Beach House Research Articles

The Role of Driving Actors as Social Engineers in Improving the Community's Economy through Social Entrepreneurship in Marine Ecotourism

The gap initiated the movement of empowerment through social entrepreneurship as a business effort to improve the economy of the community in the Sungai Pinang area by a driving actor named Ricky with a learning center known as Ricky's beach house. This research was conducted at Ricky's beach house in the Sungai Pinang marine tourism area with an inductive research approach with a descriptive qualitative method of field study method. This research presents data using descriptive data. This research aims to analyze the role of driving actors in improving the community's economy through social entrepreneurship and marine ecotourism. The results of this study show that the development steps taken by Ricky's beach house by empowering the potential of the surrounding community to be involved in every aspect of the development of Sungai Pinang tourism, such as utilizing people's homes as tourist lodging facilities, turning people into tour guides, and using facilities owned by other residents such as boats for tourists who want to go to the island including at the same time being the captain of the ship, being a waiter at the bar and lounge. The concept of social entrepreneurship also emphasizes the concept of ecotourism where tourism that is developed still pays attention to environmental sustainability even by involving foreign tourists as volunteers.

There Is a Lot More to Transplantation Surgery Than the Surgery Itself: The "Other" Sir Peter John Morris, AC, FRS.

There Is a Lot More to Transplantation Surgery Than the Surgery Itself: The "Other" Sir Peter John Morris, AC, FRS.

Golden Boy

Golden Boy Lily Meyer (bio) The tomato sat in a bowl of its own on the counter. "Look at him," my dad crowed. "Golden Boy." Golden Boy was fat and streaky, with rich orange veins running down his red sides. His stem gave off the faint, bitter smell of sun-cooked dirt. He had no wormholes, no soft spots, not one pucker or bruise. The chipmunks hadn't touched him. He was misshapen, but most heirlooms are. "Nice tomato," I said. "Nice?" Dad scooped Golden Boy from the bowl, cradling him to his chest. My dad's knuckles were swollen with arthritis. When I last saw him, eighteen months ago, his joints had recently started aching. Now his whole body seemed stooped. "Naomi thinks you're nice," he told the tomato. "Not perfect. Not blue-ribbon quality. Nice." "Blue ribbon?" I asked, dropping my backpack on the spotless, sandless kitchen floor. The marble countertop gleamed. Copper pots sparkled over the range. I smelled bleach and lemons, and I wondered who did the cleaning. Surely my father hadn't learned, at sixty-eight, to dust and scrub. [End Page 219] He lifted his chin. "What's wrong with a blue ribbon?" "Nothing." I kept my voice light. "Are you entering an ag show?" The answer, I knew, was no, though my father could clean up at the Truro Fair. He gardens with the zeal he once reserved for finance. In addition to heirloom tomatoes—Striped Caverns, Black Russians, Great Whites—he grows zucchini, pattypan squash, and both Japanese and Italian eggplants. He has blackberries and blueberries, which he protects from marauding birds with reflective tape and netting, and a brambly patch of raspberries that stay sour and greenish until the end of July. He has a peach tree and a stunted Braeburn apple that was here when he bought the house in 2001. He grows the Simon & Garfunkel herbs, plus basil, chives, cilantro, and some ailing lemongrass. All this, within fifty feet of the front door. The property extends further, but my father, these days, does not. He stroked Golden Boy, looking hurt. Out the window, a whale-watching boat cut a neat line across Cape Cod Bay, and I felt a brief and total longing to be on it. To be anywhere but my father's gigantic beach house, once my favorite place on Earth. In penance, I said, "It's a perfect tomato." "Thank you." "Do we get to eat it?" "Your brother brought a beautiful burrata from the city. I was thinking caprese for lunch." My brother was on the back deck, snoring gently. A water glass sweated next to his lounger. His legs were profoundly tan. Rather than wake him, I leaned on the railing and compared the view to the one I remembered. In five years, not much had changed. The bay rolled and glittered before me. Seabirds hunted overhead, and squirrels and chipmunks rustled in the scrub pines. The neighbors' wind chimes rang in the distance. The breeze carried all the right beach smells: hot driftwood, dried seaweed, dead fish. [End Page 220] I heard Caleb stirring. "Naomi?" As I turned, he clambered upright. "Nome! You came!" "You asked me to." He wrapped his arms around me, then picked me up—my giant baby brother—to whirl me in the air. "I did." He set me down, grinning, and I relaxed into his side. Already I felt less sorry to be here. Under even the worst circumstances, time with Caleb was a treat. I reached up to ruffle the remains of his Wall Street-short curls. Four years in banking had stripped him of scruffiness, though he retained the white goal-collision scar on his forehead and the spray of blackheads on the bridge of his nose. The sun beamed down on his white smile. At twenty-six, he was thoroughly handsome. Jewish-looking, even more than Dad or me. "How was the trip?" he asked. "Fine. Easy." I was lying, but not completely. The travel itself—a three-hour flight from Kansas City, then a two-hour drive down the arm of Cape Cod—had been smooth. Fast, even, for a summer Saturday. I...

