral photograms of scissors and goblets; and still lifes montaged with squiggly hand-drawn additions that recall Cocteau. They are strikingly bold, yet many of them had commercial uses — Tolmer’s father ran a leading firm for the packaging of luxury goods, and his photographer son put these images to use on advertisements and boxes. It’s worth remembering, as Instagram savagely injects the profit motive into all photographic communication, that an earlier avant-garde found its own methods to slide between artistic activity and commercial necessity. Through May 11 at 764 Madison Avenue; 212-517-8700, lparkerstephenson.nyc.

4. Ceysson & Bénétière, ‘Pierre Buraglio: PB. 1978-2018’

This French gallery’s outpost, now two years old, is presenting the first New York solo of Pierre Buraglio, a lone ranger of European painting and assemblage. His “Masquages Vides” of the late 1970s were cunning “paintings” that, in fact, collaged the color-streaked masking tape used to make earlier works into spare new compositions. (Their quixotic emptiness rhymed with the paintings of Supports/Surfaces, a high-concept approach to abstraction that’s seen a revival in fortunes lately, though he never formally joined that movement.) Later he turned to found objects, such as fragments of window frames and even the whole door of a Citroën 2CV, whose window he infilled with an abstract landscape of blue and green. After decades of neglect in New York, postwar French painting is everywhere these days, and there’s a good reason; long before we realized it, artists like Mr. Buraglio averred that there was no necessary boundary between painterly and conceptual sophistication. Through April 27 at 956 Madison Avenue, second floor; 646-678-371, ceyssonbenetiere.com.

5. The Artist’s Institute, Tauba Auerbach

If you forced me to name the most dependably challenging exhibition maker in the neighborhood, I’d pick Jenny Jaskey — the director of this nonprofit gallery, associated with Hunter College, whose semester-long experiments push established artists outside their comfort zones. Currently Tauba Auerbach, better known for her abstract paintings, is trying out something new: her first kinetic sculpture, solar-powered, composed of twisted, tensile wires that pull away from a soap-slicked central tube and produce coruscating but evanescent diamonds. The sculpture has the childlike legibility of a game of cat’s cradle, but two mildly nasty videos here, documenting surgery to the fascia that enclose human organs, inscribe the sculpture into a trickier domain of bodies and fluids. Through June 1 at Hunter College, 132 East 65th Street; 646-512-9608, theartistsinstitute.org.

6. Henrique Faria, ‘Eduardo Kac: Inner Telescope’

Another gallery with a strong Latin American focus, this dealership is presenting a show by the Chicago-based Brazilian artist Eduardo Kac that is, quite literally, out of this world. Mr. Kac (pronounced katz) teamed up with a French astronaut on the International Space Station, whom he instructed to cut a simple construction out of white paper: a capital M pierced by a cylinder. In a video here, plus preparatory drawings and research documents, you see the construction gently tumbling through zero gravity, and spinning to resemble the letters M-O-I (“me”): a spare but memorable evocation of the self lost in space. Through May 11 at 35 East 67th Street, fourth floor; 212-517-4609, henriquefaria.com.

Art and real estate development met elsewhere in the city, but they got married in Chelsea. Tall, expensive buildings are rising around 10th Avenue, and gallery rents are rising along with them. Young art dealers arrive to try their hand in the official gallery neighborhood, and often fold-up shop quickly, as the promisingly offbeat American Medium, which started in Brooklyn, did recently. The juggernaut of mega-gallery showrooms continues, with behemoths like Hauser & Wirth mounting impressive historical shows (and starting their own bookstores, publishing houses, magazines and nonprofit foundations), and David Zwirner is planning a Renzo Piano-designed space to open in 2020. Meanwhile, the High Line looms ubiquitously overhead, like a people mover transporting tourists (mostly) from the new Hudson Yards on the north end to the gleaming Whitney Museum of American Art on the south. Contemporary art is everywhere though, including the High Line, where you’ll find a monumental sculpture by Simone Leigh, who just opened a show at the Guggenheim, along with other notable displays. Art has saturated the neighborhood, and you can see everything from work by emerging artists to the long deceased. Here are a few places to start. MARTHA SCHWENDENER

1. Jack Shainman, ‘Paul Anthony Smith: Junction’

What you are viewing in Paul Anthony Smith’s exhibition at Jack Shainman are painstakingly altered large-scale photographs that he works on in his Brooklyn studio and which he calls “picotages.” The color photographs were taken in his native Jamaica, but also other locations, including at the West Indian American Day Parade in Brooklyn. They have been covered with pointillist dots of paint or colored pencil. Mr. Smith studied ceramics in Kansas City, Mo., and you sense the idea of glazing in his work, of images and things being covered over — although this works metaphorically, too, and suggests covered over events, people and histories. A face, a garden, or an urban scene peak through the dots in the picotage, resembling but never fully revealing themselves. Through May 11 at 513 West 20th Street and 524 West 24th Street; jackshainman.com.

2. Pace Gallery, ‘Raqib Shaw: Landscapes of Kashmir’

Raqib Shaw’s works have not always fared well with critics, and his current paintings at Pace Gallery exhibit some of the flamboyance and excess that have raised the ire of high art’s gatekeepers. From a distance, the high-gloss, virtuosic enamel paintings look like Thomas Kinkade landscapes mixed with Hieronymus Bosch scenarios: pretty, anodyne landscapes peppered with apocalyptic micro-hells in which mythic demons cribbed from traditions in Mr. Shaw’s native Kashmir battle with contemporary humans. The best works in the show are the most self-aware, in which Mr. Shaw depicts himself tending his artwork, pets or plants in a completely focused and self-absorbed manner — an effete maestro engulfed in “flow” while the hideous violence of the real world erupts outside his colonnaded window. Through May 18 at 537 West 24th Street; 212-421-3292, pacegallery.com.

3. Gladstone Gallery, Vivian Suter

One of the highlights of the international Documenta exhibition in 2017 was Vivian Suter’s display of loosely painted canvases, unframed, fluttering like elegant laundry outdoors in Athens and brightening up a glassy storefront in Kassel, Germany. Working for over 30 years near the volcanic Lake Atitlán in Panajachel, Guatemala, Ms. Suter was an art world drop-out who never dropped out of art. “Vivian’s Garden,” Rosalind Nashashibi’s film about Ms. Suter and her mother, Elizabeth Wild, also an artist, captured their art-centered lives in Guatemala. But Ms. Suter has re-emerged in the last few years, bringing that magic-garden feeling to traditional art spaces. She has transformed Gladstone’s space in Chelsea into a kind of ethereal Eden in which canvases hang from the ceiling, lie on the floor and generally work together, like branches on a tree or petals on a flower, to create an ecology of painting rather than a discrete-object experience. (Ms. Suter also has an installation on the High Line this season.) Through June 8 at 530 West 21st Street; 212-206-7606, gladstonegallery.com.

