Theres some hoopla happening on The Hill!

After years of anticipation and planning, construction has begun on Alabama A&Ms 132,000-square-foot event center and arena, Turner Constructions Huntsville office announced Thursday.

The new Alabama A&M University event center/arena will host sporting events, commencement exercises and other campus activities.

The new space will include an arena with a 6,000-person capacity, locker rooms, training rooms, an Alabama A&M athletic Hall of Fame, and a kitchen with the capability to provide meals for all events on campus.

The arena will host sporting events such as basketball and volleyball games, commencement exercises, and other university functions.

The center will provide the university with a much-needed facility where we can host major functions, such as commencements, convocations, our annual scholarship gala, and athletic events, said A&M President Andrew Hugine Jr. It will be a state-of-the-art facility just off of North Memorial Parkway, and we are thrilled to be making this addition for our students and the community, which will transform the landscape of North Huntsville.

The Alabama A&M University Athletics Hall of Fame will have a home in the new facility.

Turner is the construction management agent for the project. Under the CMa approach, the construction manager serves as an extension of the project owners staff and is responsible for construction management services, including advising, coordinating, and inspecting project design and construction, and competitively bidding the various construction components to trade contractors.

Turner will work with architecture firm Nola Van Peursem and engineering firms Moody Nolan (arena consultant); The EE Group (electrical engineer); Mims Engineering (mechanical/plumbing/fire protection); Johnson and Associates (civil engineer); LBYD (structural engineer); Camacho (food service); and Bostick Landscape Architects. The project is expected to be completed in the fall of 2022.

We are excited to partner with Alabama A&M on our fourth project together, said Tyce Hudson, project executive at Turner Construction Company in Huntsville. We have experienced a lot of success together and there is no doubt that this is going to be the best project yet.

It is going to be an excellent facility for Alabama A&M University and the community.

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Construction Begins on Alabama A&M Event Center and Arena - Huntsville Business Journal

The conditions seemed ripe for disaster.

Gusting Santa Ana winds had grounded water-dumping aircraft for hours, and flames were spreading across a tinder-dry fuel bed. Downwind sat a tangled maze of suburban streets where more than 80,000 people were ordered to evacuate.

Had this weeks Silverado fire began anywhere else, and at any other time, firefighters said it could have been the latest disaster in Californias busiest fire year on record a time when firefighting resources have been stretched perilously thin.

Firefighter Raymond Vasquez braves tall flames as he fights the advancing Silverado Fire fueled by Santa Ana winds at the 241 toll road and Portola Parkway in Irvine.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

But this latest fire started on the outskirts of master-planned Orange County, where the roads are smooth and wide, communities were built under the states most recent fire code and the largest regional firefighting force in the world was at the ready and just a phone call away.

Despite 45-mph gusts launching embers into the suburban sprawl, where cars sat bumper to bumper trying to flee the oncoming flames, not a single home was lost or seriously damaged. In the end, thanks to a semi-formal agreement among the regions biggest fire departments and the first-ever use of the worlds biggest, fastest water-dropping helicopter at night, crews were able to stand their ground, keeping the flames largely north of Portola Parkway, a major road that divides the subdivisions of Irvine from the backcountry.

In some ways, we got a little bit lucky, said Orange County Fire Chief Brian Fennessy.

In a year when firefighters have lost so many battles in part because the number of blazes has stretched firefighting resources this firefight and a second battle that began hours later in Yorba Linda could be considered successes, officials said.

When the Silverado fire began, about a third of Orange Countys firefighters were in their last hour of a two-day shift and were about to be replaced, in essence, putting twice as many firefighters at the ready than would typically be available, Fennessy said. As the chief headed to department headquarters down Portola Parkway that morning, he managed to come across the fire the moment it jumped the road and moved toward the subdivisions, giving commanders on-the-ground intel of where the fire was and how it was behaving.

An Orange County firefighter stands ready to defend a home as the Silverado fire approaches in an Orchard Hills neighborhood of Irvine.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

I just got off the phone with the [operations] chief, hes telling me the fire is still high up on the hill and right in front of me the fire is coming up the road, Fennessy said. Like so many of these fires, they show up so much faster than people think.

Fennessy pulled into the neighborhood and, along with one Irvine police officer, began urging residents to flee, he said. At one point the chief jumped out of his vehicle, grabbed a nearby fire extinguisher and put out a spot fire burning next to a home, video on his cellphone shows.

As authorities cleared out the neighborhoods, a surge of crews were headed into the area thanks to a pact reached among Orange, Los Angeles and Ventura counties and the city of Los Angeles. Fire chiefs in those districts had all agreed to help one another in dire situations, avoiding the states usual mutual aid system because its viewed as being slow to dispatch resources.

