It’s a beautiful summer day in Venice, California, and everyone seems to be out enjoying the beach—except for me.

I am profoundly autistic. As a result, I may jump up and down at strange moments or laugh uncontrollably. I cannot speak at all except for a few rote phrases, though I can write with the aid of a letter board or electronic device. And I am profoundly afraid of the dogs off their leashes that seem to be everywhere, especially in summertime.

It does not matter how small or large the dog is or whether it is well-behaved or not. Moreover, I’m not the only autistic person who panics around dogs. I am not sure why so many of us respond this way. I suspect it may have something to do with the fact that dogs are unpredictable and can bark loudly, sound being another sensitivity for me and most other autistics. When a dog approaches me, it inspires such anxiety that I cannot calm down for many hours afterward. My heart beats in my chest until I fear it is going to explode. My synapses flood with adrenaline, and I get unmanageably nervous. I cannot relax, no matter how hard I try.

This means that I often have to leave public spaces when dogs are present. It breaks my heart that I cannot participate in many summer outings with my family because of the ubiquitous presence of dogs. The constant presence of dogs outdoors is one more way in which my already circumscribed life as a person with autism has become even more circumscribed.

You might say my dilemma captures a clash between two ways of thinking about the public—not only the physical spaces we share but who is allowed access to them—one from pet lovers and another from the disabled. Both approaches are well-meaning: They seek to expand people’s horizons, and fiercely defend the rights of their subjects. Pets help us to see that our world is not just for human beings—we share community with all sorts of non-human beings as well. The disabled show that there are many different ways to be human, all of them valuable.

In an ideal world, all would be welcome. But at present, the situation is weighted toward pets and away from the disabled. The irony is that, according to prevailing laws, dogs are not allowed in many of the places that I end up having to leave.

Take, for example, the beach, which is my happy place. The rhythm of the waves helps me feel relaxed and grounded. The sound is so soothing that I do not have to wear the noise-canceling headphones that I keep glued to my ears almost everywhere else, including when I sleep. I can spend hours playing in the waves.

Los Angeles County law states that “A person shall not bring or maintain on any beach a dog or cat.” There are large signs on many Los Angeles beaches reminding people of this statute. Yet lots of people use the beach as a giant exercise area for their dogs. Moreover, they seldom leash their dogs, meaning their pets run at me, bark at me, sniff me, and climb all over me.

Another summer space I treasure is the farmers market. I love to stroll through the stands, checking out the produce. It smells enchanting and offers a vision of small, natural farms tended by real, friendly people—often there selling their own harvest, picked only hours before. One of my favorite summer joys is eating a fresh, ripe strawberry from these markets.

Here, too, California’s Health and Safety Code mandates that dogs be “kept at least 20 feet (6 meters) away from any mobile food facility, temporary food facility, or certified farmers market.” Again, prominent signs are posted at the entrance to every market. Despite this, dogs roam everywhere.

Another special place for me is the park near our apartment. It is one of the few open spaces close to where we live, and one of the few places I can ride my bike or go skateboarding when the weather is nice. Dogs have their own fenced run in the park where they are supposed to play off their leashes, yet owners insist on letting them run anywhere and everywhere unleashed. When dogs come up to me and want to play, their owners often smile as if it is cute. Instead, I have to leave—or risk a full-blown panic attack.

I am sure pet owners have no idea of the dilemma that they are placing me in. Since I cannot talk, I cannot even politely engage the violators. Instead, I am the one who ends up looking strange, having a giant meltdown in front of everyone. It feels unfair that the onus is on me to figure out how to cope, rather than on dog owners to show some basic consideration and follow the law. When my parents try to explain what is going on, they are typically met with hostility. To me, it is as though dog owners think that their pets have more rights than I do.

As Nicholas Kristof discussed in a recent piece in the New York Times, a majority of dog owners now consider their animals members of their family and spend an incredible amount of money on special food, clothing, and other products for them. It is beautiful that people love their pets so much. But it should not come at the cost of downplaying the needs of the disabled.