4. The Kitchen, ‘ANOHNI: Love’

Although you’re not always sure what you’re looking at, “ANOHNI: Love” at the Kitchen looks and feels like an art installation. It’s also deeply political. Near the entrance is an enlarged death certificate for Marsha P. Johnson, a gender activist after whom the Anohni-fronted musical group Antony and the Johnsons were named, and whose death by drowning in the Hudson was deemed a suicide (but many think was homicide). Nearby is a bookshelf with the library of Julia Yasuda, a former member of the Johnsons, which also serves as a memorial and a template for the group’s ethos and philosophy. Rough sculptures, collages, a film and the theatrically lit space create a moody ambience. It’s an apt approach for an artist for whom performance is a life project and gender is a medium. Through May 11 at 512 West 19th Street; 212-255-5793, thekitchen.org.

5. Mitchell-Innes & Nash, ‘Martin Kersels: Cover Story’

Martin Kersels characteristically splits the difference between performance and objects in his exhibition at Mitchell-Innes & Nash. Cut-up and collaged record album covers are hung as relief wall sculptures, and on May 4 at 2:30 p.m. he will reprise a performance of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” (1968), the 17-minute pop song by Iron Butterfly on a tricked-out stage in the gallery. Part comedy, part homage, Mr. Kersels’s work is a reminder that, despite the emphasis on art as business, there is still room in Chelsea for the absurd. Through May 18 at 534 West 26th Street; 212-744-7400, miandn.com.

6. Paula Cooper, Walid Raad

The works in Walid Raad’s exhibition at Paula Cooper follow a format he innovated in the 1980s and ’90s: “real” photographs paired with texts that may or may not be fictional. Applied to recent history in the Middle East — and particularly his native Lebanon and that country’s long civil war — photographs here of storefronts and people accompanied by “explanatory” texts show how para-fictions often become facts or official histories. The centerpiece is a new video made up of kaleidoscopically mirrored film loops that show buildings in the Beirut Central District being destroyed to create a new and, theoretically, better postwar city. The psychedelic forward-and-reverse motion of the loops simply but effectively questions the linear march of time and progress. Through May 24 at 521 West 21st Street; 212-255-1105, paulacoopergallery.com.

1. Peter Blum, ‘Paul Fagerskiold: Flatlands’

Oil paint can be sculptural, especially if you use as much as Paul Fagerskiold does on “Flatland.” The young Swedish-born painter lays so much blackish-purple paint on this enormous canvas that the finished surface of its figure, a monochrome rectangle with a bowed bottom edge, has the definition of hammered bronze. Each ridgy brush stroke is an eddy, and the whole is a view of the ocean — but it’s a restless one that won’t subside into the easy diffidence of most two-dimensional images. Not for nothing did Mr. Fagerskiold name the painting, and the show it appears in, after Edward Abbot’s 19th-century novella of mind-bending sci-fi geometry. Through May 11 at 176 Grand Street; 212-244-6055, peterblumgallery.com.

2. Jeffrey Deitch, ‘Austin Lee: Feels Good’

Austin Lee’s analog portraits of cyberspace are strangely fascinating. After drawing floppy cartoon hearts, stumpy, grinning figures and prancing ponies on an iPad, the painter then renders the images by hand, at a much larger scale, with brush and airbrush. Maybe it’s the adeptly balanced hot pinks and neon reds, or the promise that a virtual world might someday seem as joyful and genuine as the real. Or maybe it’s just the marrying of such disparate mediums, the quiet shock of confronting computer effects in physical form, which makes it so difficult to look away. Through May 18 at 18 Wooster Street; 212-343-7300, deitch.com.

3. Team, ‘Scenes of the American Landscape’

We all know something’s askew — and the artists in “Scenes of the American Landscape,” which I was able to sneak into before it officially opened on Thursday, know it, too. Video installations by Collin Leitch and Theodore Darst channel the restless sense of imbalance in contemporary American life into a twitchy, unrelenting shifting of styles that feels very much like a new kind of rhythm. Andrew Jilka’s oil and enamel painting of sailor tattoos and cartoon Picassos puts the same effect into freeze frame. Color photographs by Lili Jamail, of an empty armchair, and Jheyda McGarrell, of a half-dressed woman seen through her window, are a deliberate tilt both jaunty and alarming. And an untitled painting by Alissa McKendrick, in which fiddly figures unspool against an intensely worked red background, is suffused with vertigo. Through June 1 at 83 Grand Street; 212-279-9219, teamgal.com.

4. Peter Freeman Inc., ‘Silvia Bächli and Eric Hattan: Between Windows’

The Swiss artists Silvia Bächli and Eric Hattan undertake a sublime exegesis of that simplest of artistic gestures: the line. A line is an emblem of sustained effort, but also a paradox. Whether as the confident green and brown stripes of Ms. Bächli’s elegant gouaches or the wonky metal poles that Mr. Hattan stands upright and sets in concrete, the line only gets richer in isolation. Mr. Hattan’s “Schnurvideo (String Video)” is a 20-minute close-up on the artist’s hands as he untangles a clump of string and winds it up again into a grapefruit-size ball. Notice how tightly he holds it, and how, when the string slips off, he simply presses an errant loop against the ball and keeps winding. Through May 25 at 140 Grand Street; 212-966-5154, peterfreemaninc.com.

5. Ronald Feldman, ‘Bruce Pearson: Shadow Language’

Bruce Pearson makes text paintings, technically. But by overlapping text and imagery in complicated patterns, cutting those patterns into foam, and painting every resulting divot a different color, he arrives at arresting compositions that evoke tropical camouflage or the inside of a psychedelic pomegranate — even when, as sometimes happens, the original text remains legible. This should be the case with “Shadow Language,” opening this weekend at Ronald Feldman Gallery. One star is likely to be “Not to Interrupt Your Beautiful Moment,” an orange-themed pixelation of an entrancingly ambiguous phrase. April 27-June 8 at 31 Mercer Street; 212-226-3232, feldmangallery.com.

It would take half the gallerists in America to make the vast expanses of Harlem into an arts district as pedestrian-friendly as SoHo, so take it in pieces. Galleries worth visiting on the east side include 1) David Richard Gallery, lately of Santa Fe, which is currently showing the brightly colored steel of the Canadian sculptor Robert Murray (through May 4); the nonprofit 2) WhiteBox next door, just relocated from SoHo, and inaugurating its new home with the thought-provoking group show “Waiting for the Garden of Eden” (through May 5); and 3) Hunter East Harlem Gallery, whose “do it (in school)” plumbs the overlap of conceptual art and arts education (through June 1).