Fennessy reached out to his peers and within an hour of the call, had 25 engines racing to help. More crews flowed into the county in the following days. More than 2,200 firefighters arrived overall.

Had either of these fires erupted in August or September, when firefighters and equipment were busy battling record wildfires in the central and northern parts of the state, theres no telling what could have happened, Fennessy said. When the Blue Ridge fire broke out in the afternoon in Yorba Linda, commanders were able to quickly divert firefighters to the new threat. Only one home was destroyed, while seven others were damaged.

Orange County firefighters protect homes in the Orchard Hills neighborhood of Irvine.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

All of us were stunned that there were only two fires, Fennessy said. We dodged a bullet in Orange County.

Battling a wind-driven fire on the ground, and head-on, is a dangerous proposition, so hotshot crews worked the rear and sides of the fire to limit its spread while other firefighters took up positions in neighborhoods to protect homes from an onslaught of firebrands. Two hotshot crew members were critically burned in that initial attack on the fires flank and remain hospitalized.

Though aircraft were grounded for several hours in the morning, winds died down by the afternoon, according to National Weather Service data, and the aerial assault on the fires went into full swing. Air tankers caked the grass and shrub-covered hillsides with pink retardant while helicopters doused flare-ups with water even at night.

Southern California is an oddity in the world, you guys have a true air force down there, said Mel Ceccanti, a pilot and director of flight operations for Coulson Aviation, a firefighting aviation company that holds contracts around the world and has crews stationed in Orange County for a three-month period this year.

Orange County firefighters have to look away because of the hot wind, debris and approaching flames while defending homes in the Orchard Hills neighborhood of Irvine.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Throughout the first night of the Silverado fire, Ceccanti operated the companys retrofitted CH-47 Chinook, a beast of a helicopter used by the Army that can fly 200 mph and drop 3,000 gallons of water or retardant at once a payload on par with some fixed-wing tankers.

With night skies relatively clear and plenty of lakes and reservoirs in the area, Ceccanti was able to drop 47,000 gallons of water over four hours.

Its safe to say we dropped more water in Orange County than Orange County has ever had dropped, Ceccanti said.

Though the fire burned through bone-dry vegetation, Orange Countys landscape is markedly different from the terrain in Northern California a key advantage to firefighters.

Theres no timber-heavy forest to sustain fire for long periods of time, so while the light grass and shrubs can burn extremely hot and launch embers into the air, the fires go out just as fast as they begin, Fennessy said.

It burns so frickin quick, the ember cast can only last for so long, he said.

In retrospect, both Fennessy, who battled the 2007 firestorm in San Diego, and Ceccanti, who most recently flew over Australias massive bushfires, say the county caught a break this week. Had the fire reached Trabuco Canyon, it could have raged out of control as winds pushed it deeper into rugged terrain. Had the winds remained as strong as they were initially, aircraft wouldnt have been able to help.

We support ground firefighters, no matter how much you put on that fire, someone has to come through with a hose to put that fire out, Ceccanti said. If you bet the farm on aviation alone, you might catch yourself with your pants around your ankles.

As of Thursday, the Silverado fire had burned 13,390 acres and was 51% contained, and the Blue Ridge fire had burned 14,334 acres and was 39% contained. Most evacuations in the county were lifted in the afternoon.

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A rare victory in the OC during California's worst fire year - Los Angeles Times

In the 1980s, When Kevin Dahl first began visiting the Organ Pipe Cactus national monument in southern Arizona, the border was unmarked, save for a simple fence used to keep cattle from a ranch in the US from crossing into Mexico. In those days, park rangers would call in their lunch orders at a diner located just across the border.

Since then, a 30ft steel bollard wall has replaced the old barbed wire fence at Organ Pipe. The towering steel barrier cuts through the Unesco reserve like a rust-colored suture.

Its this incredible scar, said Kevin Dahl, a senior program manager at the National Parks Conservation Association, describing the wall that snakes its way through a pristine track of Sonoran desert, dwarfing the giant cacti that give this desert its name. What was once a connected landscape is now a dissected one.

That dissection is now a reality across much of the US border. It is a landscape increasingly defined by walls, roads, fences and associated border infrastructure that is fragmenting critically protected habitats, desecrating sacred cultural sites and threatening numerous endangered species in some of the most biodiverse and unique places in North America.

Border construction has had a huge impact on some of the most remote and biodiverse landscapes on the continent, said Dan Millis, a campaigner at the Sierra Club. The Trump administration is taking it even further.

Four days before the US election, this is how the new border wall has affected four distinct wilderness areas.

Donald Trump entered the Oval Office with a campaign promise to build 450 miles of a new border wall system a combination of infrastructure including bollard barriers, roads, perimeter lighting, enforcement cameras and other technology even amid the pandemic, has continued at an increasing pace. According to Customs and Border Protection, 400 miles of the border wall system has been completed so far, with physical barriers from 18-30ft tall. If he wins, he may well aspire to wall off the border in its entirety.

