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MusiCares Names the Grateful Dead 2025 Persons of the Year

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Wednesday, October 23, 2024

MusiCares, an organization that helps music professionals who need financial, personal or medical assistance, will honor the Grateful Dead as its 2025 Persons of the Year.MusiCares announced Wednesday that it will recognize original members Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh and Bobby Weir for their philanthropic efforts, their unique ability to foster community through concerts and for their impact on American music on their 60th anniversary.Over the years, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame members have supported causes across environmental conservation, mental health, music education, social justice and advocated to combat poverty, including with initiatives like Lesh’s Unbroken Chain Foundation and Garcia’s involvement with the Rex Foundation.The Grateful Dead will be honored at the 34th annual Persons of the Year benefit gala at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Jan. 31, two nights before the 2025 Grammy Awards are held at the adjacent Crypto.com Arena. The ceremony will include posthumous tributes to one of the band's founding and best-known members, Jerry Garcia. He died of a heart attack in 1995. The Grateful Dead disbanded afterward and launched into a series of spin-off projects.“This honor is truly a testament to the legacy of the music, which has always been bigger than us — it’s about the connection between us, the crew, and all those who’ve been on this long strange trip,” Hart, Kreutzmann, Lesh and Weir shared in a joint statement. “It’s not just about what we create, but about making sure the people behind it, behind us every night, the ones who quietly make it all happen, get the support they need to keep going, no matter what life throws at them.”The Grateful Dead formed in the Bay Area in the 1965, evolving to perfect a kind of hybrid approach to their improvisational, jam band style, a sound that spans acid rock, psychedelia, folk, jazz, Americana, Bakersfield country and beyond. They created their own counterculture centered around their touring, a community known as Dead Heads, and have become one of the most in-demand live acts.In 2007, the Grateful Dead received the Lifetime Achievement award from the Recording Academy.In February of this year, The Grateful Dead broke the record for the most Top 40 albums to chart on the Billboard 200, then pulling out ahead of Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra with 59. Forty-one of the band’s 59 entries in the Top 40 have happened since 2012, thanks to the popularity of the series of archival albums compiled by David Lemieux. “Their legacy transcends music, having built a community of fans and collaborators that embody the spirit of connection and support," MusiCares executive director Laura Segura wrote in a statement. "The band’s passion for the arts and philanthropy, along with their enduring commitment to social causes, has made a lasting impact that goes beyond the stage.”Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Sept. 2024

MusiCares, an organization that helps music professionals who need financial, personal or medical assistance, will honor the Grateful Dead as its 2025 Persons of the Year

MusiCares, an organization that helps music professionals who need financial, personal or medical assistance, will honor the Grateful Dead as its 2025 Persons of the Year.

MusiCares announced Wednesday that it will recognize original members Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh and Bobby Weir for their philanthropic efforts, their unique ability to foster community through concerts and for their impact on American music on their 60th anniversary.

Over the years, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame members have supported causes across environmental conservation, mental health, music education, social justice and advocated to combat poverty, including with initiatives like Lesh’s Unbroken Chain Foundation and Garcia’s involvement with the Rex Foundation.

The Grateful Dead will be honored at the 34th annual Persons of the Year benefit gala at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Jan. 31, two nights before the 2025 Grammy Awards are held at the adjacent Crypto.com Arena. The ceremony will include posthumous tributes to one of the band's founding and best-known members, Jerry Garcia. He died of a heart attack in 1995. The Grateful Dead disbanded afterward and launched into a series of spin-off projects.

“This honor is truly a testament to the legacy of the music, which has always been bigger than us — it’s about the connection between us, the crew, and all those who’ve been on this long strange trip,” Hart, Kreutzmann, Lesh and Weir shared in a joint statement. “It’s not just about what we create, but about making sure the people behind it, behind us every night, the ones who quietly make it all happen, get the support they need to keep going, no matter what life throws at them.”

