Saturday, March 30, 2019

Fugitive priest abuses altar boy faces trial

Associated Press (ap.org); Seth Auberon, Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
The sun sets on a sign in front of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe offices in Albuquerque, N.M. A priest who fled the USA decades ago faces a federal trial on charges that he sexually abused a New Mexico boy in the early 1990s at an Air Force base and veterans' cemetery. Father Arthur Perrault, a one-time pastor, has been charged with aggravated sexual abuse and more.
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Fugitive priest accused of abusing boy faces trial


Molesting is like a sacrament, right? - Yes.
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico - A Catholic priest who was captured in Morocco after fleeing the U.S. decades ago is facing a federal trial on charges that he sexually abused a New Mexico boy in the early 1990s at an Air Force base and veterans' cemetery.

The trial of 80-year-old Father Arthur Perrault is set to begin Monday in Santa Fe with jury selection. Prosecutors are expected to call dozens of witnesses, including a former deacon, parents, and former military members who knew Perrault in the early 1990s.

Federal authorities have said in court documents that Perrault may have had as many as eight other victims. But the charges against him only involve an 11-year-old altar boy. The church sent Perrault to New Mexico in the 1960s for treatment at a center for pedophile priests. He was arrested in 2017 in Tangier, where authorities say he had been teaching at an English-language school for children.

Perrault's case marks a rare federal criminal prosecution of a former Catholic priest in the state where dozens of clergy abuse victims have won more than $50 million in settlements from the Santa Fe Archdiocese, which has filed for bankruptcy protection as a result of the lawsuits. More

Friday, March 29, 2019

Meditation Retreat Day at Ahiah (March 30)

Ananda M. (Dharma Meditation Initiative), Ashley Wells, Jen B. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Full-day of rest and rejuvenation with a diverse offering of professional meditation facilitators -- including Dharma Meditation Initiative's own Buddhist teacher -- representing a spectrum of meditation styles and techniques.

Experience the joy and benefits of multiple types of meditation including: Guided * Heart-Centered * Mindfulness * Movement * Music * Contemplative * Reflective * Sensory * Meditative Sound Healing * Silent and more! Suitable and open to all levels, from beginning meditators to advanced.

Register at ahiah.com. Tickets $25.00 in advance or $30 at door. Includes BIG vegetarian lunch. More

Develop the heart rather than material things

Ajahn Maha Boowa via Ven. Sujato; Ellie Askew, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
Beloved Theravada Buddhist nuns of the re-established bhikkhuni order, California (DV).
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Let go of things...put problems in the past.
In practicing the Dharma, aim at improving the qualities of the heart -- virtue, concentration, and wisdom -- more than at material things.

As for material things, if we have just enough to get by, that’s plenty enough.…

We are born from human beings; we monastics come from people. People have homes; we monastics need places to stay -- enough to provide ordinary shelter -- but they should be just enough to get by.

Don’t make them fancy. Don’t go competing with the world outside. That would simply foster one's own defilements and make one known throughout the world in a way that the defilements would ridicule.

Better to make oneself known instead for one's virtue, concentration, and wisdom, for one's confidence in the Dharma and persistence in the practice. Better to make oneself known for having striven to cure oneself, to extricate oneself, to find release from the defilements and to be free from this entanglement of suffering that is the cycle of rebirth.

Letting go is the easy part. Move on.
This is what it means to genuinely and directly enhance one's stature. Strive in the effort. Make it to the other shore of this churning cycle in this very life -- which is much surer than any other lifetime, any other time or place.

And don’t forget, wherever you go: Don’t get involved in construction work. Everywhere we go these days there’s construction work with monastics involved in it. It’s enough to make one sick.

As soon as they meet each other they ask, "How’s it going with your meeting hall? How’s it going with your school? Finished yet? How much did it cost?"

Whenever they have a project, whatever the project, they go around harassing laypeople, gathering funds, so that laypeople have to spend money and get embroiled, too, without respite.

Let laypeople have enough money so that they can stash some of it away as savings for their own use.