Construction is occurring mostly on public, often protected lands, because the Department of Homeland Security has sweeping powers to waive environmental protection laws, like the Endangered Species Act, which would otherwise bar construction.

Protected lands belong to the government because they are so unique and fragile. Because of that same fact, they are being demolished, said Laiken Jordahl, borderlands campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity, noting the relative ease of border wall construction on public lands compared with the lengthy process of taking private property.

The eastern terminus is the Lower Rio Grande Valley wildlife refuge in south-eastern Texas 100,000 acres of lush protected lands that US Fish and Wildlife have spent four decades restoring. The 135 individual tracts of land, described as a string of pearls connecting various habitats, extend along the 275 miles of the Rio Grande River before entering the Gulf of Mexico. It is one of the most biodiverse places in the country, supporting 700 species of terrestrial animals such as the jaguarundi, a wild cat, as well as myriad plants and a vibrant ecotourism industry.

The landscape is now being bisected by a 15ft concrete base surmounted by 18ft steel bollards.

Its going to make it that much harder to preserve the very little that is left of the ecosystem, said Norma Herrera of the Rio Grande Equal Voice Network

This is some of the best birding in the world, said Elise Wort, a tourist who traveled from her California home to see some of the 500-plus bird species that reside in the valley. The border is an environmental and human disaster.

Much of the construction in the south-western border states is occurring in remote and mountainous terrain. Critics say it makes little sense to construct a physical barrier in these areas because most are lightly trafficked corridors for unauthorized migration, and they are also crucial habitat for animals. Ninety-three endangered and threatened animal species are found in the borderlands.

One such area is the Madrean Sky Islands, rugged linked mountain ranges in New Mexico and Arizona that boast the highest biodiversity in inland North America.

Its like going from the climate on the Mexican border to Canada, said Emily Burns, program director of the Sky Island Alliance, with ecosystems ranging from subtropical lowlands and deserts to temperate mountaintops.

The 30ft steel wall and stadium lighting are adversely affecting the ocelot, javelina, Mexican grey wolf and the North American jaguar, the latter of which has made a surprising comeback in the US since being hunted to extinction in the late 1980s, according to Burnss organization.

We dont expect there will be any hope for the jaguars recovery in the US if [the border is] completed, said Burns, because it will cut off the main Jaguar population in Mexico from that in the US.

Further east in Arizona, new sections of steel bollard wall are being built in the largest area of protected Sonoran landscape. At the San Bernardino national wildlife refuge, groundwater pumping to mix concrete for the wall is draining a crucial wetland and imperiling four threatened or endangered species for which San Bernardino was created to protect. Government documents obtained by environmental groups revealed that the US Fish and Wildlife Service repeatedly warned the Department of Homeland Security about the imminent threat to these species. Their warning went unheeded.

I started my career as a biologist at the Refuge, and 20 years later, I came full circle to witness its destruction, said Myles Trapenhagan, borderlands program coordinator for the Wildlands Network, an environmental group.

Construction during the Trump administration has severely affected tribal lands along the border, leading to a growing protest movement in response to desecration of sacred sites and barred access to ancestral lands.

Our tribal sovereignty is not being upheld, said Jacelle Ramon-Sauberan, a doctoral candidate of Indian studies at the University of Arizona and a member of the Tohono Oodham Nation, who lands have been split by the wall, stifling cross-border cultural and religious events between Oodham members in Mexico and the US. I dont think it ever has been when it comes to the border wall or the border in general.

At Organ Pipe Cactus national monument in Arizona, part of the ancestral lands of the Tohono Oodham nation, a particular flashpoint has been the impact of the border wall on the sacred Quitobaquito springs. A recent analysis by data scientists at the investigative journalism website Bellingcat found that water levels at Quitobaquito springs are declining at unprecedented rates, with border wall construction a likely culprit because crews have tapped the underlying aquifer for water to make concrete.

On 12 October Indigenous Peoples Day Oodham members and their allies blockaded the highway passing through Organ Pipe. Border officers responded with force, including teargas, arresting eight in the process.

Earlier this year, construction crews used dynamite to blow up Monument hill in Organ Pipe to make way for the wall, disturbing Oodham burial grounds and uprooting numerous Organ Pipe and Saguaro Cactus scattered along the service roads, which evoked felled green monoliths.

A recent decision by a federal appeals court has provided at least one win for border wall critics, and a blow to Trumps ambitions to complete the 450 miles of the wall by years end.

The ninth circuit court of appeals ruled that the presidents use of emergency powers to allocate military funds for border wall construction was illegal. Even so, construction will continue on projects where military money was not used including the four described here.