The Grateful Dead formed in the Bay Area in the 1965, evolving to perfect a kind of hybrid approach to their improvisational, jam band style, a sound that spans acid rock, psychedelia, folk, jazz, Americana, Bakersfield country and beyond. They created their own counterculture centered around their touring, a community known as Dead Heads, and have become one of the most in-demand live acts.

In 2007, the Grateful Dead received the Lifetime Achievement award from the Recording Academy.

In February of this year, The Grateful Dead broke the record for the most Top 40 albums to chart on the Billboard 200, then pulling out ahead of Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra with 59. Forty-one of the band’s 59 entries in the Top 40 have happened since 2012, thanks to the popularity of the series of archival albums compiled by David Lemieux.

“Their legacy transcends music, having built a community of fans and collaborators that embody the spirit of connection and support," MusiCares executive director Laura Segura wrote in a statement. "The band’s passion for the arts and philanthropy, along with their enduring commitment to social causes, has made a lasting impact that goes beyond the stage.”

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Biden administration offers alternatives for Colorado River’s long-term operations

Biden administration officials on Wednesday announced several potential alternatives for the Colorado River's long-term management, as the expiration date for the current rules approaches. The five alternatives will be considered as possible replacements for the 2007 Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages, which are valid through the end of 2026. These rules will steer conservation policies for a 1,450-mile river that provides water to about 40 million people in the U.S. and Mexico. "We're in a moment for solutions and leadership," Acting Deputy Interior Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis said on a Wednesday press call. "Today, we're putting forth alternatives that have established a robust and fair framework for a basin-wide agreement." The Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation, which is overseeing the revisions in compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), had given Colorado River basin states an early March 2024 cutoff date for submitting a consensus-backed alternative themselves. The U.S. portion of the Colorado River region is split into a Lower and an Upper basin, which, respectively, include California, Arizona and Nevada, and Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico. Back in March, the two basins were unable to come to a unified agreement and ended up filing competing proposals for the river's long-term management. The Lower Basin states had agreed to reductions of their own while also placing an emphasis on shared cuts across the whole watershed — basing storage capacity totals not just on the massive Lake Powell and Lake Mead, but also on other smaller reservoirs in the Upper Basin. The Upper Basin states, on the other hand, submitted a plan that they felt would better reflect changing hydrological conditions in a region where water supplies come from mountain snowpack. In the absence of a March consensus, the federal government on Wednesday released its own alternatives, which will undergo extensive analysis in a forthcoming draft environmental impact statement (EIS). Those alternatives, according to the Interior Department, reflect elements proposed by basin states, tribes, cooperating agencies and non-governmental organizations. "We have laid the foundation to ensure that future guidelines and strategies will be sufficiently robust and adaptive to withstand the uncertainty of climate change impacts," Daniel-Davis said. The release of the proposed alternatives on Wednesday serves to facilitate a "timely development of final operating guidelines that will need to be in place by August of 2026," explained Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton, on the same press call. Touton stressed that there are no preferred alternatives and that the options "represent a wide range of actions that provide improved predictability of water availability, enhanced opportunities for conservation and respond to a broad spectrum of hydrology." The proposals include four viable alternatives as well as a fifth "no action" alternative, which Touton explained is simply a NEPA requirement but would involve reverting to guidelines in place prior to 2007. Alternative 4, a "Basin Hybrid" plan, attempts to include portions of the plans submitted by the Upper Basin, Lower Basin and tribal nations. That option, according to the Interior Department, could help facilitate collaborative action among stakeholders. In this proposal, Lake Powell releases would generally be based solely on the lake's elevation, but with some consideration of Lake Mead's levels. New delivery and storage mechanisms would serve both reservoirs, including conservation incentivization for both tribal and non-tribal parties. This option would also make basin-wide cuts more equitable by spreading the burden, which has long been a priority of the Lower Basin states. Specifically, a portion of the reductions