I recognize that there is a place in the discussion for service animals. Our neighbor is blind and uses a seeing-eye dog named Ellie. She is a very smart and well-trained animal, and she is always leashed when outside. Although Ellie still makes me nervous, I can manage—in part because she is so well-behaved, and in part because I recognize that her owner has a legitimate need to use her. As another disabled person, I realize that my neighbor needs her service dog to participate fully in public life.

Even though the ordinances outlawing dogs at the beach, in farmers markets, or in public parks were not passed with disabled people in mind, they have become de facto disability rights measures. They let disabled people like myself gain access to some of the few public spaces available. This is especially true in summer, when we all want to enjoy the outdoors.

I know that dog owners do not mean to exclude us, but through their carelessness, this is exactly what they are doing.

And I understand that I don’t have all the answers. One small step toward a solution might be to have lifeguards, farmers market managers, and park officials monitor peoples’ behavior more closely.

More meaningful change, however, will only come with a shift in perspective: recognizing the presence of autistic people and believing that we deserve a place in society. For much of our history, we have been locked away and institutionalized—out of sight and out of mind. We are only now emerging from the shadows to join the rest of you.

It would be a joy to step into public space without fear, knowing that my fellow beachgoers who have dogs have accommodated me so that I, too, can enjoy the idle dog days of summer.

The post I’m Autistic and Scared of Your Dog appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The 13 books that made the 2024 Zócalo Summer Reading List all make for excellent bookworm bait. They show us what goes into building cities, and what goes into building the image of one of the biggest bands of all time. They move us from India’s 1857 uprising to New Mexico’s present-day wildfires. They chronicle wisdom passed down across generations, and cutting-edge scientific research that helps us see the cosmos anew.

As you peruse this year’s offerings, we think you’ll see why these picks should be your catch of the day.

Shop Zócalo’s 2024 summer reading list through our independent bookstore partner:

The post Fishin’ for Summer 2024 Books to Read? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Last summer was my first in my new apartment. I’d moved into the building in the fall, several weeks into a cool Vancouver November. The trees were bare, and our famous winter rain had set in for its months-long stay, but I stood on my balcony, looking out over the cityscape and mountains behind it, and thought: This will be heaven in summer.

Buildings in the Pacific Northwest are built for cold, despite our relatively mild winters. They’re made of wood and insulated, or of concrete, which retains heat naturally. Mine, a big block complex in a dense urban area, was concrete, completed only a year prior. When the building manager handed me my apartment keys, she explained the heating system. I asked about air conditioning, and she said the building didn’t have it, but that it wouldn’t be a problem. We were in Canada, after all.

Five months later, I received a notification on my phone’s weather app: An extreme heat alert was in effect for British Columbia. A spring heatwave was headed for the province, with temperatures expected over 30 C (86 F), nearly 20 degrees above the seasonal average. On May 14, I awoke in the morning from a fitful sleep and checked my thermostat: 29 C (84 F). An uncomfortable indoor temperature for a Southern Californian, but hell for a Northwesterner. My concrete home had become a sauna. That afternoon, I encountered neighbors in the elevator carrying box fans and portable air conditioners; the higher the floor they were stopping at, the more their agitation level seemed to rise. It unsettled me, but I still believed my building manager: I could survive the summer heat.

I was born in Vancouver in the late 1980s and have lived in the city most of my life. Vancouverites regularly bemoan our dreary climate, but anyone who’s lived in the Pacific Northwest long enough knows what makes living here worth it. When the rain finally lifts and the trees turn green, our corner of the planet transforms into a northern paradise. Summer’s long, light-filled days—even if they have historically lasted only a couple months—are enough to forgive the rest. When a cool ocean breeze blows in at 10 p.m. on a July evening, the sky still filled with color, anything feels possible.