This wall has done nothing more than divide our communities, disrespect our values, and inflict enormous environmental harm, said the Arizona congressman Ral Grijalva, whose district includes Organ Pipe. Its time for wall construction to end once and for all.

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'An incredible scar': the harsh toll of Trump's 400-mile wall through national parks - The Guardian

To celebrate Wightman Parks reopening, Councilperson Erika Strassburger slid down the brand-new slide built into the hillside embankment right into the park.

Councilperson Erika Strassburger going down the slide at Wightman Park. Photo courtesy of the City of Pittsburgh.

After four years of work, Wightman Park in Squirrel Hill has reopened to the public at 5612 Solway Street. What was once an under-utilized two-acre ball field with deteriorated playground equipment now features an inclusive new playground and a host of new amenities.

The project also attempts to solve stormwater drainage problems that have plagued nearby neighborhoods.

This park should be a model for all the parks in Pittsburgh, said Strassburger at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Wednesday afternoon. And while this park can and will welcome everyone regardless of age, ability, interest and neighborhood, I truly believe that every neighborhood deserves a park this wonderful.

The park prioritizes inclusion for children of different abilities along with a focus on sustainability, recreation and beautiful design, she adds.

There are distinct play areas, one for toddlers ages 2 to 5 and another for children ages 5 to 12, with an array of slides, tunnels, netting and other climbing equipment.

Theres also a new covered wooden picnic pavilion open to the community along with a walking track and a half-court basketball hoop.

In addition, the park also features a large green space, suitable for everything from frisbee to soccer, baseball and softball. New family restroom facilities are included with an adult changing table, the first in a public space in Pittsburgh.

The inclusion of an adult changing table was an important request from the community, says Senior Project Landscape Architect Andrea Ketzel with the City of Pittsburgh Department of Public Works. We heard from parents and caretakers of children with differing physical abilities. They communicated the struggles that they face in a public setting when caring for their children who have outgrown a standard baby changing table. The table will allow parents and caretakers to provide for their grown children or adult family members in a safe, sanitary and private location.

Wightman Park playground. Photo courtesy of the City of Pittsburgh.

Artists Oreen Cohen and Alison Zapata of OOA Designs created metal sculptures, inlaid with colorful panes of glass that merge the forms of falling water and pollinating insects, that are child-safe and act as benches.

OOA Designs worked with the children of the nearby Carriage House to create drawings of butterflies, bugs and natural elements for inspiration in the sculptures, says Ketzel.

The park doubles as a massive stormwater retention project, featuring green infrastructure such as rain gardens and plantings along with retention tanks beneath the park and additional stormwater storage capacity under the sidewalks. The city estimates that this will capture two million gallons of stormwater every year, and provide 50,000 cubic feet of storage.

This site is very unique in that it sits at a low point in the topography, says Ketzel. When you visit the park, you might notice that the site is bowl-shaped and the perfect place to hold water. Many years ago, it held water permanently and was used as a skating rink in the wintertime. Early in the public engagement process, we received complaints from neighbors about their basements flooding and engaged with PWSA (Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority) to collaborate on a park renovation that also included stormwater management.

The next phase of the stormwater project will involve improving drainage along local streets and directing stormwater towards the park. This will keep it out of peoples basements, and sewer overflows into the Monongahela River. The improvements will feature stormwater bump out planters at intersections, and channel drains that convey stormwater under the street between planters.

The Wightman Park project was a joint effort between the City of Pittsburgh ($3 million) and the PWSA ($2 million). The funding came from their capital budgets, as well as state, federal and local grants, says Ketzel.

squirrel hillWightman Park

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Renovated Wightman Park in Squirrel Hill reopens as 'a model for all the parks in Pittsburgh' - NEXTpittsburgh

The three storefronts from 112114 S. Madison St.comprise what is historically known as the Hill Block (Images of the Past, Feb. 1, 2017), and the buildingshave been part of Bloomfields business history for more than150 years. The question now facing community leaders is how long two of the three business fronts will remain part of the citys economic landscape.

About three years after the close of the Civil War, the Hill Block was constructed as a unified structure that was divided into three storefronts.The block isseen above in a vignette from the 1869 Bloomfield birds-eye lithograph by August Koch.

During the century and a halfit has occupied a prominent location in Bloomfield commerce, the building has weathered the transition from horse-and-buggy to the Model T, and then to todays cars and trucks. The transition has gone beyond just the mode of transportation. The changes include moving from wooden walks and dirt streets to concrete sidewalks and paved streets. Over the decades, there have been changes in buildings themselves. The imposing facade was minimized when the raised central parapet was removed, probably at the end of the 19th century. The individual store facades werepainted to look unique,and 112 S. MadisonSt.,lostits arched windows and arcaded ground floor entry.