The Dreaming: Stories by Andre Bagoo

Reviewed by: The Dreaming: Stories by Andre Bagoo Sean Weaver ANDRE BAGOO The Dreaming: Stories Leeds, UK. Peepal Tree. 2022. 190 pages. ANDRE BAGOO'S The Dreaming explores the lives and dreams of everyday gay Trinidadians through the short-story form. The Dreaming is Bagoo's first foray into short stories, having written four books of poetry and a book of essays. Deftly and carefully, Bagoo critiques the culture of exclusion each of his various Trinidadian subjects experiences—while fully demonstrating his craft as a writer. Given the subject of most of the stories within this collection, Bagoo strives and succeeds in creating fully realized gay and queer characters whose sexual dreams and identities are not just a source of fodder for neoliberal narratives that broadly paint LGBT+ peoples from the Caribbean as agents without a voice. That's not to say that such narratives do not exist—there are moments of tension within Bagoo's work where the queer and gay characters experience discrimination—but they are just blips in the greater narrative construction of the [End Page 66] collection. Bagoo forgoes grounding such narratives within this work. Instead, he spends much of his work exploring gay sexual desire, pleasure, the complexities of same-sex relationships, and human connection through keen characterization and first-person narrative. Of importance, not all Bagoo's stories are inherently gay or queer. In fact, interspersed throughout the collection are other Trinidadians who experience heartbreak and loss alongside their gay counterparts. Bagoo's ability to fully realize characters in the span of a few lines and pages makes each of the stories in this collection stand out. Characters reappear in later stories, coming in and out of the narrative that seems to underpin each fiction, reminiscent of other diasporic writers from the Caribbean like Edwidge Danticat. While some might suspect Bagoo of recycling certain gay tropes—obsession with the gay Adonis or the failure to retain meaningful relationships—he does the opposite, creating uniquely gay Trinidadian identities that critique such tropes. Thus, each story delves deeply into the minds, desires, and dreams of the various gay personae that make their presence known throughout the interconnected stories—each story and character more tender than the next. Bagoo begins the collection with a heartful story, "Haircut," in which the narrator reflects on the inability to receive a quality haircut in juxtaposition with his failing relationship—highlighting the ways people ignore the needs and desires of others and the ways we become complacent in failing to articulate our own. Bagoo plays with narrative form in stories like "Selected Boys: 2013–2016," where the narrator, in diaryesque passages, recounts the various attempts he and his partner make in "an open relationship," which he is not necessarily fond of—marking each sexual encounter with the name of the man entering and exiting the relationship. Most stories within the collection explore the complexities of relationships alongside the tensions between sexual desire and sexual fulfillment. Each story always ends with a glimpse, some sense of hope, or a dreaming of things that might yet be. Furthermore, Bagoo draws connections between the island and his gay characters—showing that such dreams are an important aspect of the national imagination and challenging the assumption that gay men do not belong. For example, the short story "Prelude" depicts a young Trinidadian man named Finn who escapes the abuse of his father for being too feminine by studying in London. There, he discovers a different form of discrimination—he is never posh or good enough for the gay English men he meets, and he encounters various forms of racism. Upon returning to Trinidad and before reuniting with his family, Finn stays at a beach house where he finds a dead dog; he reflects upon the bleak omen: "I wanted Trinidad, but did Trinidad want me?" Yet he is not deterred and spends the night with his male taxi driver: "He kissed me. And it was as though I was swallowing the night sky with its diamond stars, the black ocean with its orange welts of oil rigs in the distance. . . . I held his dick in my hand, and I felt I was holding some heavy...

Last Rights

Can you verify the surrounding world is real? In this work of René Descartes inspired philosophical short story fiction, death has come for a rational philosopher at his beach house. The Philosopher recognizes the figure as death, but insists the most likely scenario is that Death is a hallucination, a figment of his imagination. Death attempts to convince the philosopher of his authenticity through various means, but is unsuccessful. Even after showing the Philosopher his “true form” the Philosopher is not convinced, saying, “No isolated event, no matter how favorable the circumstance and how unable to otherwise explain by reference to an identifiable flaw in my person or reasoning capacities, could suffice to outweigh a lifetime’s worth of counter evidence.”

About the Contributors

About the Contributors

VIBRATION ANALYSIS OF AN AIRLIE BEACH HOUSE: A CASE STUDY IN AUSTRALIA

Airlie beach houses are quite common in the coastal areas of Australia. These houses, similar to other buildings, provide comfort for their residents. House comfort is not limited to temperature or sound pollution, vibration can be considered as another equally important factor. In this article, the vibration of an Airlie beach house was investigated. The base steel structure was modeled in SolidWorks and Space Gass for evaluating stress distribution and nodal displacement, respectively. To find the root cause of the distressing vibration of the house, which was felt with dwellings, the axial acceleration of the house’s structure was determined. Some feasible solutions such as adding a fiber-reinforced polymer joist hanger, inserting additional rubber padding to the joist hanger, and attaching additional bracing, were discussed and a cost analysis was considered for the solutions. Eventually, the nature of the best solution, which was adding rubber, was tested experimentally.