Summer was always my favorite season here. As a child, I anticipated it with mounting excitement each spring, certain of its transformative potential. Summer meant freedom from school and the confines of a world determined by adults; it meant water parks and beaches, crushes and bike rides late into the night.

Two decades later, I feel differently. Like many in the Northwest, I’ve come to dread summer.

Solastalgia is a word many of us have learned, as the places we grew up in and the seasons we spent there have been irrevocably altered by climate change. It’s a word drawn from the past (the Latin solacium—“comfort” or “solace”—and the Greek algos: “pain”) to describe our present. It holds both our current grief for what has been lost and anticipatory grief for a world that will be even more changed.

Where Vancouver summers were once associated with clear afternoons and gentle temperatures—a calling card that made the Pacific Northwest a promising option for climate apocalypse preppers—they’ve become seasons of extreme heat, fires, and smoke. June, July, August, and increasingly even May and September now often bring long, scorching days and the distinctive orange haze of a smoke-blanketed sun.

For many British Columbians, the summer of 2021 was a psychological turning point. Fifteen years ago, I can’t remember a June day in Vancouver reaching anywhere near 30 C; in fact, between 1976 and 2005, the city averaged just one day over 30 C per year. But in late June 2021, British Columbia experienced a heat dome that saw inland temperatures soar to nearly 50 C (122 F), shattering heat records, killing hundreds of people, and sparking fires across the province, one of which destroyed the entire town of Lytton within hours.

In Vancouver, temperatures hovered at nearly 40 C (104 F) for days, with wildfire smoke adding to the suffocating claustrophobia. Public libraries became cooling centers, and stores across the province sold out of air conditioners. Climate data analysis suggested that the event would have been 150 times less likely without human-induced climate change.

Last year, while I baked in my apartment during the May heatwave, parts of British Columbia and neighboring Alberta again burned—an early start to a Western wildfire season that would be Canada’s worst yet. In June, Canada made international headlines when smoke from wildfires in Quebec traveled south, enveloping New York City and large swaths of the Northeast for days. By the fall, flames had scorched 16.5 million hectares.

I couldn’t afford the expensive air-conditioning units my neighbors had purchased, so I spent June, July, and August in a state of chronic sleep deprivation and mental stress. I didn’t realize how much the summer’s heat had affected me until late August, when the smoke started to roll in from British Columbia’s devastating inland fires, forcing me to keep my windows closed and my air filter running to mitigate it.

Being shut in in 30-degree weather undid me. I caved and purchased an air conditioner—on sale, to mark what would usually be the season’s end. I’m glad I did. September in Vancouver was also hot and smoky. Being able to cool down inside my home provided immeasurable relief.

This year, I’m better equipped psychically as well. As Canada emerges from the warmest winter in the country’s history, and drought fuels fires that have already forced thousands to evacuate in the West, I’m planning for the likelihood of days spent indoors, avoiding the heat and smoke. I know I’m privileged to have an escape. Like many Pacific Northwesterners, I’ve had to accept our new reality: Summer is no longer a time of freedom.

My solastalgia encompasses my grief not just for the climate I knew and how it has changed in my lifetime, but how I have changed in tandem. I mourn the Vancouver summers of my childhood but also the version of me that associated summer with pleasure and joy, instead of anxiety and danger.

I hope there will still be days when the sun sinks late over the Pacific on a cool evening and the future feels expansive, but I’ll experience them differently, knowing they’re a reminder of a fading season. The future they conjure will likely bring a different version of summer with it.

The post An Elegy for Vancouver Summer appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Which region is the greater threat to humanity: Northern California or Southern California?

That’s the most urgent question raised by 2023’s great cinematic contest between Oppenheimer and Barbie.

Sure, these are entertaining films about a physicist and a doll. But both movies are also, in no small part, California-based stories about global nightmares, about the Earth-altering threat of bombs and bombshells alike.