Various businesses occupied 112 S. Madison from dry goods, hardware and drug stores. Many people will remember it as the West Side Grill and News Stand. The store at 113 S. Madison had been a grocery store since at least 1883. Tudo and Hazel Nardini operated Nardinis Model Market at this addressandlived above the store. Hazel was later mayor of Bloomfield. The connection to people connected to the citys administration does not stop with Hazel. Councilman Jake Bohis great-grandfather, Mark Henson, had his grocery store at this address,too, in the 1930s.

Two other buildings in the vignette are still standing today:108 S. Madison, the 3-story building, lost its top floor in a 1917 fire thatresulted in the facade being remodeled, and itnow houses Making Memories. The building at far right, 107 S. Madison, is the home of CJs Family Restaurant.

Rudy Evans | revans1953@gmail.com

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Images of the Past: Hill Block, 1869 | Columnists | bdemo.com - bdemo.com

Come autumn, as a way of defying the back-to-school doldrums brought on by a rapid shortening of the days, and to mark what feels like the true start of a year, I go on a pilgrimage. This year, more than ever, I crave the slow and steady rhythm of a walking pace, big skies, and cleansing wind and rain to shake off the cobwebs of a long confinement and to break the domestic routines of daily life. I want to connect to my own pumping heart and the natural world around me, re-oxygenate stale lungs and feel the muscles in my legs stretch and work.

Since Im looking for uplift, there is nowhere for me thats more rejuvenating and exhilarating than the uplands of Golden Cap in Dorset, the highest point on the south coast of England. In the rinsed light of early autumn, it glows, as if just-hatched, new-born. I have earmarked the little church of St Candida and the Holy Cross, behind these soaring coastal cliffs, tucked into the valleys of Marshwood Vale, a landscape that folds gently in on itself like ribbons of thickened cream. It is part of a medieval pilgrimage trail that connected Bridport to Axminster, containing one of only two shrines with relics of a saint still existing in England (the other being Edward the Confessors shrine at Westminster Abbey), somehow miraculously surviving the Reformation and the civil war. St Wite, martyred by marauding Viking hordes, attracts the hopeless and hopeful sick who journey to her quaint limestone shrine.

Pilgrimage as a cure, pilgrimage for healing: the concept is as old as these hills that were crisscrossed with wayfarer and pilgrimage trails almost since the beginning of our civilisation. But the past 50 years, in particular, have seen a global revival of interest in the idea of pilgrimage; the eternal search for spiritual and physical succour dovetailing with todays urgent calling for holistic meaning. It satisfies our hankering for slow over instant gratification, and offers an alternative, drug-free route to emotional and physical wellbeing. No surprise then that numbers increase year on year at the famous Camino de Santiago de Compostela trail, almost 350,000 recorded pilgrims last year, while more than 2m went on the Hajj in 2019.

In early March, with the world spinning on its axis, I was instinctively drawn to the pagan, mysterious, breast-like form of Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, off the Ridgeway, the oldest pilgrimage route in England. The perfect curve of the mound rose high above the flooded plains and I scaled it, in the horizontal rain, wading through treacle mud, reflecting that endurance is part of life, as it is part of any pilgrimage. Making a days circuit of the Neolithic standing stones and pagan burial sanctuaries seemed a very symbolic and purposeful way of processing the seismic changes that were unfolding. It was as if the very unknowability of Silbury helped me to find mental clarity, providing guidance as the tumultuous turn of world events shifted my own sense of self.

Sometimes when people look for a new inner direction in their lives the most sensible and simple approach is to be found in an outer direction, says Dr Guy Hayward, of the British Pilgrimage Trust. With pilgrimage you literally walk a physical path, have a clear goal your destination and have a means of reaching it: walking. The simplicity of this tangible endeavour may be the secret that many need to know in order to find that inner-direction that so many of us seek.

A walk in nature calms the psyche and eases depression

With no more than a pair of sturdy boots and a sense of purpose, on a simple physical and psychological level, the very act of walking, the rhythm of putting one foot in front of the other, of matching your breathing to your pace, in the fresh air, is soothing.

A 2015 study by the American National Academy of Science summarised that a 90-minute walk in nature calms the psyche, eases depression and feeds creative juices. Walking has been further proven to reduce blood pressure, lower blood sugar levels and improves concentration and energy. Unlike hiking, which is purely a physical challenge, the activity of a ritual walk, the thinking footfall as writer Robert Macfarlane describes it, encourages you to savour the moment and the resonance of each place. Its finding pleasure and purpose in the act of slow.