that the Lower Basin must make amid shortages would be based on a seven-reservoir capacity, rather than just that of Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Alternative 3, called "Cooperative Conservation," was informed by proposals from conservation organizations and would predicate Lake Powell releases upon total Upper Basin system storage and recent hydrological conditions, according to the Interior Department. Under this option, a large share of Lower Basin cutbacks would be based on the seven-reservoir storage capacity, recent hydrology and voluntary contributions from the two basins. In Alternative 2, called the "Federal Authorities Hybrid," Lake Powell releases would be based on a combination of Lake Powell and Lake Mead elevations, hydrological records and Lower Basin deliveries. Shortage responsibilities under this plan would be triggered entirely by the combined seven-reservoir storage capacity and distributed proportionally among parties. A "Federal Authorities" option, Alternative 1, would provide "robust protection of critical infrastructure" within the federal government’s current statutory authorities. Lake Powell released would be based on Lake Powell's elevations, with Lower Basin shortages distributed based on the region's century-old water rights priority system. "These alternatives represent a responsible range from which to build the best and most robust path forward for the basin," Touton said. "There certainly are extremely difficult choices and tradeoffs to be made, but we believe that there are ample opportunities to create a fair path to solutions that work for the entire region." In addition to presenting the alternatives, the Biden administration officials also devoted ample time in the Wednesday press call commending the progress made under President Biden on Colorado River issues. Daniel-Davis recalled how "in 2021, impacts of a historic drought in the West brought the Colorado River Basin and the communities it serves to a near crisis," stressing how Lake Mead and Lake Powell plunged to critically low elevations. But she touted the administration's "all-of-government approach" and "really bold and decisive action" for helping solve the crisis. Touton offered a similar perspective, adding, "We were able to bring the Colorado River into the back in the break of the worst drought in 1,800 years." White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi, credited not only the administration, but also the region's bipartisan partners for bringing "the river back from the brink." He commended U.S. West governors by name, and from both sides of the aisle, for their work on natural resource conservation and for recognizing the strain on the Colorado River system. Zaidi described the alternatives as "a playbook to come together once again, to meet the urgent need of stabilizing situation beyond 2026." In response to the Interior Department's publication of alternatives, JB Hamby, Colorado River commissioner for California, said in a statement that "federal law requires the Colorado River Basin’s reservoirs be managed in accordance with the Colorado River Compact." The most significant components of that 1922 water agreement, Hamby stated, are "mandatory deliveries of water from the Upper Basin to the Lower Basin and Mexico." "In order to be valid, any alternative considered must meet this requirement unless the states agree to a compromise otherwise," he said. Becky Mitchell, Colorado River commissioner for the state of Colorado, said in a statement her state did not have specific comments on the alternatives "at this time." "Colorado continues to stand firmly behind the Upper Division States’ Alternative," she said, noting that this proposal is supply-driven and aims to boost Lake Powell and Lake Mead while protecting Colorado's "significant rights and interests" in the river. "Colorado remains committed to working collaboratively with the other Basin States, the federal government and tribal Nations towards a consensus approach and also stands ready to protect our State’s significant interests in the Colorado River," Mitchell added. In a separate press call following the Interior Department's announcement, Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, told reporters that he needed "a lot more time to digest all this." While he noted "some really positive elements to these alternatives," he also said that he was "disappointed that Reclamation chose to create alternatives, rather than to model the Lower Basin state alternative in its entirety." "It didn't start at one extreme or the other, and it showed unequivocally that the Lower Basin was willing to take the first tranche of cuts," Buschatzke added.

Conservation

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Government

Surprising Surge: How Florida’s Manatees Are Thriving More Than Ever

Historic accounts reveal manatee populations increased in the 1800s and 1900s alongside human populations. A new study highlights that Florida manatees are more numerous now than ever before, likely due to improved conservation efforts and environmental changes. While historically considered rare, manatees have benefited from the same human activities that threaten their existence, indicating a [...]