Embedded in those nightmares are warnings about the damage that Northern and Southern California can do when we send our ideas out into the world.

Oppenheimer is the Northern California nightmare. While much of Christopher Nolan’s film takes place in New Mexico, where the first atomic bombs were built, the most important moments occur at Berkeley, where J. Robert Oppenheimer was a professor from 1929 to 1943.

It’s there that he meets the Manhattan Project’s military chief, Leslie Groves, and befriends the physicist Ernest Lawrence (the Lawrence of the Bay Area’s Lawrence Livermore National Lab), who becomes a crucial collaborator in the Manhattan Project. In fact, the lab in New Mexico that produced the nuclear bombs ended up being managed by the University of California.

The whole endeavor is a quintessential Bay Area enterprise. Very smart people from around the world come together to rapidly create a disruptive technology, without fully appreciating its perils and complications until it’s too late. Oppenheimer has prompted comparisons to how Silicon Valley is now making available artificial intelligence tools available without understanding their consequences.

Among the nuclear age’s cultural and commercial products was Barbie (born in 1959). She, and the new film about her, are Los Angeles nightmares.

The director, Greta Gerwig, is a Sacramento kid who shares her home city’s loathing of all things L.A. So, her film pins most of the damage that Barbie has done on Southern California, where she was invented and manufactured.

Barbie, like Los Angeles itself, is a sun-splashed comedy with a dark noir heart. The central joke of the film is that when Barbie, in unexpected existential crisis, leaves the seeming perfection of Barbieland for “Reality,” it turns out to be L.A. Amid the city’s most unreal Westside precincts (especially Venice), Barbie learns of the impossible expectations her example places on women.

Barbie’s would-be boyfriend Ken, who is confined to hanging around the beach in Barbieland, discovers the possibilities of patriarchy after he falls in love with the phallic glass office towers of Century City. And when Ken takes those supposed Southern California values back to Barbieland, that utopia of feminism (with a set design that resembles Palm Springs) collapses. Soon, the various Ken dolls have imposed a bizarro dictatorship of men, who subjugate the various Barbies, who’d previously served as president and controlled the Supreme Court.

It might be wrong to think too hard about a movie as addled and antic as Barbie, but the film does reflect the Hollywood work realities of the women who made the movie. Gerwig, star-producer Margot Robbie, and their colleagues have had to navigate an entertainment industry dominated by dim-witted Kens. (The rest of L.A., thank goodness, is a bit more egalitarian, as Mayor Karen Bass and the all-female Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors can tell you.)

Both films, however, feel more than a little soulless. Barbie, for all its righteous feminism, is a corporate vehicle for selling dolls. It misses opportunities to make light of the cynicism of this American moment, when corporations try to talk like social movements, and social movements often behave like corporations. The anxieties of Barbie are firmly upper-middle-class and higher; none of the women or men of the film worry about what worries most Angelenos—scratching out a living in a too-expensive place.

Oppenheimer is even more callous. It’s a film about nuclear weapons that doesn’t show their victims. We never see the human horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which is why the film can’t get screened in Japan), or the damage people endured because of their proximity to the testing of such weapons, from the South Pacific to Central Asia.

This distance from real-life human concerns is what makes both films so unsettling—and so convincing as apocalyptic documents.

Together, they offer a two-part scenario for the end of humanity. First, we grow divided and isolated from each other because of the unattainable lifestyles and cultural expectations that Southern California creates and promotes. Second, we kill ourselves with the technologies masterminded by Northern California.

The post Will SoCal’s Barbie Doll or NorCal’s Bobby Oppenheimer Destroy the World First? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

We spent the spring surveying Zócalo’s friends and contributors to learn what new (mostly) nonfiction books fed their minds and souls in 2023. They delivered, sending us an eclectic mix of works sure to nourish you—from coming-of-age journeys to global searches for transcendence, from probings into our shared past to forward-looking examinations of our present.