Letting go gives us freedom (Thich Nhat Hanh)
They practically kill themselves just to scrape together a little cash, but instead of being able to use it to provide for their stomachs, for their families, their children, and other essentials, or for making merit at their leisure, they end up having to hand it over to help monastics who harass them by fundraising to the point where they’re left empty-handed.

This is the dispensation (sasana) of harassing the world, which the Buddha never practiced and never taught monastics to practice. So I want you all to understand this: The Buddha never acted this way.

This is the dispensation of material objects, of money, not the dispensation of Dharma following the example of the Buddha.

Best new artist: Irish Billie Eilish (video)

All Songs Considered (NPR); Talko; KROQ; A. Wells, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

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Short list of best albums out March 29.
Los Angeles weirdo Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell (Irish, Scottish, English, Belgian), vegan, sister of Finneas O'Connell, is already a veteran pop artist at the age of 17, with a clear vision for her sound and image, even if that sound is sinister and the image a bit demented. (See her videos). She was raised and homeschooled in Highland Park, L.A. by a family of actors and musicians (Wiki). Her brilliant debut full-length, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? is finally out and way more cryptic and complicated than her lead-up singles might have suggested. On this week's New Music Friday host Robin Hilton is joined by Rodney Carmichael, Ann Powers, and Stephen Thompson as they dig into the Eilish record and more on their short list for the best new albums out March 29... More


"Empire of the City: Ring of Power" (doc)

Empire of the City: Ring of Power (documentary); Pfc. Sandoval, S.Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly

Irish-Mexican writer: Luis Urrea (audio)

Terry Gross (NPR, 3/29/19); Dhr. Seven, Crystal Quintero (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Luis Alberto Urrea's The House of Broken Angels borrows from the story of his older brother, who died of cancer. He told Fresh Air in 2018 that the book went through a rewrite after the 2016 election.

Irish-Mexican-American author finds inspiration in family, tragedy, and Trump
Terry Gross square 2017Fresh Air guest University of Illinois, Chicago Distinguished Professor of Writing Luis Alberto Urrea writes what he describes as a literature of witness.

He grew up in San Diego, California, but was born in neighboring Tijuana, Mexico, to a Basque-Mexican father and Irish-American mother.

When he was 3 years old, they relocated to California. He grew up in a San Diego barrio. He has family on both sides of the border. This dual culture was the subject of his memoir, Nobody's Son.

He's also written about the period he did relief work in Tijuana with the garbage pickers who survive on what they can find in the mountainous garbage dumps.

He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his 2004 nonfiction book, The Devil's Highway, about a group of 26 Mexican men who crossed the border illegally, guided by smugglers through the Arizona desert, where they were abandoned by the smugglers. More than half the men died in the desert.

Urrea's latest novel, The House of Broken Angels, just came out in paperback. It borrows from the real story of his older brother, Juan, who was dying of cancer when his mother died. After her funeral, the family threw a party for Juan that was part birthday celebration, part wake.

TERRY GROSS: Luis Urrea, welcome to Fresh Air. So did Donald Trump's candidacy, and election, and "build the wall" and "end DACA" [slogans] influence your decision to write this novel or influence the content of it?

Mexican-American Author Finds Inspiration In Family, Tragedy And TrumpPROF. LUIS ALBERTO URREA: It definitely affected my rewrite of the novel. You know, the novel started out as a kind of a slim memoir inspired by the events of my brother's death and final birthday party on Earth before his death. And it kind of was what I call the Mexican Finnegans Wake, right?

...GROSS: Some of [your mother's] family is from Virginia. Your father was [white, a blond-haired, blue-eyed Basque called a] Mexican, [who] grew up in Mexico...?

PROF. URREA: Yes, yes.

GROSS: So I'm not sure what his ethnic background was. But -- so describe that wall in your own home.

PROF. URREA: The situation was kind of complicated in that my mother didn't speak Spanish [and] was struggling with all her might to make me an American boy. And the other side with all of his might was trying to keep me a Mexican boy. And in my mother's world, I wasn't named Luis, I was named Louis. I was Louis Woodward, one of her people.