On the west side, the former Chelsea gallerist 4) Janice Guy’s latest show at a project space called MBnB is a terrific run of photographs by Judy Linn (through May 5). Finely observed but never precious, they’re a thrilling demonstration of artistic self-reflection undertaken for its own sake — particularly a sequence that starts with an image of a photo of James Joyce taped to a foggy window and ends with the back of James Caan’s neck on a Trinitron TV. Opening this weekend at 5) Gavin Brown’s palatial establishment on West 127th Street is a show of balletic nudes in green fields and huge new landscapes roiling with stormy energy by the 92-year-old master of slick painterly flatness, Alex Katz (through Aug. 3). And at 6) Columbia University’s Leroy Neiman Gallery, on Harlem’s southern edge, is a multimedia solo show by South African artist Mary Sibande (through May 1). WILL HEINRICH

Like so much else in Brooklyn these days, the art scene there seems to be in flux. Galleries that were familiar presences have closed; others have changed names and moved to Manhattan. Neighborhoods that previously served as linchpins now have fewer dedicated art spaces; rents are high, and other parts of the city promise greater foot traffic.

Yet in a way, transition has always been central to a geographically scattered scene that’s uneven in its offerings and anchored by a handful of larger nonprofits alongside a rotating cast of small spaces run as labors of love. Even commercial operations seem to work differently here: Jenkins Johnson Gallery’s outpost aims to build a relationship with the surrounding community (and its coming show “Free to Be,” featuring Rico Gatson and Baseera Khan, should be worth a visit). Part of the thrill of seeing art in Brooklyn is that you don’t quite know what you’re going to get.

This list is just a sample of what Brooklyn has to offer. It will take you from Bushwick down to Park Slope and focuses on exhibitions that are, quite loosely, about identity. These artists are exploring how cultural, national, social and other factors shape us, even as they take very different approaches. It’s a fitting theme for a borough that, despite becoming a brand, is still a haven for those looking to make a creative life in New York City. JILLIAN STEINHAUER

1. The Chimney, ‘Sara Mejia Kriendler: Sangre y Sol’

Industrial art spaces aren’t as au courant as they used to be, but Brooklyn and Queens still have their fair share. The Chimney rightly embraces the roughness of its home by commissioning artists to create work for its brick walls and concrete floor. Sara Mejia Kriendler has even extended her solo show onto the ceiling, covering it with mounds of gold-tinted foil. Down below, broken terra-cotta hands are piled in a huge circle on the ground, like the remnants of an ancient society or mysterious ritual. Inspired by her Colombian roots, Ms. Kriendler uses simplicity and scale to turn the gallery into a space that feels simultaneously sacred and profane. Through May 5 at 200 Morgan Avenue, Bushwick; thechimneynyc.com.

2. Tiger Strikes Asteroid NY, ‘baseball show’

The seven galleries in this building have had consistently strong programs. Tiger Strikes Asteroid is one of the smaller spaces but regularly swings for the fences, focusing on solo presentations for underrepresented artists and group exhibitions with unusual themes, like the current “baseball show.” Organized by Andrew Prayzner, the show brings together an array of astute work, including Elias Necol Melad’s clever paintings of baseball cards without their figures (and thus their value) and Christopher Gideon’s incriminating scans that show dipping tobacco tins in players’ pockets. The nine artists treat the sport not simply as a beloved pastime but as a cultural phenomenon worth examining. Through May 5 at 1329 Willoughby Avenue, No. 2A, Bushwick; 347-746-8041, tigerstrikesasteroid.com.

3. Recess, ‘Lex Brown: The Inside Room’ and ‘American Artist: blue are the feelings that live inside me’

The nonprofit Recess does something different than most other art spaces: It gives artists the gallery and roughly two months to realize their projects on-site. So the work happens before the public’s eyes, and it’s best to visit multiple times to follow the progress. Right now, Lex Brown is building a studio for the production of an experimental TV show that will disregard the typical conventions of the medium — scenes and story lines will be improvised, multiple people will play a single character — to focus on human interaction. Hanging in the front room are disquieting photographs by American Artist of books from the Blue Lives Matter movement — an extension of their recent, powerful show at Brooklyn gallery Koenig & Clinton. Through June 8 and May 11 at 46 Washington Avenue, Clinton Hill; 646-863-3765, recessart.org.

4. Open Source, ‘Ronny Quevedo: Field of play’

Located in a renovated carriage house near the Prospect Expressway, Open Source is something of an outlier in a neighborhood without many art galleries. That hasn’t stopped it from mounting ambitious exhibitions. Ronny Quevedo’s current solo show continues his investigation of games and their relationship to the migration of people. On the floor, he’s placed gold and silver tiles that turn the space into a kind of board. Some of them hold concrete sculptures of misshapen sports balls, while prints on the walls turn the shapes associated with various games into evocative abstractions. With the whole gallery as a “Field of play,” as the exhibition is titled, it falls to the viewer to invent the rules for navigating it. Through May 11 at 306 17th Street, Park Slope; open-source-gallery.org.

5. Theodore:Art, ‘Peter Krashes: Contact!’

Once upon a time, 56 Bogart was the place to see art in Bushwick; today it’s no longer the neighborhood’s artistic nerve center. The galleries that remain are a mix of newcomers and longtime holdouts, of which Theodore:Art, at almost a decade old, is one. Peter Krashes’s current exhibition is a poignant reflection of the changes being felt throughout Brooklyn. The artist is a longtime community organizer, and in his gouache-on-paper paintings he captures street festivals, encounters with the New York Police Department and celebrity sightings near Barclays Center. Krashes paints with smooth, confident strokes but leaves blank specks throughout, suggesting the gaps of memory that make even the best representations of reality imperfect. Through May 18 at 56 Bogart Street, Bushwick; 212-966-4322, theodoreart.com.

6. Art in General, ‘Chim↑Pom: Threat of Peace (Hiroshima!!!!!!)’ and ‘Don’t Follow the Wind: Non-Visitor Center’

This storied nonprofit is best known for presenting conceptual shows that contain an ambitious site-specific element. The current centerpiece is the Japanese artist collective Chim↑Pom’s affecting, tunnel-like installation made of paper cranes that people from around the world have sent to Hiroshima as a gesture of peace. The city keeps the cranes — millions of them — in a special warehouse, where the collective also filmed a new video. On view concurrently is a “non-visitor center” for “Don’t Follow the Wind,” an exhibition created inside the radioactive Fukushima exclusion zone by Chim↑Pom, other artists and the curator Jason Waite (who organized both shows at Art in General). Visitors can glimpse the restricted area via a 360-degree video and contemplate the sobering past and present of our nuclear reality. Through July 13 at 145 Plymouth Street, Dumbo; artingeneral.org.