Make these recommendations your summer companions, and they’ll keep you company whether you’re lucky enough to be lying on a sandy shore or just find yourself mentally there.

Shop Zócalo’s 2023 summer reading list through our independent bookstore partner:

The post Zócalo’s 2023 Summer Reading List Delivers Much-Needed R&R appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The potential that once hung so heady in the sun-warmed solstice air is no more.

Just another year waiting on Hot Girl Summer.

Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion popularized the phrase “hot girl summer” before COVID, releasing a 2019 song of the same name that became her first No. 1 hit. Of its meaning, she told the Root, “It’s about women and men being unapologetically them, just having a good-ass time, hyping up your friends, doing you.” In other words, a summer where you can be in charge of your own happiness.

The word “hot” has proven elastic in the English language over the centuries. Its use as a way to communicate attraction and desire goes all the way back to Chaucer and Shakespeare. But its incorporation as slang is relatively recent; in print, at least, the Oxford English Dictionary dates its use back to a 1926 New Republic article, which reminds us—if we’ve “forgotten” our mythology—that Aphrodite was the “hot momma of goddesses.” By the time Paris Hilton started designating everything from velour tracksuits to the earth “hot” in the early 2000s, the nimbleness of hotness was increasingly apparent, though it was still up to tastemakers to determine its parameters.

With Megan Thee Stallion’s latest popularization of “hot,” though, the boundaries of the word were reframed once again. No longer is it only a label that someone can slap on you—instead, her vision of a “hot girl” is anyone’s mantle to claim. The writer Danya Issawi called attention to this phenomenon in the New York Times recently: “Hotness is no longer just in the eye of the beholder,” Issawi observed. “It’s a mood. It’s a vibe.”

In this context, the phenomenon of doing hot girl things, which has taken off across social media, can be as mundane as going for a walk or doing your taxes. The emphasis is entirely on how you do them—and how you feel doing them—which is why, for instance, it’s been used as a way to destigmatize mental and physical ailments. Can hot girls have IBS? (Of course.) Depression? (Who doesn’t in this day and age.)

But if being a hot girl is a self-affirming act that you as an individual can manifest, I’ve come to think of Hot Girl Summer as a collective societal pact. Amid the sorrows, horrors, and existential crises of the modern life, Hot Girl Summer has felt like the promise of a better world that we can build together.

Which is why, for the past two years, the idea of Hot Girl Summer—née “Hot Vax Summer” in 2021, and this year’s “Hot Girl Summer 2.0” or “‘Hot Vax Summer,’ but for real this time” (emphasis my own)—has loomed so large in the collective imagination.

Like Charlie Brown revving up to kick the prodigal football each Memorial Day, I’ve held my breath, watching that sun-kissed horizon. Maybe this is the summer we’ve been anticipating, the summer it will all happen—only for a new avalanche of horrors to tumble out.

Looking at it from the other side of Labor Day this year, I think I’ve finally realized what it is that we’ve been talking about when we talk about Hot Girl Summer. And why it will never truly manifest. Hot Girl Summer is utopia. What we hope for, and then mourn as we slide into September, is a different reality.

Throughout the ages and across the globe, people have always expressed this longing for another, better world.

“Utopian vision invariably presents itself as a social commentary, an allegory of the desire for change and transformation,” wrote the scholar Longxi Zhang in the academic journal Utopian Studies. This desire, Zhang points out, is “deeply ingrained in the very nature of the human condition, as no one in any society is unwilling, if not actively trying, to make life better and achieve the optimum out of our limited resources and capabilities.”

When Thomas More wrote his socio-political satire Utopia just over 500 years ago in 1516, he gave us a word for this hope. But while it’s often said that he was pulling from the Greek word ou-topos or “no place,” More was actually playing on the Greek word eu-topos or “a good place.” As the British Library points out, “at the very heart of the word is a vital question: can a perfect world ever be realized?”