On proportional design and diagonal planning in R.M. Schindler’s Beach house of 1936/38 for Anna Olga Zacsek

ABSTRACTRudolph M. Schindler’s revolutionary theories and designs, which were clearly ahead of his time, have gradually been recognized for their ingenuity. His work would equip him to represent the American modern avant-garde. Many architects find it difficult to leave behind working conventions. Perhaps, only a few in the profession have challenged conventional thinking and working traditions, including Schindler. Among Schindler’s oeuvre, the beach house built for Anna Olga Zacsek is unique in terms of its systematic interplay of the diagonal axis and his unit grid design. Unfortunately, the building was demolished before becoming extensively known in the architectural community. Many scholars and commentators have briefly commented on the house, yet there has been no in-depth study. Thus, the surviving archival drawings were read and reconstructing, and a physical scale model was fabricated. These were used to uncover the house’s unique spatial characteristics and to expose the underlying logic of it spatial composition.

Dr. Ride’s American Beach House by Liza Berkenmeier

Reviewed by: Dr. Ride’s American Beach House by Liza Berkenmeier Sean F. Edgecomb DR. RIDE’S AMERICAN BEACH HOUSE. By Liza Berkenmeier. Directed by Katie Brook. Greenwich House, Ars Nova, New York City. November 10, 2019. Liza Berkenmeier’s dynamic new play, Dr. Ride’s American Beach House, presents an underrepresented history of how queer women carved out feminist space for themselves in the early 1980s, following the period of gay liberation. While LGBTQ+ theatre about that era primarily focuses on HIV/ AIDS and gay men, this production empathetically pushed the epidemic to the side, for just a moment, demonstrating how Sally Ride became an icon for lesbians, symbolizing aspirational hope at a time when queer women were just beginning to find their voices. With its quiet, intimate, and minimalist staging, director Katie Brook’s production showed how the origins of queer activist spaces often began with casual conversations at intimate gatherings before growing to movements that continue to advance inclusive, queerer spaces. Click for larger view View full resolution An intimate moment between Kristen Sieh (Harriet) and Erin Markey (Matilda) in Dr. Ride’s American Beach House. (Photo: Ben Arons.) The production opened with two friends, Harriet (Kristen Sieh) and Matilda (Erin Markey), gathering for their weekly “Two Serious Ladies Book Club” (SLBC) meeting (named for Jane Bowles’s enigmatic 1943 feminist novel). While Matilda is married with a child and Harriet is saddled with a deadbeat boyfriend, clearly something clandestine and queer exists between these two women. The bosom friends expressed their Sapphic desire through a secret greeting in the form of song and an impromptu lap dance, flirtatiously exchanging the chorus of the 1965 pop hit A Groovy Kind of Love— a kind of lavender lingo that conveyed an Oscar Wildean sentiment for a “love that dare not speak its name.” Berkenmeier’s play suggests that such [End Page 371] brief encounters, potentially cut short by the pressures of partners and children at any moment, were the only time and place where women, like these, could find a space for queer fellowship. Brook’s staging of this liaison pulled back the proverbial curtain on the kind of secret spaces where queer relationships took self-protective sanctuary in the recent past. Sieh and Markey’s convincing intimate relationship was heightened by their offstage, ongoing artistic collaborations, in work such as in Tina Satter’s evolving performance piece Ghost Rings. Click for larger view View full resolution Kristen Sieh (Harriet) has her eyes opened by Marga Gomez (Meg) in Dr. Ride’s American Beach House. (Photo: Ben Arons.) Regardless of the freedom provided by their recurrent undercover rendezvous, Harriet and Matilda feel stuck in St. Louis, trapped by the normative insipidness of their lives. Their yearning for queer space was initially reflected in their choice of meeting place—the haphazardly decorated rooftop of the museum where Harriet lived and worked, repur-posed as a patio, with an expansive sky, represented at Ars Nova by set designer Kimie Nishikawa’s expansive cyclorama. The velvety blue sky portended Ride’s revolutionary trip to space the next morning, but it also provided a visual symbol for the cosmic challenges placed on same-sex couples during this period. The dilatory pace of the first scene shifted with the arrival of a lesbian nurse named Meg (Marga Gomez). Meg’s performance of confident out-ness, aided semiotically by Melissa Ng’s butch costume design and Gomez’s signature close-cropped hair, exploded the socially imposed walls of Harriet’s and Matilda’s lives, represented by their teased hair and vintage costumes that epitomized 1980s femininity. While Matilda expressed that she invited Meg to the SLBC meeting as a titillating provocation, it was Harriet whose world was unexpectedly ripped opened when Meg matter-of-factly revealed that her hero, Sally Ride, was a lesbian. This epiphany, that perhaps Ride is more similar to Harriet than she initially realized, ignited a fire within her to put an escape plan in motion, made real by a transition of Sieh’s physicality from passively frail to empowered and frenetic. When it is revealed that Harriet’s mother has just passed away in Florida, Harriet takes it as...

