Etcetera

Here are seven of this past month’s selections in our ongoing Black History Month and Women’s History Month series on films helmed by black women directors:

🌟 A Dry White Season (Euzhan Palcy, 1989): Made at the height of the anti-apartheid movement, Palcy’s furious and urgent political thriller remains a textbook case of directorial risk-taking. At its heart is the truth that change can only be brought about if we first open our eyes. 🌟 Eve’s Bayou (Kasi Lemmons, 1997): Lemmons’s masterful talent is evident in every luscious composition, swoon-worthy color, pitch-perfect performance, and bracing narrative turn as a Louisiana girl gains clarity on the world around her — and those entrusted to protect her from it. 🌟 Finding Christa (Camille Billops, 1991): In 1981, visual artist Billops reconnected with Christa, the daughter she gave up for adoption 20 years before. A decade after reuniting, Billops composed this rueful, docu-fictional examination of the difficult choices that define a life. 🌟 Free Angela and All Political Prisoners (Shola Lynch, 2012): Angela Davis put her intellect into revolutionary practice and brought her fight for freedom to the masses. Here, the scholar and prison abolitionist recounts a pivotal chapter, her courage and convictions undiminished. 🌟 Gideon’s Army (Dawn Porter, 2013): Porter is one of our most empathic nonfiction storytellers. Her debut movingly captures the warrior spirit of three indefatigable public defenders in Georgia as they weather heartbreaking losses and narrow victories, dejected but not yet broken. 🌟 Happy Birthday, Marsha! (Tourmaline, 2018): Tourmaline and co-director Sasha Wortzel commemorate history by treating it as a felt experience. As played by Mya Taylor and captured by Arthur Jafa, Marsha P. Johnson is again a living, breathing being resisting to a song all her own. 🌟 Hidden Memories (Jacqueline Frazier, 1977): Frazier evocatively experiments with sound, editing, image, and POV in this gutsy and unusual memory piece. As her protagonist recalls an unwanted teenage pregnancy, Frazier passes no judgment, honoring the sanctity of a woman’s choice.

Alejandra Atares. Cactus naranjas, 2018.

This bottle opener that shoots caps

recommend me places to visit while in Paris

Here’s a YouTube video that explains it too…

So from my limited understanding it would have to be really hot and humid to get a wet-bulb reading of 95°. On the National Weather Service Heat Index, at 80% humidity 95° feels like 136°

Not to panic though. We still have time but I really think it’s up to our youth to take control. Politically and environmentally. Trump just proposed to cut billions of dollars to NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Energy Department, AND the National Cancer Institute. These old rich bastards probably won’t even be alive when it goes down so they don’t care.

What I did not count on was a typhoon (Morakot) keeping humidity in the 95-99% range.

I had to sit down every minute I walked, even under a cloudy sky. It’s like trying to suck air through a towel soaked in bathwater. I was pouring sweat and it wasn’t evaporating at all because the air was saturated, which is the point of wet bulb temperature readings: if there’s no evaporation, sweating doesn’t cool you. At that temperature, neither does water; everything you drink is the same temperature you are. Staying still, not exerting yourself at all, only keeps it from getting worse; it does not get better. And the environment I was in only went to body temperature and cooled off to the high eighties (30°C) at night: as long as I didn’t move I’d be fine. We also had the privilege of functional technology, iced drinks: in a brownout that’s not an option.