Conservation

Second Teen Charged in New Jersey Forest Fire as Rain Should Help Douse New York Blaze

A second teenager has been charged with intentionally setting a wildfire in a New Jersey suburb of Philadelphia

A second teenager was charged with intentionally setting a wildfire in a New Jersey suburb of Philadelphia as “significant” rainfall was expected to help douse a stubborn wildfire burning on the New Jersey-New York border Wednesday.Many parts of the Northeast have been under red flag alerts, with firefighters responding to hundreds of brush fires in tinder-dry and windy conditions. Officials have said numerous prolonged rain storms are needed in parts of New England as well as New Jersey and New York, which are the driest in between 120 to 150 years.Police in Evesham Township said Wednesday they have arrested a 14-year-old from Marlton in connection with an Oct. 30 wildfire that burned less than a tenth of a square mile. On Nov. 7, they charged another youth, also from Marlton, with setting that same fire. The latest arrest was made Tuesday and announced on Wednesday. Both are charged with aggravated arson, and causing or risking widespread injury or damage.Both have been taken to a juvenile detention center as detectives investigate whether they might have been responsible for a second wildfire in Evesham a week later that burned a slightly larger area.A storm moving into the New Jersey-New York area Wednesday was expected to bring what New York officials called “significant” rainfall to the area of the Jennings Creek wildfire, which has burned 8.3 square miles and was 90% contained as of Wednesday morning.While that will undoubtedly help fire crews douse the fire, which is burning in several hard-to-reach areas of rugged terrain, the rain could bring its own challenges.“Soil within the burned area will become unstable and erosive as it becomes more saturated,” the New York Department of Environmental Conservation said in a statement Tuesday night. “Residents may see burned and decomposing trees fall within the fire area. A combination of mud and burned debris may run off into local waterways causing discoloration.”Two smaller wildfires in New Jersey, each having burned less than a tenth of a square mile, were declared fully contained Wednesday morning. They were burning in Hainesport in Burlington County, and in Pine Park in Lakewood in Ocean County.Follow Wayne Parry on X at www.twitter.com/WayneParryAC Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Sept. 2024

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Costa Rica Faces Must-Win Battle Against Panama in Nations League Quarterfinal

Costa Rica have it all to do when they make the short journey to Panama City for tonight’s second leg of the Nations League quarter-final. After falling to a 1-0 defeat in the home leg last week in San Jose, La Sele will have to do something they haven’t done since 2015 and win in Panama to have any chances of progressing to the semi-final. Since away goals count in this competition, Los Ticos will have to win by two clear goals to advance to the next round, with even a 1-0 victory, meaning the tie heads to extra time and potentially a penalty shootout if the score remains the same. Panama Profile Bordered by Costa Rica to the west and Colombia to the southeast, Panama is the bridge between North and South America. They are colorfully nicknamed “Los Canaleros” (The Canal Men) due to the nation’s association with the Panama Canal, a significant waterway that connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Costa Rica’s longest border, measuring 348 km (217 mi), is with its southeastern neighbor, Panama, and the two countries share a strong bond; both are bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west, have similar population sizes—with Costa Rica at approximately 5 million and Panama at 4.5 million—and are both renowned for their rich biodiversity and commitment to environmental conservation. It’s been quite the decade for the Panama national team, long seen as the underachievers of CONCACAF, with a lowly 97th FIFA ranking in 2010 and an average ranking of 86th overall; since then, they have achieved their highest ranking of 29th in 2014, qualified for their first FIFA World Cup in 2018, reached two Gold Cup finals in 2013 and 2024, and had an impressive showing at this year’s Copa América, defeating hosts USA and Bolivia en route to the quarter-finals. Head coach Thomas Christiansen has been in charge since 2020, and the Dane has delivered respectable results, with 34 wins, 14 draws, and 19 defeats in his 67-game tenure. He has also provided Panama with a distinctive playing style: a ball-dominant team that incorporates positional play from a 3-4-3 formation with influential Houston Dynamo midfielder Adalberto Carrasquilla pulling the strings in the middle of the park. He is backed by a robust defense, with towering duo José Córdoba and Edgardo Fariña forming a solid partnership at center-back and supported by experienced full-backs Fidel Escobar, César Blackman, and Michael Amir Murillo (who usually fills in on the right-side of midfield). Thursday’s match-winner, José Fajardo, is the nation’s main attacking threat and has the most goals in the current squad, with 14 goals in 54 appearances. The Universidad Católica del Ecuador striker is in good form, recording five goals in his last ten caps, and was a constant menace for the Costa Rica backline in last week’s game with his direct runs in behind. Besides the decent showing at the Copa América, 2024 has been an unmemorable year for Los Canaleros, suffering seven defeats in 12 fixtures, and the first-leg victory brought a three-match losing run to an end. However, their 32,000-capacity home stadium, Estadio Rommel Fernández Gutiérrez, is somewhat of a fortress, remaining unbeaten in 16 consecutive competitive home matches since losing 3-0 to Mexico in November 2019. Costa Rica Team News Interim coach Claudio Vivas will be forced into at least two changes, as Jeyland Mitchell picked up a yellow card in last week’s defeat, meaning he is suspended for the return leg, and fellow defender Juan Pablo Vargas limped off with a torn muscle, meaning he is also likely to miss out. Yostin Salinas is the natural replacement for Mitchell at right-back, while Alexis Gamboa is the leading candidate to replace Vargas at center-back. Possible Starting 11 Sequeira; Salinas, Gamboa, Cascante, Calvo (C); Vargas, Aguilera, Bran, Madrigal; Martínez, Ugalde. Head-to-Head History Costa Rica has historically had an outstanding record against Panama, with La Sele’s once holding an astonishing ten-match winning streak that spanned 13 years (1992-2005) against their southeastern neighbor. The two countries have faced each other 63 times, with their first meeting taking place in 1938. Los Ticos has emerged victorious on 31 occasions, Panama 13 times, while the remaining 12 encounters ended in draws. Yet, that now seems like a distant memory, as Los Canaleros have a formidable six-game win streak against Los Ticos, in addition to coming out victorious in nine of the last 11 meetings between the two countries, dating back to 2017—a prime example of Panama’s climb in the international football stage. They are also currently higher in the FIFA ranking at 39th spot, 11 places above Costa Rica. Kick-off is at 20:00 CST Tonight at Estadio Rommel Fernández, Panama City, Panama. The post Costa Rica Faces Must-Win Battle Against Panama in Nations League Quarterfinal appeared first on The Tico Times | Costa Rica News | Travel | Real Estate.