The Fading History of Trevor Owen: A Figure of Jamaica’s Independence Fashion Industry

In this article, the photographic artist Joy Gregory reflects on the discovery of the uncataloged archives of couturier Trevor Owen and the 2013 Artists’ Residency that took place at the Beach House, Owen’s home and atelier in Reading, Jamaica.In 2005, five miles down the coast from Montego Bay, Derek Bishton and his wife Merrise purchased a small beach house retreat in Reading. They discovered among the things left in the property, a store room filled with dressmaking materials: row upon row of stiff patterns hanging from the ceiling, bundles of material, boxes of buttons, and numerous jars of odds and ends, along with several portfolios of designs, newspaper clippings, address books, and notebooks with measurements of former clients. The story of Owen’s 30-year career, the societies in which he moved, the company that he kept and his occupation of a property that was once part of the Tate & Lyle sugar plantation, also unravels the story of Jamaica’s colonial past, that is, the uneven relationship between the island and Europe.Absent from European and American fashion histories, Owen is recognized in Jamaica as the couturier who dressed wealthy local residents and tourists from Kingston, the wider Caribbean, the USA, and Europe, jet-setters who populated the Montego Bay strip in its hey-day during the 1950s. He is a major figure in Jamaica’s post-Independence fashion industry. This timely article, illustrated primarily by Gregory’s photographs, highlights and responds to his legacy.

So Far

So Far Charlotte Pence (bio) and Adam Prince (bio) On her final evening in Cartagena, thirty-two-year-old Margaret Lockwood-Showenwaldt took a laminated invitation offering discount drinks and a free buffet from a man wearing a bandanna over his face like a Wild West bad guy. He stood in front of a crumbling colonial building with a neon sign reading Club de Las Mil Noches. She whispered a question, which he nodded to vigorously, then led her inside. He offered a grimy stool, though Margaret continued to stand. "Un momento," he said. "Momencito. Momelito." Then he rushed through a curtain behind the bar, which no one was tending. There were no men in the place at all, only a few women slurping stew from paper bowls on the opposite side of the room. They varied in age and dress, from eighteen to fifty, from cutoff jeans and a neon bikini top to a ruffled A-line that might have been worn by a Cape Cod bridesmaid. There was a dance floor behind them with a giant, rotating disco ball missing several of its tiny mirrors—dark, [End Page 506] pitted spaces, like missing teeth. A picnic table had been set up in the corner of the dance floor, on which lay Crock-Pots and mismatched serving bowls. Margaret fidgeted at the now-bare place on her ring finger, wondering how long a momencito might last. Then she took a breath and went to work with her Handi Wipes, cleaning first the sticky bar top, next one of the stools. Along with her disgust and fear, she felt a wild, heart-skipping excitement at how very authentic this place was, and pride at having come so far. For a little while, all of these emotions stood managed and arranged in a tense equilibrium. Then they collapsed into panic as she was overtaken by an urgent need to pee. ________ The back room of the Club de las Mil Noches was really more like a shabby vestibule, with a door to the alley standing at one side and a black curtain leading into the bar at the other. Between those two was space only for a filing cabinet, a lamp, and a school desk, at which sat club owner Lucho Alvarez de Moreno. But the curtain slid open now, and Lucho's young cousin edged himself in. "It's going to rain," the cousin said. "It is not going to rain," returned Lucho from his desk. "We're fucked if it rains." "It is not going to rain." A few months ago, Lucho had made the mistake of telling his cousin that the Mil Noches wasn't making enough money to stay open much longer, prompting this shy young man—who'd spent his adult life inside, watching telenovelas and American movies [End Page 507] because of a sensitivity about his harelip—to emerge from his apartment wearing that black bandanna. It had taken the young man only a single week to become friends with the street rats, who started calling him Bandito, as though he were some legendary criminal. Through this network, Bandito had learned that Colombia's president planned to build a beach house as a wedding gift to his daughter and son-in-law in the now-quiet beach town of Taganga. Without telling Lucho, Bandito had negotiated to trade the Mil Noches for a club up there. The two men had argued then, Lucho calling him a schemer with telenovela ideas, Bandito calling Lucho a bitter old man who'd given up on living. They needed to make the trade as soon as possible, the younger argued, before the gift was announced and everyone knew what property in Taganga was really worth. Bandito did have a point. And in the end, Lucho had given in. It wasn't a straight trade, but involved some money, too. They'd been running several promotions, but they were short. Still short. This was their last chance, the biggest promotion of all. They'd printed those laminated cards, included a buffet. Cena de Ensayo, they called it. Rehearsal Dinner. " We need five hundred U.S.," said Bandito. "Tonight." "I know...