Helpful Tips

People can find visiting galleries intimidating, mysterious or irksome, but it needn’t be, even for beginners. There’s no time like our annual Spring Gallery Guide to discuss the basics (and pleasures) of this time-honored activity. My fellow critics and I have fanned out across the city to take the pulse of the scene, but before you get to our recommendations, let me offer some advice:

Galleries don’t charge admission. New York City has the largest concentration of art galleries anywhere; there’s a great deal of information and many experiences to be had, free of charge. These are welcoming places that don’t exist only to sell art. They’re also a public service, a way for artists and art students to see what other artists are up to, but also for the rest of us as well.

Be engaged. Wave or smile to the people at the front desk when you enter (and maybe say “Thank you” when you leave). Join the ritual of signing the sign-in book. (Most galleries have them.) It lets artists know you’ve been there and provides a little private moment before plunging in. You’ll also see news releases by the sign-in book. They give you the title of the show (if there is one), some whiff of the artist’s intention and a short biography. There’s a good chance there will also be checklists, almost always with photographs of the works. This provides the title, date, materials and dimensions of every artwork on view. It’s your map.

Take the process seriously. Give every show a chance. Art is never trying to pull the wool over your eyes. Walk around the sculptures; study the paintings — and their surfaces — from various distances. Examine the checklist, and think about how the art objects were made and of what. Can you identify the materials used on first sight?

Listen to yourself. Realize that you are having reactions and forming opinions even if you can’t quite articulate them. Tally up what you like or don’t like about a certain piece. Strike up a conversation with someone who seems to be looking as hard as you. Compare notes. Got questions? Ask them of whoever behind the desk looks the least busy. Keep in mind that many people in these positions at galleries are young artists or writers and usually quite smart. You never know when you’re talking to the next Huma Bhabha. ROBERTA SMITH

Top image grid, from top left: ChimPom and Art in General; Dario Lasagni; Dawn Mellor and TEAM Gallery; via Alexander and Bonin, New York; Joerg Lohse; American Artist; ANOHNI and The Kitchen; Arcmanoro Niles and Rachel Uffner Gallery; Aria Dean and Chapter NY; Dario Lasagni; Bruce Pearson and Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York; Austin Lee; Cameron Clayborn and Simone Subal Gallery; Dario Lasagni; Mark Mulroney and Mrs. Gallery; Vivian Suter and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels; David Regen; Claude Tolmer and L. Parker Stephenson Photographs; via apexart; Eduardo Kac and Henrique Faria, New York; Jessi Reaves and Bridget Donahue NYC; Greg Carideo; Sasha Bezzubov and Front Room Gallery; Sharon Horvath and Pierogi; Julia Rommel and Bureau, New York; Dario Lasagni; Mira Schor and Lyles & King; Walid Raad and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; Peter Krashes and Theodore:Art, Brooklyn; Martin Kersels and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York; Silvia Bächli and Peter Freeman, Inc.; Moira Dryer and Van Doren Waxter, New York; Stefan Hagen; Ming Fay and Sapar Contemporary; via 56 Henry; Object Studies; Raqib Shaw, via Pace Gallery; Pierre Buraglio and Ceysson & Bénétière; Graciela Iturbide; Lili Jamail and TEAM; via Artist’s Institute at Hunter College; Paul Fagerskiold and Peter Blum Gallery, New York; Etienne Frossard; Paul Anthony Smith and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York; Sara Mejia Kriendler and The Chimney; Reggie Shiobara.

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mariebenz · 6 years

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Novel Subtypes in B Progenitor Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

MedicalResearch.comInterview with:

Zhaohui Gu, PhD Postdoctoral Research Associate St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, TN MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response:B-progenitor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL) is the most common pediatric malignancy and the leading cause of childhood cancer death. B-ALL includes multiple subtypes that are defined by distinct genetic alterations and that play an important role in diagnosis, prognosis and therapy of patients. Advances in transcriptome sequencing (RNA-seq)have helped researchers discover additional subtypes and driver mutations inB-ALL and identify possible new therapeutic targets. Still, up to 30% of B-ALL cases do not fit into established subtypes. These patients lack targeted therapeutic approaches and commonly relapse. Fort his study, we used integrated genomic analysis of 1,988 childhood and adult cases to revise the classification system of B-ALL. The system includes eight new subtypes and a total of 23 B-ALL subtypes. The subtypes are defined by chromosomal rearrangements, sequence mutations, or heterogeneous genomic alterations. Many show a marked variation in prevalence according to age. The newly identified subtypes included one (n=18) defined by rearrangements of gene BCL2, MYC and/or BCL6 anda distinctive gene expression profile (GEP). Patients in this subtype were mostly adults (n=16) with very poor outcomes. Another novel subtype was defined by IKZF1 N159Y missense mutation. N159Y is in the DNA-binding domain of IKZF1, and is known to disrupt IKZF1 function, with distinct nuclear mis-localization and induction of aberrant intercellular adhesion. There were eight cases in this subtype that shared highly similar GEPs. We also identified two subtypes with distinct GEP and characterized by PAX5 alterations. One, PAX5 altered (PAX5alt), included 148 cases. PAX5alt was characterized by diverse PAX5 alterations including rearrangements (n=57), sequence mutations (n=46) and/or focal intragenic amplifications (n=8). These PAX5 alterations were found in 73.6% of PAX5alt cases. The second distinct subtype comprised 44 cases, all with PAX5 P80R missense mutations. Bi-allelic PAX5 alterations were commonly seen in this subtype in the form of PAX5 P80R coupled with a second sequence mutation or deletion of the wild-type PAX5 allele. Adult PAX5 P80R cases showed better 5-year OS (61.9±13.4%) than those in PAX5alt subtype (42.1±10.2%). In addition, Pax5 P80R heterozygous and homozygous mice developed B lineage leukemia with a median latency of 166 and 87 days, respectively. The heterozygous mice acquired alterations on the second allele, which faithfully recapitulated the condition of the patient leukemia. MedicalResearch.com: What should readers take away from your report? Response: Identification of subtypes accurately is very important for diagnosis, intensity-tailored therapy, and to identify targetable lesions. In this large scale genomic study, we demonstrated the power of using RNA-seq to classifying B-ALL and established a revised B-ALL taxonomy with 23 distinct subtypes. We identified 8 novel subtypes, including two defined by PAX5 alterations. Through in vitro and in vivo experiments, we demonstrated that PAX5 P80R could impair B cell differentiation and initiate leukemia. Together with the subtype defined by IKZF1 N159Y mutation, we showed for the first time that transcription factor missense mutations could be a subtype defining genetic lesions. MedicalResearch.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this work? Response:B-ALL classification has been conventionally used in scientific research and clinicaltreatment. However, due to the complexity of genetic alterations and geneexpression profile analysis, a comprehensive and robust classification is stillchallenging for many researchers and clinicians. This study establishes anRNA-seq data based B-ALL classification pipeline, which could assign over 90%of the B-ALL cases into distinct subtypes. The raw sequence data and well-curatedgenetic information of 1,988 B-ALL case have been deposited to public database(https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ega/). The dataare also accessible through an interactive St. Jude data portal (https://pecan.stjude.cloud/proteinpaint/study/PanALL),which serve as invaluable resource for future research and clinical diagnosis. We have identified eight new subtypes in previously uncategorized B-other cases. We described each subtypes’ gene expression signatures, driver genetic lesions and clinical outcomes, but in-depth functional studies and development of customized treatments for the novel subtypes are still needed. The genetic background of patients in each subtype is similar, making it easier to evaluate and compare patients’ response to specific treatments. That should potentially speed-up the development of more effective treatment for these previously uncategorized cases. Despite the progress, about 6% of the B-ALL cases still cannot be classified into any subtypes. We propose to perform more comprehensive genomic analysis, including whole genome sequence, to identify the hidden driver lesions. Ultimately, the goal is to classify all B-ALL patients into distinct subtypes and assign customized regimens for them. MedicalResearch.com: Is there anything else you would like to add? Response: This was an international effort and multiple institutional collaborative project. The participants were St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, The Children's Oncology Group, ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group, Cancer and Leukemia Group B, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, University of Toronto, Northern Italian Leukemia Group, Southwestern Oncology Group, Medical Research Council UK and City of Hope. Citation: Abstract presented at the 2018 ASH abstract Publication Number: 565 Submission ID: 111219 Title: Characterization of Novel Subtypes in B Progenitor Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Zhaohui Gu, PhD1, Michelle L. Churchman, PhD1, Kathryn G. Roberts, PhD1, Ian Moore, MS1, Xin Zhou, PhD2, Joy Nakitandwe, PhD1, Kohei Hagiwara, MD2, Stephane Pelletier, PhD3, Sebastien Gingras, PhD4, Hartmut Berns, PhD5, Debbie Payne-Turner, BS1, Ashley Hill, BS1, Ilaria Iacobucci, PhD1, Lei Shi, PhD6, Stanley Pounds, PhD6, Cheng Cheng, PhD6, Deqing Pei, MS6, Chunxu Qu, PhD1, Meenakshi Devidas, PhD7, Yunfeng Dai, MS7, Shalini C. Reshmi, PhD8, Julie Gastier-Foster, PhD8, Elizabeth A. Raetz, MD9, Michael J. Borowitz, MD, PhD10, Brent L. Wood, MD, PhD11, William L. Carroll, MD12, Patrick A. Zweidler-McKay, MD, PhD13, Karen R. Rabin, MD, PhD14, Leonard A. Mattano, MD15,Kelly W. Maloney, MD16, Alessandro Rambaldi, MD17, Orietta Spinelli, PhD17, Jerald P. Radich, MD18, Mark D. Minden, MD, PhD19, Jacob M. Rowe, MD20, Selina Luger, MD21, Mark R. Litzow, MD22, Martin S. Tallman, MD23, Janis Racevskis, PhD24, Yanming Zhang, MD25, Ravi Bhatia, MD26, Jessica Kohlschmidt, PhD27, Krzysztof Mrózek, MD, PhD27, Clara D. Bloomfield, MD27, Wendy Stock, MD28, Steven Kornblau, MD29, Hagop M. Kantarjian, MD29, Marina Konopleva, MD29, Williams Evans, PharMD30, Sima Jeha, MD31, Ching-Hon Pui, MD31, Jun Yang, PhD30, Elisabeth Paietta, PhD24, James Downing, MD1, Mary V. Relling, PharMD30, Jinghui Zhang, PhD2, Mignon L. Loh, MD32, Stephen P. Hunger, MD33, Charles Mullighan, MBBS, MD1 1Department of Pathology, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN 2Department of Computational Biology, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN 3Department of Immunology, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN 4Department of Immunology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15261 5Department of Transgenic Core Facility, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN 6Department of Biostatistics, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN 7Department of Biostatistics, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 8Institute for Genomic Medicine, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, OH 9Division of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology, New York University, New York, NY 10016, 10Division of Hematologic Pathology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 11Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 12Perlmutter Cancer Center, NYU-Langone Health, New York, NY 13ImmunoGen, Inc, Waltham, Massachusetts 14Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 15HARP Pharma Consulting, Mystic, CT 16University of Colorado School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital, Aurora CO 17Hematology and Bone Marrow Transplant Unit, Ospedale Papa Giovanni XXIII, Bergamo, Italy 18Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA 19Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network, Toronto, ON, Canada 20Hematology, Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerlem, Israel 21Abramson Cancer Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 22Division of Hematology, Department of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN 23Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 24Cancer Center, Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY 25Cytogenetics Laboratory, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center 26Division of Hematology-Oncology, University of Birmingham, Alabama 27Comprehensive Cancer Center, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 28University of Chicago Medical Center, Chicago, IL 29Department of Leukemia, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 30Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN 31Department of Oncology, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN 32Department of Pediatrics, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and the Helen Diller Family 33Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA The information on MedicalResearch.com is provided for educational purposes only, and is in no way intended to diagnose, cure, or treat any medical or other condition. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health and ask your doctor any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. In addition to all other limitations and disclaimers in this agreement, service provider and its third party providers disclaim any liability or loss in connection with the content provided on this website. Read the full article

#ASH18 #leukemia #StJudeResearch

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usnewsaggregator-blog · 7 years

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<em>The Atlantic</em> Daily: Not for Lack of Trying

New Post has been published on http://usnewsaggregator.com/the-atlantic-daily-not-for-lack-of-trying/

The Atlantic Daily: Not for Lack of Trying

What We’re Following

Zimbabwe’s Crisis: Robert Mugabe, the longtime leader of Zimbabwe, has been placed under house arrest by the country’s military in an apparent coup. Mugabe, who is 93, has refused for decades to cede political power; in the days before his ouster, he fired Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, prompting Mnangagwa’s supporters in the military to retaliate. Now, Zimbabwe may have a chance to install a more democratic government—but it depends on what military leaders do next.

Taxing Times: In order to pass their tax-reform bill under the rules of budget reconciliation, Republican senators are setting their proposed tax cuts for individuals to expire at the end of 2025. Cuts to corporate taxes, meanwhile, are being kept permanent—undercutting the party’s claim that the bill aims primarily to help middle-class families. The senators have also added the repeal of Obamacare’s individual-insurance mandate to the tax bill, in a risky effort to accomplish their two highest legislative priorities at once.

Roy Moore: In a press conference, the attorney for Roy Moore continued to deny the mounting allegations that the Republican Senate candidate from Alabama sexually abused and harassed teenagers when he was in his 30s. Multiple sitting lawmakers, as well as the Republican National Committee, have withdrawn their support for Moore, and sources close to his longtime champion Steve Bannon say the Breitbart News executive has been weighing whether to distance himself from Moore. Even so, Alabama’s election laws make it hard to replace or remove Moore as the GOP candidate, and his defenders risk turning sexual assault into a partisan issue.

