Birth Tourism: The Newest Red Herring in the Anti-Immigration Arsenal
First published on Global Comment on July 23, 2010. Read the original with comments here.
Earlier this year, The Marmara Manhattan, part of a Turkish hotel chain, began offering a package to expectant mothers. For between $5100 – $15000, visitors got a two-month stay, prenatal consultation, crib, and items for both mother and newborn. They say they’ve already sold 15 such packages. This is the cutting edge in birth tourism, the practice of visiting countries to give birth to children who will then be citizens. And though it involves a tiny number of women, it’s about to be a big deal, if the anti-immigration crusaders of The Tea Party have their way.
In late May, Rand Paul told a Russian news program that America is “the only country I know that allows people to come in illegally, have a baby, and then that baby becomes a citizen.” While it may be true that we are the only such country Paul knows, we are far from the only country with birthright citizenship laws. Yet as anti-immigrant sentiments become more common in developed nations, that list of countries is shrinking. It’s been suggested that recent changes in the birthright laws of England, India, Australia and other countries have been undertaken to prevent birth tourism. In a contentious 2004 referendum, 80% of Irish voters rejected birthright laws over concerns about “citizenship tourism.”
Posted on July 28, 2010 to Global Comment
Tags: Social Justice
My Country, My Train, My K-Hole
First published in The Morning News on June 30, 2010. Read the original here.
The train from Chicago to New Orleans passes through Kankakee, Homewood, and Yazoo City; names that evoke images of wagon trains and episodes of Dr. Quinn. I don’t know most of this country.
Were I to draw a map, the Northeast would be ponderously detailed; Chicago would float in limbo; and California would consist of San Francisco and L.A. smooshed together between beaches and pot farms. The rest would be a mess, cartography by way of Cubism.
I’d like to say riding the train taught me something about this country; that my seatmate (probably, to ensure maximum movie potential, my elderly, black, female seatmate), told me about growing up on a farm in Yazoo City, or the first car to come to Homewood. But she slept most of the ride, and the only words we exchanged were a cordial “Have a safe trip,” when she got off at Jackson.
The train cut through towns at dawn and dusk. I saw dirt roads and business districts, stretched my legs in Memphis, and watched the moon rise through the snack car window. Sans context, without my mythical seatmate’s ur-narrative of rural childhood, the Mississippi—that long north-south axis of Americana—sprawled alongside me, meaningless.
Just the way I like it.
Posted on July 28, 2010 to The Morning News
Tags: Essay, Travel
In New Orleans, New Life by the River
First published in The New York Times on June 27, 2010. Read the original, with photos, here.
For residents of the blue-collar Bywater-Marigny area of New Orleans, access to the Mississippi River has been blocked for years by decaying industrial buildings. But it won’t be much longer, thanks in part to R. Allen Eskew, an architect whose firm has been hired to turn a mile and a half of piers and wharves into a riverfront park to open in fall 2011, Step 1 in the nearly $300 million Reinventing the Crescent plan.
The park is one of many projects, small and large, growing in the fertile soil around the Mississippi. Amid colorful shotgun houses (left), tucked away on streets named Piety, Desire and Independence, a wealth of cafes, boutiques and bars offer a calmer alternative to the excesses of the French Quarter, just upriver.
Posted on July 28, 2010 to New York Times
Tags: Travel
Storm King Turns 50
First published in The Daily Beast on June 4, 2010. Read the original, with photos, here.
In putting together Storm King Art Center’s 50th anniversary exhibit 5 + 5, David R. Collens faced a difficult task: designing a show that celebrated the sculpture park’s storied history, while also laying out a road map for Storm King’s next five decades.
Collens, who has been the director and curator of Storm King for more than 35 years, admits to not having done many group shows. For the anniversary, however, Collens worked with 10 artists—five with major exhibitions at Storm King already under their belts, and five mid-career sculptors whom he hadn’t shown before. The resultant exhibit, on view now through November 14, is filled with work by some of today’s most well-known outdoor sculptors.
Alice Aycock , Chakaia Booker, Mark di Suvero, Andy Goldsworthy, and Ursula von Rydingsvard represent the park’s history. To anyone acquainted with modern sculpture, their names conjure up distinct images: Booker’s repurposed tires and wearable pieces; di Suvero’s large-scale steel constructions. But it took more than just name recognition to secure a place in 5 + 5.
“I selected those five artists to represent people who really understood the landscape at Storm King and did something very different,” says Collens. With 500 acres of manicured grounds in the rolling Hudson Valley, Storm King offers a wide variety of sites for installation, yet many artists go no further than the area around the museum building. Collens looked for those sculptors who would do something more innovative.