Remembrance of Antonin Scalia

Remembrance of Antonin Scalia RUTH BADER GINSBURG Justice Scalia, in his preface to the libretto for the comic opera Scalia!Ginsburg, described as the peak ofhis days on the bench an evening in 2002 at the Opera Ball, held at the British Ambassador’s Residence. There, he joined two Washington National Opera tenors at the piano for a medley ofsongs. He called it the famous Three Tenors perfor­ mance. He was, indeed, a convivial, exuber­ ant performer. It was my great good fortune to have known him as working colleague and dear friend. In my treasure trove of memories, an early June morning, 1996. I was about to leave the Court to attend the Second Circuit Judicial Conference at Lake George. Justice Scalia entered, opinion draft in hand. Tossing a sheafofpages onto my desk, he said: “Ruth, this is the penultimate draft of my dissent in the Virginia Military Institute case. It’s not yet in shape to circulate to the Court, but I want to give you as much time as I can to answer it.” On the plane to Albany, I read the dissent. It was a zinger, taking me to task on things large and small. Among the disdainful footnotes: “The Court refers to the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. There is no University of Virginia at Charlottesville, there is only the University of Virginia.” Thinking about fitting responses consumed my weekend, but I was glad to have the extra days to adjust the Court’s opinion. My final draft was much improved thanks to Justice Scalia’s searing criticism. Indeed, whenever I wrote for the Court and received a Scalia dissent, the majority opinion ultimately released was notably better than my initial circulation. Justice Scalia homed in on the soft spots, and gave me just the stimulation I needed to write a more persuasive account of the Court’s decision. Another indelible memory, the day the Court decided Bush v. Gore, December 12, 2000,1 was in Chambers, exhausted after the marathon: review granted Saturday, briefs filed Sunday, oral argument Monday, opin­ ions completed and released Tuesday. No surprise, Justice Scalia and I were on opposite sides. The Court did the right thing, he had no doubt. I strongly disagreed and explained why in a dissenting opinion. Around 9:00 p.m. the telephone, my direct line, rang. It was Justice Scalia. He didn’t say “get over it.” Instead, he asked, “Ruth, why are you still at the Court? Go home and take a hot bath.” Good advice I promptly followed. 250 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY Justice Ginsburg and Justice Scalia enjoyed celebrating their March birthdays together. They were photographed with their respective birthday cakes in the Natalie Cornell Rehnquist Dining Room in 2008. Among my favorite Scalia stories, when President Bill Clinton was mulling over his first nomination to the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia was asked: “If you were stranded on a desert island with your new Court colleague, who would you prefer, Larry Tribe or Mario Cuomo?” Scalia answered quickly and distinctly: “Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” Within days, the President chose me. I recall, too, a dark day for me, confined in a hospital in Heraklion, Crete, in the summer of 1999, the beginning of my bout with colorectal cancer. Justice Scalia’s was the first outside call I received. “Ruth,” he said, “Get well,” and “let me know ifthere is anything I can do to help.” Justice Scalia was a man ofmany talents, a jurist of captivating brilliance, high spirits, and quick wit, possessed of a rare talent for making even the most somber judge smile. The press wrote of his “energetic fervor,” “astringent intellect,” “peppery prose,” “acu­ men” and “affability.” Not so well known, he was a discerning shopper. In Agra, India, together in 1994, our driver took us to his friend’s carpet shop. One rug after another was tossed onto the floor, leaving me without a clue which to choose. Nino pointed to one he thought his wife Maureen would like for their beach house in North Carolina. I picked the same design, in a different color. It has worn very well. Once asked how we could be friends...

The housing bomb: why our addiction to houses is destroying the environment and threatening our society

Have we built our way to ruin? Is your desire for that beach house or cabin in the woods part of the environmental crisis? Do you really need a bigger home? Why don't multiple generations still live under one roof? In The Housing Bomb, leading environmental researchers M. Nils Peterson, Tarla Rai Peterson, and Jianguo Liu sound the alarm, explaining how and why our growing addiction to houses has taken the humble American dream and twisted it into an environmental and societal nightmare. Without realizing how much a contemporary home already contributes to environmental destruction, most of us want bigger and bigger houses and dream of the day when we not just one dwelling but at least the two our neighbor does. We push our children to get out on their own long before they need to, creating a second household where previously one existed. We pave and build, demolishing habitat needed by threatened and endangered species, adding to the mounting burden of global climate change, and sucking away resources much better applied to pressing societal needs. Reduce, reuse, recycle is seldom evoked in the world, where economists predict financial disasters when new starts decline and the idea of renovating inner city residences is regarded as merely a good cause. Presenting irrefutable evidence, this book cries out for America and the world to intervene by making simple changes in our household energy and water usage and by supporting municipal, state, national, and international policies to counter this devastation and overuse of resources. It offers a way out of the mess we are creating and envisions a future where we all live comfortable, nondestructive lives. The housing bomb is ticking, and our choice is clear-change our approach or feel the blast.