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Lost your sense of direction? Turn off your phone and you’ll soon reconnect

Tech giants said today’s digital native kids would be the first generation who would not know what it meant to get lost. But is that a good thing?We’ve lost direction and our brains are shrinking – at least, our hippocampi are. These seahorse-shaped parts of the brain measure about 5cm, sit just above both ears and drive our spatial awareness and orientation. London taxi drivers, famed for taking the Knowledge, a test that involves memorising the central streets of the capital, have full-sized hippocampi. But in 2011, neuroscientists at University College London discovered that the cabbies’ hippocampi shrunk significantly after retirement.The development of the hippocampus can also be stunted in childhood. Children living in urban environments rarely see the sun rise or set and cannot tell the difference between east and west. When I volunteered to go into my local school to teach kids about direction, I found they struggled to distinguish north from south and east from west – though they could do so if allowed to use their phones. Continue reading...

We’ve lost direction and our brains are shrinking – at least, our hippocampi are. These seahorse-shaped parts of the brain measure about 5cm, sit just above both ears and drive our spatial awareness and orientation. London taxi drivers, famed for taking the Knowledge, a test that involves memorising the central streets of the capital, have full-sized hippocampi. But in 2011, neuroscientists at University College London discovered that the cabbies’ hippocampi shrunk significantly after retirement.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.The development of the hippocampus can also be stunted in childhood. Children living in urban environments rarely see the sun rise or set and cannot tell the difference between east and west. When I volunteered to go into my local school to teach kids about direction, I found they struggled to distinguish north from south and east from west – though they could do so if allowed to use their phones.Since 2005, when Google Maps was launched claiming it would help users get from A to B and then, three years later, when the iPhone 3G was released featuring “live” location, the online tech giants stated that today’s digital native kids would be the first generation who would not know what it meant to get lost. But is that a good thing? Their horizons and orientation, like their hippocampi, are shrinking with the collusion of online providers. In four generations children have gone from roaming up to six miles from home to an average of just 300 yards. Even before Covid, surveys found that three-quarters of children spent less time outdoors than prison inmates. Many parents know the subsequent 50% rise in agoraphobia has profoundly affected children’s mental and physical health. But it also drives biophobia, an avoidance, even fear of the natural world. If we come to dread nature, the result is an indifference, even hostility, towards environmental conservation.Wherever kids do travel they are probably following the blue dot on their phone screen, showing them the way without reference to the world around them. Maps have never been more accessible in the palm of our hands on our phones, but they are as much a tyranny as a liberation. Our phones now map us, harvesting our online likes and dislikes.The famous ‘blue marble’ Apollo 17 photograph of the Earth is upside downCurrent studies suggest a link between this so-called developmental topographical disorientation and mental health, as online experiences lead to a digitally poisoned awareness of space and place. We are becoming, quite literally, disoriented in a digital world where we have given up on tools that enhance our cognitive abilities, like paper maps and magnetic compasses that enabled us to navigate and orient ourselves in tandem with the physical world. We have retreated from using the spatial skills that sustained us for millennia. No wonder our sense of being lost is existential as much as directional.To be disoriented means to be “lost to the east”: the word comes from Latin for the sun rising in the east. In ancient history, most societies were oriented with east as their prime direction, the source of light, heat and life-giving sun. West, where the sun sets, came next. North and south then followed, as people located them by the position of the sun at midday, and visual astronomical observation of Polaris, the North Star. Early polytheistic societies worshipped the sun rising in the east, a tradition inherited by monotheistic Judeo-Christian belief that put east at the top of their maps, as the location of the beginning of Creation and the place of Resurrection. In the Old Testament, Creation starts in the Garden of Eden in the east. The medieval Mappa Mundi in Hereford Cathedral has east at the top, showing Adam and Eve in Eden, and west at the bottom. This was an orientation that defined European Christianity for more than 1,000 years.By contrast, early Islamic maps placed south at the top, because the