So, after the easing of lockdown, I celebrated with a British Pilgrimage Trust route, via app, that guided me from the city of Wells, to the iconic pilgrimage landmark of Glastonbury Tor. I was drawn by their description of ley lines, Green Men, leaping water, fire-breathing dragons and angels in high places. I followed their counsel to pause, breathe and interact with the landscape; throwing stones into the holy wells, offering blessings at the foot of sacred trees, leaning into the branches and feeling the bark beneath my hands. My venture here felt like something quite separate from a ramble on a hill in my own backyard; a symbolic gesture of something meaningful and profound.

We came home sore of foot, butwith lighter hearts

I recognise that my private pilgrimages, which bookended lockdown, were very personal and solitary quests for direction and a sense of wholeness and wellbeing in a fractured world. Yet it should not be forgotten that social interaction can be the most memorable source of influence in a pilgrimage. As a way of taking the pulse of place and its people, pilgrimage is a great way to travel. Traditionally, it has always been a true social leveller, as Chaucer has so vividly described.

On my various holy trails around the globe, the inevitable spontaneous mixing with strangers has been a singular takeaway. I have met down-and-outs and dreamers, strivers and shysters, hippies and Alpha achievers, and even a future lover, all as varied and as interesting as the swindling millers, virtuous martyrs and libidinous wives in the Canterbury Tales. Climbing Adams Peak in Sri Lanka on New Year, and watching tantric ritual dances and seeking the head lamas blessing at the Mani Rimdu festival in Nepal with its medieval atmosphere of beer, bribery and bride-bartering, the communality, and festival vibe is joyfully infectious, the social interaction uplifting.

A few years ago, I was wrung-out emotionally in the wake of my mothers death and at a kind of crossroads in my life. Not knowing which way to take my career, unable to make any sane decision about the most trivial things, even what colour to paint the bedroom, I decided to join an organised pilgrimage in Shikoku, one of the less visited islands of Japan. The mythological landscape is part of a route made sacred by Kb-Daishi, founder of Shingon Buddhism in the 8th century. I hoped it would help me, not only get under the skin of this indomitable landscape and Japans rich, storied past, but also to find the something that was missing, the key that would reconnect me to myself. After all, extending ones horizons is a fundamental human instinct, a fact that made lockdown so challenging.

I invited my sister and we piggybacked on to a jolly coachload of white robed henro, or pilgrims, for a few days, following the same slippery forest paths to our destination-shrines. We entered into the convivial spirit of their rituals: purifying at the water troughs, throwing a coin into a tray, lighting incense, ringing the giant bell, hitting the gong, chanting the Heart Sutra. Each step had its own resonance, like notes on a score sheet. They rose and fell.

Over tricky, stony, maple leaf-strewn paths, trodden down comfortingly over centuries by so many pilgrims before, the act of walking and talking out our grievances and problems among our uncomprehending fellow pilgrims, without having to maintain constant eye contact, was conducive. My sister and I successfully aired our hopes and fears, argued and cried, and came home, sore of foot, but with lighter hearts and soaring spirts.

We display the mementos of the journey conical hats and staff, journals full of shrine stamps with humour, but never underestimating that these are material symbols of the transformative power and healing trajectory of pilgrimage.

Contact British Pilgrimage Trust for organised pilgrimages in the UK (britishpilgrimage.org). Britains Pilgrimage Places by Nick Mayhew Smith and Guy Hayward is published by Lifestyle Press at 19.99

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In troubled times, a ritual walk can clear the mind and soothe the soul - The Guardian

Billed as the most important David Hockney landscape to ever appear at auction, the British artists Nichols Canyon went on view in London on Thursday ahead of its sale.

The 1980 landscape is the star lot of Phillips 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York on December 7 and is estimated to sell for $35 million.

Nichols Canyon is considered Hockneys first mature landscape. It marked the artists return to California and to painting following a hiatus in the 1970s during which he focused on photography.

The paintings counterpart Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio, is held in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

It is a very rare and pretty unique painting in his career, according to Phillips Global Chairwoman Cheyenne Westphal.

The canyon was very much part of his daily life. He was living up the hill and driving down the hill to his studio and this journey every day, several times, became part of his self, as he says.

He started it with a wonderful squiggly line and then created this extraordinary California landscape around it with the swimming pool, the houses, just the lusciousness of it all.

The painting has been held in a private U.S. collection since 1982.

In 2018, 83-year-old Hockneys Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) from 1972 sold for $90.3 million at Christies in New York, smashing the record for the highest price ever paid at auction for a work by a living artist.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text.)

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Hockney masterpiece goes on view ahead of auction - Hindustan Times

Reading Time: 4 minutesThe rugged land of Broken Hill, NSW. Photo: pxfuel.com

I dont think that I am alone in feeling a strong urge to travel after working from home for many months. Perhaps we always want what we cant have.

Whilst some State borders are now opening up, my wife and I really recently succumbed to the urge to travel by driving out to Broken Hill which is about as far as it is possible to travel without leaving New South Wales.