Law of the Jungle

Law of the Jungle Claudette Bakhtiar (bio) The Night Guest Fiona McFarlane Faber & Faber www.us.macmillaners.com/thenightguest/fionamcfarlane 256 Page; Print, $14.00 Click for larger view View full resolution Werner Herzog’s documentary, Grizzly Man (2005), tells the story of Timothy Treadwell, a exuberant man-child with no formal training in wildlife who, nevertheless, spent 13 summers in the wilderness trying to bond with grizzly bears. In the end, he is eaten by one of them. There is a point in the film when Sam Egli, a helicopter pilot who helped to clean up the site of the tragedy, is interviewed. “[Treadwell] got what he deserved in my opinion.” Egli says with barely veiled contempt. “He thought…they would bond as children of the universe…I think that he had lost sight of what was really going on.” There were, apparently, many others who shared this opinion, according to the film. I thought of this while reading Fiona McFarlane’s beautiful and disturbing debut novel, The Night Guest, but I wasn’t sure why at first. Ruth, the main character, is nothing like Timothy Treadwell. She is elderly, widowed and lives alone in an isolated beach house on the coast of Sydney. She has two grown sons who worry about her but who are too busy with their own families to visit much. She stares at the waves outside, she stares at the walls. She is kind-hearted, vulnerable and blameless as a baby bird. So why did I think of Treadwell? Ruth is, and has always been, out of touch with the world; she doesn’t understand, or even try to understand, the forces at work in it, and this leads to tragedy. But, unlike Treadwell, we don’t fault her for it. We fault the environment, the society that has produced her, the society that has produced us. What happened to her could easily happen to any one of our grandmas. By the novel’s end, we see the author is sending a warning; she is telling us to wake up, to take nothing for granted, to view the world with clear eyes, to stop being so dumb. Through a 3rd person narration that tracks Ruth’s viewpoint very closely, we journey into Ruth’s memories. Ruth has lived in a bubble of privilege her whole life. Raised in post-war, colonial Fiji, her parents were white, Christian missionaries (her father, a doctor, her mother, a nurse) who were part of a protected elite. In Fiji, she was “repeatedly told that she was part of a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a people belonging to God.” It was, to Ruth, “a strangely urgent life, in which her father must heal the sick and save their souls.” Richard Porter, a dashing young doctor, arrived in Fiji to help her father and Ruth fell in love with him. He is considered by everyone to be “gifted” but “misguided” for befriending “the wrong Fijians (‘agitators,’ Ruth’s father called them).” Well-read, politically alert, opinionated, Richard intimidated Ruth. “She didn’t have opinions, if what he had were opinions; only preferences, and these were often vague.” Of the colonial unrest in Fiji, she noticed little of it. Fiji, to her, had always been a “strange, safe place.” Richard ended up marrying a Japanese woman which scandalized their Christian community. Ruth, broken-hearted, moved on by leaving Fiji and settling in Sydney. She met and married Harry, a solicitor, had two sons, worked as an elocution teacher, teaching rounded vowels to “the children of sugar-company executives, engineers, missionaries, and government officials: the children of the Empire.” Now she is 75. Harry has been dead for 5 years and, since then, nothing “of consequence” has happened to Ruth, we are told. But then something happens—Ruth is visited in the night by a tiger, or what she believes to be a tiger. She hears noises in her house at night that suggest “the panting and breathing of a large animal.” We are not sure what the tiger means. Is it a daydream? Is it the onset of dementia? Whatever it is, it presages the arrival of Frida, a woman...