—Rosa Inocencio Smith

Snapshot

Since its founding, The Atlantic has published more than 250 “cases”: about 200 arguments for, and 50 against, ideas and items from newspapers to cats. Check out an interactive list of them all—and submit your own “case”—here.

Evening Read

Democrats are shockingly unprepared to fight climate change, writes Robinson Meyer:

On the one hand, Democrats are the party of climate change … On the other hand, the Democratic Party does not have a plan to address climate change. This is true at almost every level of the policy-making process: It does not have a consensus bill on the issue waiting in the wings; it does not have a shared vision for what that bill could look like; and it does not have a guiding slogan—like “Medicare for all”—to express how it wants to stop global warming.

Many people in the party know that they want to do something about climate change, but there’s no agreement about what that something may be.

This is not for lack of trying. Democrats have struggled to formulate a post-Obama climate policy because substantive political obstacles stand in their way. They have not yet identified a mechanism that will make a dent in Earth’s costly, irreversible warming while uniting the many factions of their coalition. These problems could keep the party scrambling to face the climate crisis for years to come.

Keep reading here, as Robinson outlines the Democrats’ key obstacles to developing a climate policy.

What Do You Know … About Science, Technology, and Health?

A risky effort to save the vaquita from extinction went tragically wrong when one of the critically endangered marine mammals died in captivity. Meanwhile, a project to teach endangered birds raised in captivity about their natural predators is looking promising, though its method—near-death experiences—is ethically ambiguous. The good news for those concerned about extinction is that it’s unlikely to come by asteroid: The meteor that collided with Earth 65 million years ago had only a 13-percent chance of causing a mass die-out, so the dinosaurs may simply have been very unlucky—and hopefully we won’t be.

Can you remember the other key facts from this week’s science, tech, and health coverage? Test your knowledge below:

1. Beginning in the 1930s, “road trains” made it easier to ship goods through central ____________.

Scroll down for the answer, or find it here.

2. Ross 128 b, a newly discovered, Earth-size exoplanet, is only ____________ light-years away from Earth.

Scroll down for the answer, or find it here.

3. The ____________ movement encourages its members to be vulnerable with strangers by playing games such as Handshake and the Noticing Game.

Scroll down for the answer, or find it here.

—Rachel Gutman

Answers: australia / 11 / authentic-relating

Look Back

In honor of The Atlantic’s 160th anniversary, we’re sharing one article every day to mark each year of the magazine’s history. In 1867, a year before the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, Frederick Douglass urged Congress to defend the equal citizenship of black Americans:

Statesmen of America! beware what you do. The ploughshare of rebellion has gone through the land beam-deep. The soil is in readiness, and the seedtime has come. Nations, not less than individuals, reap as they sow. The dreadful calamities of the past few years came not by accident, nor unbidden, from the ground. You shudder to-day at the harvest of blood sown in the spring-time of the Republic by your patriot fathers …

This evil principle again seeks admission into our body politic. It comes now in shape of a denial of political rights to four million loyal colored people. The South does not now ask for slavery. It only asks for a large degraded caste, which shall have no political rights …

Statesmen, beware what you do. The destiny of unborn and unnumbered generations is in your hands.

Read more here.

Reader Response

Following Kurt Andersen expression of admiration for several Mormon politicians while acknowledging that he finds their religious beliefs “extreme and strange,” Hal Boyd takes issue with the casual mocking of Mormons:

Criticism about another’s beliefs is hard to separate from judgments about a person’s worth or intellectual capacities. But, ironically, it is often the very beliefs that Andersen and others criticize that have produced the prosocial Mormon behaviors so often praised …

This isn’t to suggest that beliefs or truth claims are off-limits from scrutiny or rigorous debate. Rather, it means that the link between behavior and belief should prompt greater engagement with actual religious teachings, instead of straw-man caricatures. It means trying to understand why a belief that seems implausible on its face is believed and lived by otherwise rational individuals. It means seeking to understand what it is about that given belief that tends to produce virtuous behavioral outcomes.

Read Boyd’s essay here.

Verbs

“Hell” escaped, influence limited, genes edited, cities changed.

Time of Your Life

Happy birthday to Patricia (a year younger than helicopters); to Wendy’s daughter Kim (twice the age of Harry Potter); to Carla’s good friend Mimi (13 years older than The Partridge Family); to Yolanda (the same age as Oprah Winfrey); and to Harvey (a year younger than Captain America).

Do you or a loved one have a birthday coming up? Sign up for a birthday shout-out here, and click here to explore the Timeline feature for yourself.

Meet The Atlantic Daily’s team here, and contact us here.

Did you get this newsletter from a friend? Sign yourself up here.

Original Article:

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tekmodetech · 7 years

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Woman says Roy Moore initiated sexual encounter when she was 14, he was 32

Leigh Corfman says she was 14 years old when an older man approached her outside a courtroom in Etowah County, Ala. She was sitting on a wooden bench with her mother, they both recall, when the man introduced himself as Roy Moore.

It was early 1979 and Moore — now the Republican nominee in Alabama for a U.S. Senate seat — was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. He struck up a conversation, Corfman and her mother say, and offered to watch the girl while her mother went inside for a child custody hearing.

“He said, ‘Oh, you don’t want her to go in there and hear all that. I’ll stay out here with her,’ ” says Corfman’s mother, Nancy Wells, 71. “I thought, how nice for him to want to take care of my little girl.”

This undated family photo shows Leigh Corfman with her mother, Nancy Wells, around 1979 when Corfman was about 14 years old. (Family Photo)

Alone with Corfman, Moore chatted with her and asked for her phone number, she says. Days later, she says, he picked her up around the corner from her house in Gadsden, drove her about 30 minutes to his home in the woods, told her how pretty she was and kissed her. On a second visit, she says, he took off her shirt and pants and removed his clothes. He touched her over her bra and underpants, she says, and guided her hand to touch him over his underwear.

“I wanted it over with — I wanted out,” she remembers thinking. “Please just get this over with. Whatever this is, just get it over.” Corfman says she asked Moore to take her home, and he did.

Two of Corfman’s childhood friends say she told them at the time that she was seeing an older man, and one says Corfman identified the man as Moore. Wells says her daughter told her about the encounter more than a decade later, as Moore was becoming more prominent as a local judge.

Aside from Corfman, three other women interviewed by The Washington Post in recent weeks say Moore pursued them when they were between the ages of 16 and 18 and he was in his early 30s, episodes they say they found flattering at the time, but troubling as they got older. None of the three women say that Moore forced them into any sort of relationship or sexual contact.

Wendy Miller says she was 14 and working as a Santa’s helper at the Gadsden Mall when Moore first approached her, and 16 when he asked her on dates, which her mother forbade. Debbie Wesson Gibson says she was 17 when Moore spoke to her high school civics class and asked her out on the first of several dates that did not progress beyond kissing. Gloria Thacker Deason says she was an 18-year-old cheerleader when Moore began taking her on dates that included bottles of Mateus Rosé wine. The legal drinking age in Alabama was 19.