What I found over the ten days of that journey was not just an extraordinary variety and diversity of climatic conditions and landscapes but a demonstration of the resilience and fortitude of Australians and the magnificence of Gods creation.

It brought to mind these words from Psalm 65:7-8,11-13(NJB):

The nations are in uproar, in panic those who live at the ends of the earth;Your miracles bring shouts of joy to the gateways of morning and evening.You crown the year with your generosity, richness seeps from your tracks,The pastures of the desert grow moist, the hillsides are wrapped in joy.The meadows are covered with flocks, the valleys clothed with wheat,They shout and sing for joy.

There would be few states on earth with the range of weather and atmosphere of New South Wales.

Crossing the mountains for our first stay in Millthorpe near Orange we were confronted by a snow fall interspersed with a rain which seemed to fall horizontally.

Our time in those beautiful vineyards began with mornings just above freezing. From there we travelled hundreds of kilometres to the old copper mining town of Cobar.

The landscape on that journey moved from the fertile to the red earth of the Outback.

Cobar is a town built by a mining site.

Although currently inaccessible, the remains of the original mines and what would once have been molten slag now spread across the earth like a Martian landscape is quite extraordinary.

Travelling from Cobar to Broken Hill is a mere 500 kilometres or so.

The Outback was surprisingly colourful with vast fields of purple, white and yellow desert flowers.

There is also something quintessentially modern Australian about an isolated truck stop in the Outback serving an excellent long black.

Any Australian who has travelled by road will be familiar with the sad sight of wallabies and kangaroos hit by vehicles ,but as you move into the Outback these are interspersed with dingoes.

Broken Hill is well worth the travel time and not just for the experience of the journey itself.

The fact that Broken Hill the Silver City is a mining town is evident as you arrive.

The town is built next to a massive mound of a mining site.

Although quite small there is much to do and much to surprise.

The extraordinary quality, size and variety of the minerals which have been extracted here is well presented in the Albert Kersten Mining and Minerals Museum.

The human cost of extracting these resources is powerfully evidenced by the Line of Lode Lookout and Miners Memorial which can be seen from most parts of the city.

This memorial contains the names of more than a century of lives lost and a stark and simple recording of the facts of each of those tragedies.

Perhaps it is the unique richness of the landscape where red earth contrast with richly coloured desert flowers and wild emus and goats can be seen along the roadside but the area around Broken Hill has also long been a centre of artistic endeavour.

The most famous exponents were the Brushmen of the Bush: Pro Hart, Eric Minchin, Jack Absalom, John Pickup and Hugh Schulz.

There are some good examples of their work in the Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery and larger collections of works by Hart and Absalom in their galleries.

Fortunately, the Pro Hart Gallery has sufficient works to challenge any view of his work as one dimensional.

His displayed works cover existentialism, duplicity, politics, religion and anonymity.

If only the gallery had more space.

A sculpture park of his works is opposite the gallery.

In this brief journey I experienced the wonder and power of God through His creation experiencing the age of the earth, change and rejuvenation.

There is no need to panic but a trip to Broken Hill will reward you.

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Michael Quinlan: Glory be to God for arid landscapes - The Catholic Weekly

Kelly Akashi, A Device to See the World Twice. Photo courtesy of The Clark.

Currently situated or hidden throughout the landscape of the Clarks 140 acres of forest and field are the works of half a dozen female artists. One could see this outdoor exhibition, guest curated by Molly Epstein and Abigail Ross Goodman, as particularly apt for this moment, although Ground/work was not intended as a response to the pandemic. Meant to open in late spring, the showcase was in fact pushed back repeatedly by virus related difficulties until finally opening in the first week of October.

I put the word opening in quotes only because many of these works have actually been installed for quite some time now, with the recent arrival of Hague Yangs Migratory DMZ Birds on Asymmetric Lens completing the showcase. Yet, at the same time, each of these installations seems to create an intimate experience with its specific location, whether that be in the woods or flush against a wall. With this in mind, each piece operates on its own in a way, independent of any other piece or even an opening date. The affect of these six works, amplified by their specifically selected locales, is a welcome addition to the Clarks continuing contemporary endeavors.

Each of these six artists Kelly Akashi, Nairy Baghramian, Jennie C. Jones, Eva LeWitt, Analia Saban, and Haegue Yang began their work with a visit to the museum to select a site for their piece. With the knowledge that the exhibition would run for the next year, each artist was also faced with the question of how to incorporate the transience of the landscape. How these pieces will interact with the winter, spring and summer months, we have yet to see; the current autumn foliage, however, will be a tough act to follow.