Verano, verano : Performance Review

Verano, verano:Performance Review Wilma Feliciano Verano, verano (2013), by Puerto Rican playwright Myrna Casas, revives the poetic realism of her first drama, Cristal roto en el tiempo (1960). Subsequent to Cristal, she experimented with non-realistic techniques such as the absurd, in La trampa (1964), and metadrama, in El gran circo eucraniano (1988). In these pieces, Casas relied on misunderstandings, caustic humor, and reversals to mock the social mores of middle-class misfits. In Verano, verano, perverse family dynamics unleash anguish, denial, and shame. Set in the beach house that once delighted the young family, the now dusty patio and weathered furniture symbolize their demise. Structured in 26 short scenes that alternate between strained conversations, suppressed words, and monologues, the plot interweaves yesterday’s secrets with today’s melancholy. The characters, both the dead and those alive, exist in solitude and silence. Don Pablo, a womanizing patriarch, describes the maturation of his son Juan Pablo from a whimsical youth to an alienated recluse: “Fue fantasioso desde pequeño. Recuerdo que hasta hablaba Click for larger view View full resolution The unhappy family isolated in their common anguish. Photo: Gregorio Barreto. [End Page 195] con amigos invisibles, quizás es preferible no enfrentarse a realidades tan amargas” (37). Juan talks only to Celeste, his invisible daughter, who comes back from the dead periodically to snatch snippets of the past. Don Pablo blames his infidelity and his wife’s rancor for the family’s dissolution. Adriana cannot see her daughter, so she believes Juan’s truncated talk evinces his mental illness and tries to evoke happy memories, but he silences her. His constant rejections drive Adriana to take a lover, but when Celeste sees them, Adriana imposes a code of secrecy on the confused child. Worse, Adriana always preferred her son Bobby and blames Celeste for not rescuing him from the ocean. The refrain of the well-known lullaby “Naranja dulce” softly intones the lament of the unloved child: “Dame un abrazo que yo te pido” (44, 53-54). Click for larger view View full resolution Celeste tries to amuse Juan, her father. Photo: Gregorio Barreto. Along with the lullaby, other auditory and visual images underscored the tone of relentless grief in the production of Verano, verano at the Interamerican University of Arecibo, Puerto Rico, on November 13, 2013. Ocean sounds reinforced the beach setting. Modern music and children’s songs harmonized past and present, while lighting changes and flashbacks moved the action. Don Pablo’s elegant garb portrays him as a man of means. In contrast, his son’s worn pants and tattered hat identify him with the jíbaros (peons) of Puerto Rico. Ironically, the white dresses of Adriana and Celeste suggest their innocence, as if life had dragged them to their dilemmas. Arguably the starkest image of decay was the fumigator on the dusty coffee table. Always visible but never touched or mentioned, the fumigator suggests a [End Page 196] Click for larger view View full resolution Juan Pablo and Adriana, an estranged marriage. Photo: Gregorio Barreto Click for larger view View full resolution Celeste prays for Adriana’s mother love. Photo: Gregorio Barreto. [End Page 197] family infested by male privilege, which includes Don Pablo’s philandering and Juan’s insistence on silencing his wife and daughter. Even the memory of little Bobby destroying the sand castle portends his machismo and the family’s fate. Juan’s depression drowns them all in the same ocean that took the children and facilitated Adriana’s suicide. Finally, the ironic title, Verano, verano, contrasts the warm happy days of youth with the icy bitterness of perpetual winter. The play ends as Celeste, recollecting blue skies, sings “Naranja dulce” and imagines that her mother loves her. [End Page 198] Wilma Feliciano SUNY College at New Paltz Copyright © 2014 The Center of Latin American Studies

Spreading the Word: Seasonal Changes Mean New Opportunities for Media Coverage

Summer kicking into high gear conjures images of swimming pools and barbeques. But before you book your beach house for the weekend, think about what the changing seasons can mean for you professionally.

Changes in beach gravel lithology caused by anthropogenic activities along the southern coast of Lake Michigan, USA

The southern coast of Lake Michigan is the most urbanized and most densely populated area in the Great Lakes region. Development of steel mills, harbors, and municipalities in NW Indiana and in NE Illinois in the last century and a half altered the nearshore environment so much that native beach gravel (>8 mm) now exist only in the exhumed paleo-beach remnants from the Nipissing Phase (~4,500 years ago) of Lake Michigan. Native gravel, collected from paleo-beach remnants at Mount Baldy Dune and Beach House Blowout, contain predominantly beach shingle, very platy siltstones (71–78 %), with secondary crystalline pebbles (18 %) in the east, and carbonate pebbles (12 %) in the west. A large amount of anthropogenic fill (steel industry waste, waste from power generating plants, construction debris, railroad, and road fill) has been added since the late 1800s to fill Lake Michigan and expand industrial land. Four areas of major coastal structures—Michigan City Pier and Breakwater, Burns Harbor Pier and Breakwater, Gary Works Pier, and Indiana Harbor Peninsula—altered the natural littoral drift and created four independent sectors on Indiana’s coast—Northeastern, Eastern, Central, and Western—between which no natural transfers of coarse sediments occur. Downdrift from the coastal structures, severe beach erosion has prompted extensive beach nourishment with non-native sandy gravel. Four distinct populations of modern beach gravel now exist along Indiana’s coast of Lake Michigan: (1) native gravel with diluted beach nourishment influence, (2) native gravel with a minor industrial influence, (3) compact gravel of nourished origin, and (4) anthropogenic gravel of industrial origin. Native gravel with diluted nourishment influence is found in the western, downdrift areas of the Northeastern (from Long Beach to Washington Park Beach) and Eastern Sectors (from eastern Indiana Dunes State Park to western Dune Acres) and contains up to 40 % compact carbonate and crystalline pebbles in addition to native beach shingle. Native gravel with minor industrial influence is found in the Central Sector of Indiana’s coast (from central Ogden Dunes to Marquette Beach) and contains predominantly beach shingle, platy clastic lithology, but also up to 30 % of chert and other pebbles released by industry. Compact gravel of nourished origin contains 60–90 % of carbonate and crystalline pebbles, and is found in the eastern, updrift areas of the Northeastern (Michiana Beach and Duneland Beach) and Eastern Sectors (from Crescent Beach to the western Beverly Shores). Anthropogenic gravel of industrial origin contains 70–90 % compact chert and slag and is found in every beach of the Western Sector and in the westernmost beach of the Central Sector. Streams draining into southern Lake Michigan generally contain little coarse sediment except in their channels near the roads and railroads, where angular to subangular anthropogenic pebbles predominate (70–90 %). However, streams have very little influence on gravel lithology along the coast because they seldom discharge anthropogenic gravel into Lake Michigan. Recent changes in gravel lithology along the southern Lake Michigan coast may affect changes in nearshore benthic flora and fauna as well as algal and bacterial blooms during warm summer months.