Of the four women, the youngest at the time was Corfman, who is the only one who says she had sexual contact with Moore that went beyond kissing. She says they did not have intercourse.

In a written statement, Moore denied the allegations.

“These allegations are completely false and are a desperate political attack by the National Democrat Party and the Washington Post on this campaign,” Moore, now 70, said.

The campaign said in a subsequent statement that if the allegations were true they would have surfaced during his previous campaigns, adding “this garbage is the very definition of fake news.”

After The Post published this story Thursday afternoon, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and a handful of other GOP senators said Moore must step aside if Corfman’s account is true.

According to campaign reports, none of the women has donated to or worked for Moore’s Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, or his rivals in the Republican primary, including Sen. Luther Strange, whom he defeated this fall in a runoff election.

Corfman, 53, who works as a customer service representative at a payday loan business, says she has voted for Republicans in the past three presidential elections, including for Donald Trump in 2016. She says she thought of confronting Moore personally for years, and almost came forward publicly during his first campaign for state Supreme Court in 2000, but decided against it. Her two children were still in school then and she worried about how it would affect them. She also was concerned that her background — three divorces and a messy financial history — might undermine her credibility.

“There is no one here that doesn’t know that I’m not an angel,” Corfman says, referring to her home town of Gadsden.

Corfman described her story consistently in six interviews with The Post. The Post confirmed that her mother attended a hearing at the courthouse in February 1979 through divorce records. Moore’s office was down the hall from the courtroom.

Neither Corfman nor any of the other women sought out The Post. While reporting a story in Alabama about supporters of Moore’s Senate campaign, a Post reporter heard that Moore allegedly had sought relationships with teenage girls. Over the ensuing three weeks, two Post reporters contacted and interviewed the four women. All were initially reluctant to speak publicly but chose to do so after multiple interviews, saying they thought it was important for people to know about their interactions with Moore. The women say they don’t know one another.

“I have prayed over this,” Corfman says, explaining why she decided to tell her story now. “All I know is that I can’t sit back and let this continue, let him continue without the mask being removed.”

This account is based on interviews with more than 30 people who said they knew Moore between 1977 and 1982, when he served as an assistant district attorney for Etowah County in northern Alabama, where he grew up.

****

Moore was 30 and single when he joined the district attorney’s office, his first government job after attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, serving in Vietnam, graduating from law school and working briefly as a lawyer in private practice in Gadsden, the county seat.

By his account, chronicled in his book “So Help Me God,” Moore spent his time as a prosecutor convicting “murderers, rapists, thieves and drug pushers.” He writes that it was “around this time that I fashioned a plaque of The Ten Commandments on two redwood tablets.”

“I believed that many of the young criminals whom I had to prosecute would not have committed criminal acts if they had been taught these rules as children,” Moore writes.

Outside work, Moore writes that he spent his free time building rooms onto a mobile home in Gallant, a rural area about 25 miles west of Gadsden.

According to colleagues and others who knew him at the time, Moore was rarely seen socializing outside work. He spent one season coaching the Gallant Girls, a softball team that his teenage sister had joined, said several women who played on the team. He spent time working out at the Gadsden YMCA, according to people who encountered him there. And he often walked, usually alone, around the newly opened Gadsden Mall — 6 feet tall and well-dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt, say several women who worked there at the time.

Corfman describes herself as a little lost — “a typical 14-year-old kid of a divorced family” — when she says she first met Moore that day in 1979 outside the courtroom. She says she felt flattered that a grown man was paying attention to her.

“He was charming and smiley,” she says.

After her mother went into the courtroom, Corfman says, Moore asked her where she went to school, what she liked to do and whether he could call her sometime. She remembers giving him her number and says he called not long after. She says she talked to Moore on her phone in her bedroom, and they made plans for him to pick her up at Alcott Road and Riley Street, around the corner from her house.

“I was kind of giddy, excited, you know? An older guy, you know?” Corfman says, adding that her only sexual experience at that point had been kissing boys her age.

She says that it was dark and cold when he picked her up, and that she thought they were going out to eat. Instead, she says, he drove her to his house, which seemed “far, far away.”

“I remember the further I got from my house, the more nervous I got,” Corfman says.

She remembers an unpaved driveway. She remembers going inside and him giving her alcohol on this visit or the next, and that at some point she told him she was 14. She says they sat and talked. She remembers that Moore told her she was pretty, put his arm around her and kissed her, and that she began to feel nervous and asked him to take her home, which she says he did.

Soon after, she says, he called again, and picked her up again at the same spot.

“This was a new experience, and it was exciting and fun and scary,” Corfman says, explaining why she went back. “It was just like this roller-coaster ride you’ve not been on.”

She says that Moore drove her back to the same house after dark, and that before long she was lying on a blanket on the floor. She remembers Moore disappearing into another room and coming out with nothing on but “tight white” underwear.

She remembers that Moore kissed her, that he took off her pants and shirt, and that he touched her through her bra and underpants. She says that he guided her hand to his underwear and that she yanked her hand back.

“I wasn’t ready for that — I had never put my hand on a man’s penis, much less an erect one,” Corfman says.

She remembers thinking, “I don’t want to do this” and “I need to get out of here.” She says that she got dressed and asked Moore to take her home, and that he did.

The legal age of consent in Alabama, then and now, is 16. Under Alabama law in 1979, and today, a person who is at least 19 years old who has sexual contact with someone between 12 and 16 years old has committed sexual abuse in the second degree. Sexual contact is defined as touching of sexual or intimate parts. The crime is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail.

The law then and now also includes a section on enticing a child younger than 16 to enter a home with the purpose of proposing sexual intercourse or fondling of sexual and genital parts. That is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

In Alabama, the statute of limitations for bringing felony charges involving sexual abuse of a minor in 1979 would have run out three years later, and the time frame for filing a civil complaint would have ended when the alleged victim turned 21, according to Child USA, a nonprofit research and advocacy group at the University of Pennsylvania.

Corfman never filed a police report or a civil suit.

She says that after their last encounter, Moore called again, but that she found an excuse to avoid seeing him. She says that at some point during or soon after her meetings with Moore, she told two friends in vague terms that she was seeing an older man.

Betsy Davis, who remains friendly with Corfman and now lives in Los Angeles, says she clearly remembers Corfman talking about seeing an older man named Roy Moore when they were teenagers. She says Corfman described an encounter in which the older man wore nothing but tight white underwear. She says she was firm with Corfman that seeing someone as old as Moore was out of bounds.

“I remember talking to her and telling her it’s not a good idea,” Davis says. “Because we were so young.”