But I’d argue that question has always been moot.

Even if a utopia—or a Hot Girl Summer—isn’t possible, it doesn’t mean we can’t all work toward it to the best of our ability. And do so unapologetically, as I think Megan Thee Stallion would argue.

After all, the most important thing to remember about utopias is that they are always a state of pursuit.

The Uruguayan literary master Eduardo Galeano put it most beautifully when he wrote: “Utopia lies at the horizon. When I draw nearer by two steps, it retreats two steps. If I proceed ten steps forward, it swiftly slips ten steps ahead. No matter how far I go, I can never reach it. What, then, is the purpose of utopia? It is to cause us to advance.”

From the other side of the calendar, Hot Girl Summer, too, beckons us forward, a coconut-scented siren call of what could be.

The post Hot Girl Summer Is a Utopian Notion appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

As the United States sends stockpiles of weapons to Ukraine, another transatlantic mobilization is underway. Freed from two years of COVID restrictions and testing requirements, Americans are once again traveling in large numbers. Market observers have predicted a six-fold increase in American tourism to Europe compared to summer 2021.

If you’re wondering what shipments of weapons and planeloads of tourists have in common, the answer is: quite a bit. Tourism has long had a way of getting mixed up in international politics.

It is easy to overlook tourism’s political importance. After all, most Americans journey abroad seeking fun or exposure to a country’s history, food, and art. The goal is usually to escape news headlines, not study them in detail.

Tourism is also easy to dismiss as a superficial activity involving pre-packaged, staged encounters. The word “tourist” began in the 18th century as a neutral synonym for “traveler,” but, as the literary historian James Buzard has shown, cultural sophisticates soon turned the word into an insult. Starting in the mid-19th century, self-declared travelers sought to bolster their own cultural status by ridiculing tourists as thoughtless sheep. The most famous American version of this anti-tourist position came from popular historian Daniel J. Boorstin. In his 1962 book, The Image, Boorstin lamented how the rise of convenient transportation across the oceans rendered travel experiences “diluted, contrived, prefabricated.” According to Boorstin, a genuine traveler takes risks and interacts with locals, while tourists merely follow someone else’s script.

The U.S. Information Agency (USIA) saturated travel agencies and airlines with this booklet. Photo taken by author. Courtesy of U.S. National Archives in College Park, Maryland.

It’s a mistake to stereotype tourists in this way. The historical record shows that tourists are pretty good at thinking for themselves. My research uncovered many examples. Here is one: Exactly 70 years ago, as the Korean War raged and the Iron Curtain divided Europe, the U.S. government decided to coach American tourists on how to prepare for encounters with communists and their supporters. It was the height of McCarthyism in the United States, but grassroots communist movements thrived in Western Europe. In fact, many of the waiters and chambermaids serving Americans in France’s luxury restaurants and hotels belonged to communist labor unions. So, in 1952, the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), working with civic organizations, saturated travel agencies and airlines with a booklet, “What Should I Know When I Travel Abroad?” If Americans met a Western European who wanted to negotiate with Moscow, the booklet suggested that Americans respond politely but firmly: “It seems to us that in the fight between what is right and what is wrong there just isn’t room for neutralism.”

Actual tourists, however, didn’t follow the script. The USIA interviewed several hundred Americans in their homes after their 1952 trips. Most appreciated the booklet, and a surprising share—71 percent—claimed they read it cover to cover. Still, the government’s diplomatic experts found troubling signs. When it came to explaining something as basic as “America’s concern with Communism,” the report found Americans “ill-equipped.” Alarmingly, the USIA learned that Americans took “a less-determined stand” on European neutralism than their government’s recommendation. Fully one-third said that their travels helped them understand European desires for negotiating with the Soviets. One tourist admitted to the USIA, “I couldn’t say anything. I could only sympathize.”