And that kind of combat over me was extended into so many other things. You know, the two cultures clashing, the relationship coming apart at the seams but sort of trapped together by my fervent Catholicism.…

GROSS: You must've been pretty confused when you were growing up if your parents were fighting over your identity... So in the conflict between your mother wanting you to be American and your father wanting you to be Mexican, did you, at some point, say to yourself, I'm Mexican-American?

PROF. URREA: (Laughter). I'll be honest with you. So the neighborhood we lived in was full of ethnic violence and strife. And it was a neighborhood where black versus brown versus white and any combination of those, okay?

So if you can imagine me, Irish-looking kid, talking Tijuana with a Mexican accent going to Catholic school, right? walking -- this sounds like a great hard-luck story -- but, you know, it wasn't quite a mile. But it was a pretty long walk through the barrio in my little, silly Catholic school uniform every day. And can you imagine all the homeboys watching this? And I always have this weird fantasy of them all saying, "Gentlemen...

GROSS: (Laughter).

PROF. URREA: Right? "Let us make peace and kick his butt today."

GROSS: (Laughter).

PROF. URREA: ...Which is perhaps what made me a big reader, right? I'd rush home and lock myself in and read. And in fourth grade, a scary event happened, which is melodramatic to talk about. But I escaped some street violence - let's put it that way - and my parents felt that it was time to get out of that ambiance. And my mother had come into a little bit of inheritance money. And we suddenly moved north again. And note the journey -- right? -- heading north.

We went north to a little, essentially, Anglo, working-class suburb -- in other words, to my mother's at least ethnic group, not my father's. And we were the first mixed family in our little neighborhood, which caused a lot of interesting things. But I suddenly, for the first time in my life, heard pretty harsh anti-Mexican rhetoric. And I myself was called greaser, wetback, taco bender -- which was a San Diego specialty. I thought that was a good insult because it was creative, you know, a little bend in the taco. You're so witty.

GROSS: (Laughter).

PROF. URREA: And I had gone - I had joined the Boy Scouts. I was instantly an American kid, and I liked it. I thought, OK, Americans have lawns. That's cool. I had not seen lawns until fifth grade -- big green lawns. More + AUDIO

If time travel is true, it's strange (video)

Matrix Wisdom, March 27, 2019; Pat Macpherson, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly


Buddha inside a "bell" (stupa), Borobudur
Think time travel doesn't exist? Watch this! It can apply to any time or place. And just like Andrew D. Basiago (projectpegasus.net) blew the whistle on long ago, there is "chronovision" -- a television like technology capable of looking into the past and presenting it to the viewer as if in real time. Time travelers are called "chrononauts," possibly suggested in the Buddha statues found in bells (like the German secret technology known as Die Glocke, a bell-shaped "perforated stupa") atop the largest excavated Buddhist temple complex (Borobudur in Java, Indonesia). It is now in government hands and possibly also in the Vatican Archives. What was "Bell" Labs working on?

Iraq 2: Venezuela (comedy)

Samantha Bee (Full Frontal on TBS); Seth Auberon, Pfc. Sandoval (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly


(Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, 2/6/19) The situation in Venezuela is rapidly deteriorating, but Elliott Abrams is rebooting his Iran-Contra game plan from the 1980s. Totally boss and/or incredibly frightening! Watch Full Frontal with Samantha Bee all new Wednesdays at 10:30/9:30c on TBS.

Lies we're taught about Washington DC

ReallyGraceful; Liz Ohanesian (laist); AP; Pfc. Sandoval, S. Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
(ReallyGraceful) What we weren't taught about Washington, D.C. with clips from "Empire of the City: Ring of Power" documentary.