Fibro Dreaming: Greenwashed Beach-house Development on Australia’s Coasts

New Urbanism has been appropriated in an Australia context and deployed in the marketing of a peri-urban housing development on the far north coast of New South Wales. Mimicking the ‘neo-traditional’ focus in the US, developers offered a resurrection of quintessential Australian beach house architecture ‘lost’ through the suburbanisation of the coast. Symbolic references to a more ‘authentic’ past, represented in the built form, were contemporised using tropes of environmental sustainability and integration with nature. The image of beach housing and a green lifestyle have successfully attracted buyers and housing price premiums. This paper demonstrates that the cultural capitals of ‘heritage’ and ‘greenness’ are valued as distinction to the suburban norm. It is concluded that, while this development appeals to the notion of an enlightened consumer, this new model of development ultimately offers little to challenge issues of environmental degradation associated with other versions of (sub)urban sprawl.

Scorpio is Bright

Shaken from the series of traumatic events during my daughter Alice's fifteenth year, I was glad we were leaving town for our annual family vacation at my mother's beach house. Alice, still sullen and withdrawn, was miserable about being trapped with the family and geographically separated from her social life. One morning she pulled me aside Mom, I need you to help me with something but you can't ask a lot of questions or tell me I can't do anything.”

<i>Kiss Me Deadly</i>

Kiss Me Deadly Robert Kleyn (bio) If frame is the smallest unit in the construction of a film, and film is "truth 24 frames per second," how many truths make up the 106 minutes of Robert Aldrich's Kiss me Deadly (US, 1955)? And this frame, one of these truths, leaves us with an ambiguity; it is both an ending and "The End." What is "filmic" in this single frame? First, it is the materiality of the light, metaphor for both photography and projection, and second, the action of the waves, metaphor for the essentially mechanical operation of the film apparatus.1 We've been anticipating the end ever since the beginning: since Kiss Me Deadly's opening shots of a woman wearing only a trench coat and running barefoot along a dark road, since the title credits, scrolling up from the bottom of the frame, backward, as if the whole film were somehow an endless loop, an instance of Aldrich's trick of "turning things upside-down" to empty them and fill them again. The foot of the first shot already invokes the very end. Each frame of the film is movement towards it. In Kiss Me Deadly, the end, both immanent and imminent, serves up the new age of perpetual crisis, the secularized doomsday of techné; in 1955, atomic; now, whatever year you read this, ecological.2 "The End" is the end of so many things: first, the film and the audience's time in the theater; the end of the story told by the film; the end of the two protagonists; and, certainly, but only in retrospect, the end of "classic" film noir, the end [End Page 114] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Final frame from Kiss Me Deadly, Robert Aldrich. The end, both immanent and imminent, serves up the new age of perpetual crisis, the secularized doomsday of techné; which, in 1955, was atomic. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Alternate final frame. The end to end all ends. [End Page 115] of the Production Code which Aldrich had learned so well. Despite approval of the script, the film was subject to numerous cuts to appease censors who clearly saw what the film stood for but couldn't locate it in any particular sequence. Kiss Me Deadly concludes with two alternating shots—the flashing scene of a wounded embrace is intercut with a reverse shot of a delicious Malibu beach house rent by spectacular explosions caused by the fission of an atomic device in the leather-encased cube that propels the plot. Kiss Me Deadly was first screened with the end title superimposed over the fiery bungalow, not, as in the Aldrich version (restored in the Criterion release), Mike Hammer and his secretary-lover Velda retreating into the dark Pacific surf. This frame from the director's cut, number 152,464, begs the question: What kind of end is this? End of mankind, end of history, end of the world (as we know it), end of the film, end of the tale, end of an era, end of time, end of it all, end of me—the end to end all ends. Once upon a time, film audiences adored the filmic conventions and wished to be told that the film was over. Just as Hammer flaunts the forces of order, Aldrich flaunts the conventions; but while Hammer fails, Aldrich succeeds, and the power of this movie persists. Does Hammer die? Could the title not have read "To be continued"? After all, Kiss Me Deadly was only the sixth of many novels in the Mike Hammer series. But the two Hammer films that followed couldn't rival the Aldrich vehicle and the property migrated to TV. So, for Aldrich, this was the end of Hammer and what he stood for, and that's why "The End." What kind of end is this anyway? Hammer (alter ego of Mickey Spillane, author of the original bestseller novel) is impotent in face of the mystery that lures him on to the apocalypse at Kiss Me Deadly's climax. As Mike and Velda escape the fiery bungalow, transformed by the atomic device into children...