people that first converted to the faith lived directly north of Mecca. The easiest way to understand their holy direction was to orient their maps so that Mecca was “up”. We still talk about going up north and down south in the UK, an old hangover from understanding the four points of the compass according to our bodies: up and down, front and back, or left and right. South does just as well as the cardinal direction, as it was for classical Chinese science, which had its magnetic compasses pointing south, not north. They are called luojing, “the thing that points south”. Australians know this: in 1979, Stuart McArthur published his Universal Corrective Map of the World, oriented southwards with Australia at the top.The compass appeared in the 13th century on European maritime maps that allowed navigators to orientate themselves on a north-south axis. But it took another 400 years for these maps to agree on putting north at the top, which had always been an inauspicious direction in most societies as a place of cold and darkness. It was crowned cardinal direction by the Flemish mapmaker Gerardus Mercator. But Mercator was more interested in enabling pilots to sail accurately east to west. On his world map (1569), distortion was minimised either side of the equator, which was ideal for European maritime empires sailing east to west via Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope. The north and south poles were projected to infinity, as everyone presumed they were ice-bound and travelling there seemed pointless.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRather than looking up, we spend our time looking down, glued to the blue dot on our phonesSo north triumphed accidentally, because nobody wanted to go there. As Europe’s imperial mapmakers cemented north as the cardinal direction, other traditions prioritising different directions were dismissed and erased. The west succeeded in putting north on top at the expense of places it denigrated and labelled “southern” (America and Africa), or as part of the “Middle East”. When Nasa first saw the image of the Earth photographed by the Apollo 17 astronauts on 7 December 1972, they rotated the original photo 180 degrees to show north at the top rather than south. The famous “blue marble” photograph, one of the most reproduced images in human history, is actually upside down.Historically no societies have put west at the top of world maps because of its associations with sunset and death. But as a political idea, the west has situated north on top after centuries of imperial domination. But will it stay there as India and China reorientate our global economy, and potentially turn it 180 degrees? Might the use of compasses disappear altogether – and with them the cardinal directions?In my lifetime we have gone from looking up, aspiring to a shared global village inspired by Nasa’s blue marble photograph, to looking down, glued to the blue dot on our phones as our hippocampi shrink and many of us withdraw from nature. It probably isn’t the end of civilisation. After all, maps and compasses are cognitive artefacts, like the internet, and we’ve been using them for millennia. But for our sense of wellbeing, and that of the world that sustains us, we can take steps not just to appreciate nature, but understand how we are part of it, acknowledging that it will always be bigger than us, in a positive, not phobic way. Many share basic principles of psychotherapy: grounding, breathing, being “in the moment”, imagining ourselves from outside or “above” our bodies. It seems that, more than ever, we need to explain who we are by understanding where we are. Here are a few tips on how to do so.Take your bearings. Use a compass (even on your phone!) to work out the four cardinal directions. Time and space are interrelated, so rethink your attitude to clock time by noticing the movement of the sun east to west from sunrise to sunset. As the sun sets, identify north by finding Polaris. We’re just a dot in the universe: accept it.Use a paper map. It is a declining art, but using paper maps will make you more aware of your surroundings. An archaic English term for map is a plot, just like a story: turn your route into an adventure.Feel the wind. Thousands of years before the invention of the compass, we understood and identified the four cardinal directions according to winds. Identify the wind’s direction according to your body: is it behind or in front of you? Look up, turn around. Acknowledge its force. This is a simple grounding exercise that reorients us according to the elements.Get lost. Take a trip, turn off your phone and deliberately get lost. It’s a little scary, but it will heighten your senses and sharpen your appreciation of the world around you. If that is too daunting, read Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost, because as Solnit suggests, who knows what you might find when you deliberately get lost?Four Points of the Compass: The Unexpected History of Direction by Jerry Brotton is published by Penguin at £20, or buy a copy for £17 at guardianbookshop.com. Jerry is also the presenter of the podcast What’s Your Map?