How destruction of LA's original Chinatown led to the one today
LA Chinatown 1930 (Lillian Louie Collection)
Stroll through Chinatown, and if you're not trapped in line at Howlin' Rays or munching on a slice of Phoenix Bakery's famous strawberry cake, you can discover local history through small signs on buildings and historical markers that dot the sidewalks. Today, the area faces more change, thanks to a new wave of gentrification. Nouveau foodie joints attract young crowds while old school restaurants still draw regulars. Developers erect high-end apartment buildings but some seniors halted a proposed rent increase. Born out of necessity for a community displaced by racism and civic development, the neighborhood has endured for more than 80 years — but the Chinatown we know today isn't Los Angeles's first such enclave. More

Intervening in Venezuela, trouble in Ukraine
Nicolas Maduro
Venezuela is anti-imperialism and will not succumb to U.S. meddling and oil stealing.

Nicolas Maduro
CIA/US imperialists are bent on interfering and destabilizing Pres. Maduro in Venezuela
More blackouts hit Venezuela as opposition, government ra
Ukraine: fascist pro-Russian police clash with far-right protesters

Nat'l Vietnam War Veterans Day (video)

AM; Raw Uncut Vietnam (video); Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon, Crystal Q., Wisdom Quarterly


National Vietnam War Veterans Day in 2019
Towards the end of the 19th century, colonial French imperial forces gradually took more control of the Buddhist country of Vietnam. Colonial Europeans originally controlled it as a "protectorate" from 1883 through 1939. Then they controlled it as a "possession" from 1939 through 1945. This changed on September 2, 1945, when Vietnam's nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the country’s independence. In December of 1946, the First Indochina War began in French Indochina. A conflict between French forces and their opponents... [became one taken over by American imperial forces as we went in on France's official departure. That is how we entered the American War, in spite of all the lies politicians and disinformation specialists at the CIA, FBI, and NSA reported. We call it the "Vietnam War," an illegal and undeclared kinetic conflict that nearly tore the USA apart and ushered in the peace movement, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, and the general awakening of youths in its wake. North Americans began to realize that we live under the control of a military-industrial complex going on at least since the time of U.S. Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower. As General Smedley Butler revealed long ago, WAR IS A RACKET, a farce that gets many people killed to make a few people rich. Truth is the first casualty, replaced by propaganda and a national fairytale of our valor, because we have been lied into every war and invasion from the founding of the USA, beginning with the Genocide of the Native Americans to the first U.S. imperial adventures in the Philippines and Hawaii. It used to shock people of good conscience, but now it seems anything goes.]


Soldiers are young and naïve but soon become cynical, addicted, or dead.

Color COMBAT footage from Saigon: U.S. War on Vietnam
Argunners Magazine, April 6, 2018
This first video is mostly footage showing the Army of the Republic of Vietnam filmed on May 6, 1968 in the city of Saigon, Vietnam, a few days after the start of the "May Offensive," in which the Vietcong allegedly, according to U.S. sources, attacked multiple targets in and around Saigon with much success from May 5-30, 1968.

Thursday, March 28, 2019

What is "Zen" for practitioners? (audio)



Zen is probably the most popular kind of Buddhism, but it is a school that few understand. Instead, most mistake it to be emptiness, iconoclasm, or free-form "whatever."

Our teacher, Prof. Robert E. Buswell at UCLA, wrote an excellent book from his own experience trying to correct these Western misconceptions about Zen Buddhism called Zen Monastic Experience: Buddhist Practice...

Zen is much deeper. It is an ancient tradition that does not rely on paradoxes, koans, or clapping. There is a point and a style of practice to get cool calm and collected.

It's as easy and impossible as Alan Watts and D.T. Suzuki made it out to be when describing it to Western practitioners. Followed by socializing and vegan snacks and drinks. RSVP FREE:

FREE: March 28, 2019, 7:00 PM
  • Dharma Meditation Initiative, Los Angeles
  • 7:00-8:30 PM, Thursday, March 28, 2019
  • The Neighborhood Church, Room 23
  • 301 N. Orange Grove Bl., Pasadena
Buddhist scholar Rob Buswell (UCLA) spent five years as a Zen monk then as a Theravada Buddhist monk. He draws on personal experience in this insightful account of day-to-day Zen practice. He reveals a religious tradition that differs radically from the stereotype prevalent in the West. His portrayal of the life of modern Zen monks provides a provocative look at Zen from the inside. More

What our MOON really is (video)

Interview with investigative journalist Linda Moulton Howe (earthfiles.com) via UAMN TV, March 22, 2019; Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly


The Moon is an intelligent machine
Linda Moulton Howe (earthfiles.com) explains how the moon is not what we think it is. It is a computer like machine that watches, observes and monitors Earth. What happened to Neil Armstrong, the "first man on the moon," while he was up there? What did he see? What changed him during the mission? Was he warned never to talk about the alien presence in the solar system? Howe explains that there is life on the moon, the solar system, and throughout the universe.