Jennie C. Jones These (Mournful) Shores is the closest piece to the Clark Center itself, although it could easily be missed by a passerby. The work attaches to the outer edge of the granite wall that borders the reflecting pool, appearing as almost a natural extension of the wall itself. A minimalist interpretation of an Aeolian Harp, also known as the wind harp, Jones piece is activated by wind and inspired by the turbulent weather depicted in Homers iconic Eastern Point and West Point, Prouts Neck. The harps cherry wood innards also reference the trans-Atlantic trade which not only delivered such commodities but the thousands of enslaved people who produced them. Both sonically and aesthetically haunting, These (Mournful) Shores is a powerful first foray into outdoor art for Jones.

Leaving the reflecting pool to journey up stone hill, the next piece one encounters also seems to be hidden in plain sight. Analia Sabans Teaching a Cow How to Draw is perhaps the most functional of all the Ground/work pieces, in that it serves an explicit function:fencing in the resident cow herd in the pasture. The title of the work refers to the design of each fence frame, alluding to classical perspectival drawing instructions. Framing the surrounding landscape as the canvas, Sabans work seems to posit the cows as the artists, in stark contrast with the Old Masters in the permanent collection below. In drawing this parallel, Teaching a Cow How to Draw creates a moment of absurdity which feels appropriate.

Next on the horizon is Eva Lewitts Resin Towers A, B, and C, three multicolored columns standing 11 feet tall. Assembled from hand-cut pieces of colorful plastic suspended in layers of transparent resin, further inspection of each tower reveals a sphere motif, contracting and unfurling with extended viewing. The work establishes an interesting binary: whereas the transparency of the resin allows for the towers to merge with and absorb the surrounding landscape, the kitsch of the fluorescent colors seems to diverge from this integration. The bright palette of these towers, the Clark website states, acts as a beacon, calling down the hill and beckoning visitors to their site.

Beyond this beacon sits Nairy Baghramians Knee & Elbow, two roughly chiseled marble sculptures resting in the grass which have drawn visitors of the human and bovine sort [insert pic of cows in sculpture]. Trying to transfer the figurative act into abstraction, Baghramian created these two hand-hewn forms, one pink and one white, riddled with pockmarks; the texture of their exterior stands in sharp contrast to their sleek, polished interior, and the steel couplers bones, perhaps? which attach them. Playing off of the classicizing traditions of marble and constructions of whiteness, Baghramians work hovers just beyond abstraction in its allusion to joints and pivot points and in revealing the fragile nature of marble, Knee & Elbow is able to confront essential questions of self-optimization and the potential for collapse.

Hidden in a thicket of trees is Kelly Akashis A Device to See the World Twice. A massive distorting lens a magnifying glass of sorts, supported by bronze cast branches Akashi had positioned this work to focus on an ancient elm tree. Funnily enough, the tree cracked and fell over in the spring, a strange premonition of the destruction this year would bring. Rather than training the lens on a different subject, however, Akashi left it as is, now centered on a fragmented memory of what once was. Tucked away in a blanket of green, Akashis installation asks questions regarding viewership, distortion, and the transience of time. In highlighting the ruins of a subject rather than its ideal, Akashi sublimates and highlights the (inevitable) decay of art.

The last piece to arrive and perhaps the most difficult to locate is Hague Yangs three-part installation, Migratory DMZ Birds on Asymmetric Lens, which introduces an avian diaspora of sorts to the Berkshires. Yang was inspired by the April 2018 meeting of North and South Korean leaders in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a lush and biodiverse area 160 miles long by 2.5 miles wide located between the two countries. At one point during this pivotal meeting, the leaders requested to speak in private, leaving only the birds as witness to their conversations. These three pieces employ 3-D printed resin birds set atop robotically milled stone pedestals, egg-like in nature. Considering notions of presence and absence, these synthetic birds both occupy space and vanish, creating an unusual dialogue with their living counterparts in the Berkshires.

In the month that it has officially been open, Ground/work has already been the stage for dynamic artistic interventions. Sunday, Oct. 18 saw Professor Amy Podmores Poetry with Objects course (which I am a part of) collaborate with Brad Wells Sound Art, Public Music class to create wearable, sculptural, distancing apparatuses accompanied by sound components that were used to safely and communally walk and view the Ground/work installation [insert photo from this]. And just as these pieces have been the stage for intimate encounters with the public, these works are sure to continue interacting unexpectedly with their environments as well for the next year that they are on display. A balm for these troubled times, Ground/work shines as the Clarks first outdoor exhibition taking on new levels of meaning from our current moment while simultaneously providing a reflective space to process it.

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The Clark breaks new ground with first outdoor sculpture show - The Williams record

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COVID 19 Research Report on Electromotive Surgical Tables Industry Growth With Top Key Vendors: Getinge, Hill-Rom, Skytron, Steris, Stryker -...