A second friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing her job, has a similar memory of a teenage Corfman telling her about seeing an older man.

After talking to her friends, Corfman says, she began to feel that she had done something wrong and kept it a secret for years.

“I felt responsible,” she says. “I felt like I had done something bad. And it kind of set the course for me doing other things that were bad.”

She says that her teenage life became increasingly reckless with drinking, drugs, boyfriends, and a suicide attempt when she was 16.

As the years went on, Corfman says, she did not share her story about Moore partly because of the trouble in her life. She has had three divorces and financial problems. While living in Arizona, she and her second husband started a screen-printing business that fell into debt. They filed for bankruptcy protection three times, once in 1991 with $139,689 in unpaid claims brought by the Internal Revenue Service and other creditors, according to court records.

In 2005, Corfman paid a fine for driving a boat without lights. In 2010, she was working at a convenience store when she was charged with a misdemeanor for selling beer to a minor. The charge was dismissed, court records show.

****

This undated photo shows Gloria Thacker Deason when she was about 18. (Family photo)

The three other women who spoke to The Post say that Moore asked them on dates when they were between 16 and 18 and he was in his early 30s.

Gloria Thacker Deason says she was 18 and Moore was 32 when they met in 1979 at the Gadsden Mall, where she worked at the jewelry counter of a department store called Pizitz. She says she was attending Gadsden State Community College and still living at home.

“My mom was really, really strict and my curfew was 10:30 but she would let me stay out later with Roy,” says Deason, who is now 57 and lives in North Carolina. “She just felt like I would be safe with him. . . . She thought he was good husband material.”

Deason says that they dated off and on for several months and that he took her to his house at least two times. She says their physical relationship did not go further than kissing and hugging.

“He liked Eddie Rabbitt and I liked Freddie Mercury,” Deason says, referring to the country singer and the British rocker.

She says that Moore would pick her up for dates at the mall or at college basketball games, where she was a cheerleader. She remembers changing out of her uniform before they went out for dinners at a pizzeria called Mater’s, where she says Moore would order bottles of Mateus Rosé, or at a Chinese restaurant, where she says he would order her tropical cocktails at a time when she believes she was younger than 19, the legal drinking age.

“If Mother had known that, she would have had a hissy fit,” says Deason, who says she turned 19 in May 1979, after she and Moore started dating.

This undated family photo shows Wendy Miller around the time she was 16. (Family photo)

Around the same time that Deason says she met Moore at the jewelry counter, Wendy Miller says that Moore approached her at the mall, where she would spend time with her mom, who worked at a photo booth there. Miller says this was in 1979, when she was 16.

She says that Moore’s face was familiar because she had first met him two years before, when she was dressed as an elf and working as a Santa’s helper at the mall. She says that Moore told her she looked pretty, and that two years later, he began asking her out on dates in the presence of her mother at the photo booth. She says she had a boyfriend at the time, and declined.

Her mother, Martha Brackett, says she refused to grant Moore permission to date her 16-year-old daughter.

“I’d say, ‘You’re too old for her . . . let’s not rob the cradle,’ ” Brackett recalls telling Moore.

Miller, who is now 54 and still lives in Alabama, says she was “flattered by the attention.”

“Now that I’ve gotten older,” she says, “the idea that a grown man would want to take out a teenager, that’s disgusting to me.”

This undated family photo shows Debbie Wesson Gibson when she was about 17. (Family photo)

Debbie Wesson Gibson says that she was 17 in the spring of 1981 when Moore spoke to her Etowah High School civics class about serving as the assistant district attorney. She says that when he asked her out, she asked her mother what she would say if she wanted to date a 34-year-old man. Gibson says her mother asked her who the man was, and when Gibson said “Roy Moore,” her mother said, “I’d say you were the luckiest girl in the world.”

Among locals in Gadsden, a town of about 47,000 back then, Moore “had this godlike, almost deity status — he was a hometown boy made good,” Gibson says, “West Point and so forth.”

Gibson says that they dated for two to three months, and that he took her to his house, read her poetry and played his guitar. She says he kissed her once in his bedroom and once by the pool at a local country club.

“Looking back, I’m glad nothing bad happened,” says Gibson, who now lives in Florida. “As a mother of daughters, I realize that our age difference at that time made our dating inappropriate.”

****

By 1982, Moore was by his own account in his book causing a stir in the district attorney’s office for his willingness to criticize the workings of the local legal system. He convened a grand jury to look into what he alleged were funding problems in the sheriff’s office. In response, Moore writes, the state bar association investigated him for going against the advice of the district attorney, an inquiry that was dismissed.

Soon after, Moore quit and began his first political campaign for the county’s circuit court judge position. He lost overwhelmingly, and left Alabama shortly thereafter, heading to Texas, where he says in his book that he trained as a kickboxer, and to Australia, where he says he lived on a ranch for a year wrangling cattle.

He returned to Gadsden in 1984 and went into private law practice. In 1985, at age 38, he married Kayla Kisor, who was 24. The two are still married.

A few years later, Moore began his rise in Alabama politics and into the national spotlight.

In 1992, he became a circuit court judge and hung his wooden Ten Commandments plaque in his courtroom.

In 2000, he was elected chief justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court, and he soon installed a 5,280-pound granite Ten Commandments monument in the judicial building.

In 2003, he was dismissed from the bench for ignoring a federal court order to remove the monument, and became known nationally as “The Ten Commandments Judge.”

Moore was again elected chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in 2012, and was again dismissed for ignoring a judicial order, this time for instructing probate judges not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

All of this has made Moore a hero to many Alabama voters, who consider him a stalwart Christian willing to stand up for their values. In a September Republican primary for the seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Moore defeated the appointed sitting senator, Luther Strange, who was backed by President Trump and other party leaders in Washington. Moore faces the Democratic nominee, Doug Jones, in a special election scheduled for Dec. 12.

On a visit home in the mid-1990s to see her mother and stepfather in Alabama, Corfman says, she saw Moore’s photo in the Gadsden Times.

“ ‘Mother, do you remember this guy?’ ” Wells says Corfman said at the time.

That’s when Corfman told her, Wells recalls. Her daughter said that not long after the court hearing in 1979, Moore took her to his house. Wells says that her daughter conveyed to her that Moore had behaved inappropriately.

“I was horrified,” Wells says.

Years later, Corfman says, she saw a segment about Moore on ABC News’s “Good Morning America.” She says she threw up.

There were times, Corfman says, she thought about confronting Moore. At one point during the late 1990s, she says, she became so angry that she drove to the parking lot outside Moore’s office at the county courthouse in Gadsden. She sat there for a while, she says, rehearsing what she might say to him.

“ ‘Remember me?’ ” she imagined herself saying.

Credit: WashingtonPost

The post Woman says Roy Moore initiated sexual encounter when she was 14, he was 32 appeared first on Tekvision.

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