Barnabas Nagy: fake Western history (video)

Seth Auberon, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Barnabas Nagy



Barnabas Nagy (barnabasnagy.com) singlehandedly investigates something very strange. He is looking into a very strange phenomenon right under our noses, the faking of history. What is the actual shape of the earth, and why does it matter enough to manipulate the information? Why lie?


Flat Earth: Paid flat earth trolls and why the globe lie is important

Things are covered up, and cover stories are set up with the flimsiest of staged photographic support. Nagy breaks it down: We have been fed an artificial American, European, New Zealand, Australian history. Maps have been changed, but fortunately older maps still exist showing another history. Moreover, new information and new lines of evidence keep rolling in. Tartaria (Tartary) had electricity and advanced technology, with very large humans and artifacts and a mud flood? If not then who can explain away what Nagy is questioning?

Fake History: Invented 5,000+ years, no tombstones earlier than i625
Barnabas Nagy
(March 26, 2019) I could not find tombstones earlier than iactual625. That would, consequently, mean that it's not just 1,000 years that have been made up but more than 5,600 years (if we take 6,000 years of human history for granted). Ancestry profiles do not show timelines earlier than 1700s either, so I challenge everyone to find the oldest gravestone in their local cemetery.
👍 SUPPORT: barnabasnagy.com/support-me
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#BarnabasNagy #FakeHistory #i1019 #1000YearsInvented #MudFlood

Genius: The Story of Nikola Tesla (video)

Matrix Wisdom, March 23, 2019; Pat Macpherson, Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly


Nikola Tesla: Hard to Believe — But it’s True! His important discoveries -- which he explained came to him after being broadcast through space to him from another planet with intelligent life -- were way ahead of their time, so the U.S. government stole them and developed them in secret.

Science: There's NO objective reality

CoasttoCoastAM.com, 3/17/19; TechnologyReview.com, 3/12/19; Editors, Wisdom Quarterly
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A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality
TechnologyReview.com, 3/12/19

Physicists have long suspected that quantum mechanics allows two observers to experience different, conflicting realities. Now they’ve performed the first experiment that proves it. 

Back in 1961 the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Eugene Wigner outlined a thought experiment that demonstrated one of the lesser-known paradoxes of quantum mechanics.

The experiment shows how the strange nature of the universe allows two observers -- say, Wigner and Wigner’s friend -- to experience different realities.
Since then physicists have used the “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment to explore the nature of measurement and to argue over whether objective facts can exist. That’s important because scientists carry out experiments to establish objective facts.

But if they experience different realities, the argument goes, how can they agree on what these facts might be?
 
That’s provided some entertaining fodder for after-dinner conversation, but Wigner’s thought experiment has never been more than that—just a thought experiment.

Last year, however, physicists noticed that recent advances in quantum technologies have made it possible to reproduce the Wigner’s Friend test in a real experiment. In other words, it ought to be possible to create different realities and compare them in the lab to find out whether they can be reconciled.
 
And today, Massimiliano Proietti at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and a few colleagues say they have performed this experiment for the first time: They have created different realities and compared them.

Their conclusion is that Wigner was correct: These realities can be made irreconcilable so that it is impossible to agree on objective facts about an experiment. More

Knapp's News
Broadcaster George Knapp loves ETs (caricature by Dennis Rano, 2011)
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These items have recently caught Coast to Coast occasional host George Knapp's attention, including articles on who owns Mars, strange cryptids, and UFO "metamaterials."