Indeed, international travel can help build solidarity with other countries. As the USIA learned, tourists aren’t so good at following specific political talking points, but tourism has, historically, instilled a sense of which foreign places matter to the United States. Why is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) so popular in the United States today? One reason is that Americans have for so long visited Europe in search of cultural treasures—making those nations feel like part of a shared community. When World War I erupted, wealthy Americans who had traveled to Europe before the war became the most vocal advocates for U.S. entry into the conflict, citing their tourist memories, especially of embattled France. One influential magazine in 1917 offered a lavish 16-page photograph spread showcasing French tourist sites “to help perpetuate … the bond of romantic affection” linking America to France. During the next war, while Adolf Hitler posed for snapshots by the Eiffel Tower, best-selling books like The Last Time I Saw Paris built U.S. commitment for fighting Germany with travel writing that described France as part of Americans’ own heritage.

What does the political nature of tourism mean for today? For starters, Americans with the ability to travel abroad should think more deliberately about combining politics with pleasure when choosing their destinations. NATO’s self-defense clause obliges the United States to risk World War III for the safety of countries like Estonia. My guess is that few Americans could locate Estonia on a map. Next summer, why not skip Paris or Rome and visit Estonia’s charming capital of Tallinn? Learning about newer NATO members will help Americans develop more informed opinions on the risks and rewards of their nation’s foreign commitments.

Government officials themselves should give more attention to tourism’s ability to sustain those bonds of affection. The American Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan has called on Taiwan’s government to welcome more foreign tourists as a matter of “national security.” The U.S. government would be wise to give tourism similar attention. When it comes to popular culture, politicians usually fixate on what’s novel. That’s why, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Biden White House organized a briefing for TikTok influencers. As far as I can tell, the Biden White House has not reached out to the travel industry or the millions of tourists heading abroad this summer. The president cannot make tourists support his policies, but he can encourage them to listen to and learn from our allies while abroad.

Washington can also help make foreign travel accessible for more Americans. In an age of polarization, international travel remains refreshingly bipartisan. According to a 2021 survey, 41 percent of Democrats and 38 percent of Republicans reported having a valid passport. But that percentage drops to 21 percent of Americans with annual incomes under $50,000. In 1949, the widely respected journalist Norman Cousins called for government subsidies to help poorer Americans travel abroad. Washington could follow that advice today by waiving passport fees and bolstering exchange programs for low-income Americans—not as a form of charity but as way to broaden Americans’ engagement with foreign policy.

Overseas vacations have always involved politics alongside leisure and escapism. Your next vacation by itself will not change the world, but it will become part of the next chapter in international history.

The post Could Your Vacation Change the World? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

My dad, Norman Horowitz, had no engineering training, just a love for the beauty and symmetry of bridges. Using an old World War I Army Manual, steel from the local junkyard, and cobblestones he foraged near his home in the Bronx, he spent four years building the bridge. When it was finished, it connected the camp’s main campus with the manmade “Animal Island,” which, back in the day, housed a petting zoo.

The bridge that the author’s father built at Camp Pontiac. Photo by Janice Benjamin.

My dad, whose favorite book was Profiles in Courage, dedicated his bridge to the late President John F. Kennedy, installing at its foot a podium with a bust of JFK that was a replica of the famous Robert Berks sculpture at the Kennedy Center. JFK’s inaugural words, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” captured the public service spirit my dad wanted the children of Camp Pontiac to live by. The Kennedy bust became a literal touchstone for generations of campers, who paused to pat the head—and, my dad liked to believe, to think of others—when crossing the bridge.

My dad was an elementary school teacher in the Bronx. The middle of three boys, he was handsome with blue eyes and thick, jet-black hair. He was also shy, probably due to being severely asthmatic as a child. Camp Pontiac was his favorite place, both as a teenager—he was 15 when his father bought the camp in 1945—and as an adult, when he and his brothers inherited it. I spent summers at Camp Pontiac, often passing my dad, who’d smile and wave, usually busy fixing something, his clothes and hands too dirty to hug me. I was proud to be Norman’s daughter.