Goldsworthy has taken one of the park’s existing stone walls and used it to create one of his natural compositions. Visitors are invited to walk the length of the wall (which Storm King calls a “sketch in stone”) and observe the way in which Goldsworthy seamlessly blends natural dilapidation and ephemeral construction.
But Collens’ curatorial vision shines brightest in his selection of the five new artists—John Bisbee, Maria Elena González, Darrell Petit, Alyson Shotz, and Stephen Talasnik. “It was time to pass the torch to a younger generation,” says Collens, an idea with which all of the more experienced artists in the show agree.
5 + 5 brings in not just new sculptors, but ones who embrace daring forms, innovative uses of the space, and original concepts for what outdoor sculpture can be. The show is stretching the dimensions of Storm King and playfully changing the ways in which works on display can coexist.
Sixteen platforms were designed by González to be arrayed throughout the grounds. When viewed from one, visitors on another will look to be part of sculptures in the permanent collection. For instance, from the vantage of platform three, visitors on platform four will look to be perfectly balanced atop Menashe Kadishman’s Suspended sculpture as González incorporates observers into the roles of artist and art.
In Stream: A Folded Dream, Talasnik has created a 12-foot-high, 90-foot-long structure made of more than 3,000 bamboo rods. Throughout the exhibition, it will serve as a backdrop for both music and dance performances, something Storm King hasn’t done before.
“It’s quite a counterpoint to stone and steel and other materials we have,” says Collens. In curating 5 + 5, he wanted to avoid just bringing “more metal into Storm King—[as] we have plenty of it.” The 10 selected artists use everything from metal nails, cedar, and granite to reflective plastic, rubber, and earth.
5 + 5 is as diverse for its sculptors as it is for its works. Talasnik, a visual artist by training, has only been showing sculpture since 2000, while di Suvero had his first museum pieces in 1959. And while the recent documentary Who Does She Think She Is? laments the woeful underrepresentation of women in most major museums, half the artists in 5 + 5 are female.
When asked if this gender parity is purposeful, Collens says: “From my perspective, I’m trying to find the best I can in terms of sculpture, male or female, national or international.” Though if there is one way the exhibit is lacking, it is in terms of geographic and ethnic diversity. All of the artists are American, Canadian or European (though di Suvero was born in China, and Gonzalez in Cuba), all but Goldsworthy live in the United States, and only two are people of color. Storm King, like the art world in general, still has some distance to go.
“I think we need to adapt and change like all institutions,” Collens says. If 5 + 5 is any indication, Storm King’s next 50 years are up to the challenge.
Storm King Art Center is located in Mountainville, New York. Visiting hours are Wednesday-Sunday, 10:30 a.m.—5:30 p.m. More information is available at www.StormKing.org.
Posted on June 9, 2010 to The Daily Beast
Tags: Arts & Culture
Pigs’ Blood in Cigarettes?
This gallery was originall published on The Daily Beast on 5/25/2010. Read it in its entirety, with comments, here.
As Vegetarian Week kicks off in the U.K., it’s more difficult than ever to observe it faithfully. From horse fat in fabric softener to crushed insects in fruit juice, Hugh Ryan locates animal products in 11 unlikely places.
1) Fabric Softener
What could possibly make your sheets feel more Downy fresh than a nice schmear of rendered animal fat? Dihydrogenated tallow dimethyl ammonium chloride—a roundabout way of saying fat from animals like horses and sheep—is used by some commercial fabric softeners to coat your clothes with a soft, fluffy layer of lipids.
Posted on May 29, 2010 to The Daily Beast
Tags: Social Justice
The Books Powerful Women Love
Originally published on The Daily Beast on 4/27/2010. Read it in its entirety, with comments, here.
In a few days, one of America’s most beloved teens turns 80. Nancy Drew, girl detective, first appeared in print on April 28, 1930, in The Secret of the Old Clock. With her two best friends, George Fayne and Bess Marvin, she tooled around River Heights in a dark blue roadster, solving crimes, exploring secret passages, and foiling bad guys.
Three hundred books, a dozen video games, five films, and two TV series later, Nancy’s still at it. These days, she drives a sky-blue hybrid and carries a cell phone, but River Heights still depends on her to prevent everything from identity theft to political assassinations. Her books don’t follow any of the hot trends in young adult fiction: Nancy fights no zombies, owns no designer clothes, and lusts after nary a vampire. Yet each new book has a print run of 25,000 and, cumulatively, the books have sold more than 200 million copies. It’s hard to imagine another cultural icon that could bring together Sonia Sotomayor and Laura Bush, both of whom cite Nancy as an inspiration.
Posted on May 29, 2010 to The Daily Beast
Tags: Arts & Culture