    Wednesday, March 27, 2019

    Native American Tribes of California

    LA Times (latimes.com/archives, 4/13/98); Xochitl, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

     
    What makes California so special?
    In 1911 a mysterious Native American man emerged from the wilderness of Northern California. No one knew who he was or could understand his language, so he was immediately put in a jail.

    A couple of anthropologists befriended him, and he told them the story of his life. As the last surviving member of the Yahi people, Ishi [after whom a famous book was written] was able to provide invaluable insights into his culture, ensuring that his tribe would be remembered.

    To learn more about California's indigenous (Native American) tribes, use the direct links on the Los Angeles Times' Launch Point website (latimes.com/launchpoint).
     
    Level 1
    BEST BOOK: beacon.org
    Chumash Indians: The Chumash Indians of the Central Coast painted stories and legends inside caves from Morro Bay to the Channel Islands. Find out more about the Chumash through these reports written and illustrated by third-graders (sbceo.k12.ca.us/~eagles/chumash). 

    Shapes and Uses of California Indian Basketry: The early Native Americans achieved a high degree of craftsmanship and artistry in their baskets. View pictures that demonstrate the incredible range of their skills: from cooking baskets and water bottles to cradles, moccasins, and animal traps (mip.berkeley.edu/cilc/basket). 

    Chumash Indians--Sports and Recreation: Imagine two teams, each with a hundred players, using a special "shinny" stick to hit a small wooden ball through the other team's goal posts. Learn about the many games that the Chumash played to practice important skills as well as to have fun (cyberfair.gsn.org/sierra/games).

    Level 2
    Genocidal white invaders' mass burial
    California Native American Site: Anthropologists estimate that 130,000 to 350,000 Native Americans were living in California [which seems low for the estimated 100 million living in the future-USA and 300 million in America] before European [invaders and genocidal colonial] settlers arrived. Find out about the Ohlone people who lived near present-day San Francisco and Monterey County (library.advanced.org/13386). 

    American Indian Movement (aimovement.org)
    The Miwok Indians of Yosemite: The Miwok used nettle root to help relieve rheumatism and milkweed to help heal warts. Find out about the history, tools, foods, arts, games, and legends of this tribe who lived in the area currently known as Yosemite (mariposa.yosemite.net/woodland/miwok). 

    People of Our Past: Like many other tribes, the Chumash and Los Angeles Tongva (Gabrielinos/Kizh) prepared acorns by grinding them, washing away the tannic acid, and using the acorn meal to make flat cakes and soup. Learn more about their way of life through photos and oral histories (cyberfair.gsn.org/sierra).
     
    Level 3
    ART: Erasure (pamelajpeters.com)
    California Indians: An Historical Sketch: This detailed account traces the history of Native Americans in California from their earliest known origins to the present-day and includes historical resources (www4.hmc.edu:8001/humanities/indian/history). 

    The History of the Maidu Mechoopda Indians: The California Gold Rush of 1848 changed the lives of the Maidu Mechoopda Indians forever. View maps and pictures that help tell the story of this tribe: the early days, their virtual extinction at the hands of white settlers and their current struggles in the late 20th century (ecst.csuchico.edu/~adamw/tribal/history). 

    California Tribes: A collection of resources on Native American tribes today. Read about the Hoopa alphabet, view the work of different artists, and find out when the next powwow is (indy4.fdl.cc.mn.us/~isk/maps/ca/california).
     
    EXPLORER'S QUEST
    Entheogens to Spirit Land
    What games did the Chumash play to develop the good eye-hand coordination skills needed for hunting? CLUE: See Chumash Indians Sports and Recreation (cyberfair.gsn.org/sierra/games).

    Launch Point (latimes.com/launchpoint) is produced by the UC Irvine Department of Education, which reviews each site for appropriateness and quality. This week's Quest was designed by Julie Ryan, Leslie Baldwiin, Todd Sautner, Stan Woo-Sam, and Anna Manring.
     
    First Americans: Tribal Art from North America (Bowers Museum)
     
    News of the Day
    Chris Farthing