Conservation

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Capturing The Fire

When Louise Coghill saw the first plume of smoke begin to rise behind her parents property, she could never have predicted that in less than four hours, it would become a wall of flames, swallowing everything in its path. A photographer by trade, Louise has travelled the world documenting everything from the nomadic wanderers of Mongolia, to base life at Mount Everest. Capturing the extraordinary comes naturally to Louise, so when her family home in the semi-rural Western Australian town of Gidgegannup became engulfed in flames, her first instinct wasn’t to take shelter, it was to pick up her camera.

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Last Chair

We pollute the environment upon which we depend. An exploration of the paradox of sustainable skiing and how we can protect the places we love.

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The Cost of Sand

The Cost of Sand highlights the potential destruction of a crucial bio-link on the edge of the Ramsar wetlands from proposed expansion of sandmining in Bass Coast, Victoria. It features interviews with scientists and conservationists about the significance of preserving the last remnant coastal bushland in the region and the vulnerable wildlife and ecosystems it supports.

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MusiCares Names the Grateful Dead 2025 Persons of the Year

Photos You Should See - Sept. 2024

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Biden administration offers alternatives for Colorado River’s long-term operations

Surprising Surge: How Florida’s Manatees Are Thriving More Than Ever

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Costa Rica Faces Must-Win Battle Against Panama in Nations League Quarterfinal

Lost your sense of direction? Turn off your phone and you’ll soon reconnect

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The Kodiak Queen

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MusiCares Names the Grateful Dead 2025 Persons of the Year

Photos You Should See - Sept. 2024

Related News

Biden administration offers alternatives for Colorado River’s long-term operations

Surprising Surge: How Florida’s Manatees Are Thriving More Than Ever

Second Teen Charged in New Jersey Forest Fire as Rain Should Help Douse New York Blaze

Costa Rica Faces Must-Win Battle Against Panama in Nations League Quarterfinal

Lost your sense of direction? Turn off your phone and you’ll soon reconnect

Suggested Viewing

The Kodiak Queen

Bread For Tomorrow

Capturing The Fire

Last Chair

The Cost of Sand

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