My father’s life goals were simple: to take care of and educate his family, and the children entrusted to his care at school and camp. He supported my every pursuit, from academics to theater—and also cheered on every other young person, including my college and law school friends, who crossed his path. My dad and I were so close he picked out my wedding dress—without me present—when my punishing hours as a young attorney left me without any spare time.

Sometime in the 1980s, when I was in my 20s and after my father had sold his share of the camp, we learned that the JFK head had mysteriously disappeared. I saw how the news disturbed my dad, even in his stoic, quiet way. I made it my secret mission to find the statue, knowing how much it meant to him. I visited the auction houses around Copake, where my father used to take me as a child, thinking maybe the thief would try to sell the bust. Decades passed. I took to searching on eBay. The bust was still lost when my father died in 2016, at age 86. I kept looking, wanting to find the statue for myself, as a memory of my dad.

Around the beginning of the pandemic, I saw a post on the Camp Pontiac Alumni Facebook page, written by a woman who’d been a camp counselor in the 1980s. She reminisced about a silly prank, lightheartedly describing how the JFK head had been stashed in a camper’s luggage trunk. My stomach dropped. As others chuckled about the “funny” antic, I seethed with rage.

I privately messaged the woman who’d written the post, who apologized and took the story down. I called my sister and my cousins to vent. As the night wore on, my rage settled into a profound sadness. I missed my hardworking, noble father more than ever. I talked to him out loud. I went into the room in my house where he’d stayed during his final months, sat on his bed, and cried bitterly. After decades of looking, I finally realized that the statue was irretrievably gone—and with this came a larger reckoning I hadn’t wanted to face: so was my father.

The next day, something inexplicable happened. My cousin Janice, who’d moved back to Copake, walked to camp to take a picture of my father’s suspension bridge, thinking it might cheer me up. Instead, she texted me a picture of the JFK head, lying on its side on a stone slab.

I was driving, and swerved to the side of the road. “Huh? Is that an old picture? I’m confused,” I texted back.

It wasn’t an old picture. My father’s brother Eddie took off in his golf cart to retrieve the head. Amazingly, the bust was perfectly intact, with the post where my dad had mounted it still attached.

We all thought that whomever had been in possession of the head saw the Facebook posts, felt guilty, and furtively returned it during the night. But as details came together, the truth was more remarkable: The camp site manager had been crossing my father’s suspension bridge when his dog started digging at something. Buried deep in the dirt, with only the post poking out, was the JFK head. With no knowledge of the statue’s history, the manager brushed it off and set it on a nearby stone slab. Not long after he left, my cousin walked over and discovered it.

The JFK bust with the spindle sticking out lying on the stone. Courtesy of author.

It had been over 30 years since the JFK bust had gone missing. The day after I raged in sadness over what seemed its permanent loss, the statue had, magically, appeared. My father was a strong-willed man, but I never expected to get a message from him after he died. It was as though he’d felt my despair and unearthed the single most meaningful symbol of his character.

The bust, on a new mount, now sits in my home in California, and every day I am astounded to see it there. Recently, to mark what would’ve been my dad’s 90th birthday, I posted on social media about the statue’s reappearance. Comments from Camp Pontiac alumni poured in.

“I was but a little kid, some 60 years ago when I watched your dad build that remarkable suspension bridge,” wrote Ronald J. Krowne, a camper in the 1960s. “It symbolized so much to us … & the JFK bust was the crowning anchor of it all.” Robin Bernstein, a camper throughout the ‘70s, wrote that the statue “reminded us of the larger world around us and of doing what we can to make the world a better place.”

This summer marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of Camp Pontiac. In celebration, the current owners have revamped the camp logo—it will now be the image of my dad’s suspension bridge.

The post The Bridges My Father Built appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The 12 books on this list traverse turning points in history, and navigate the headwinds of the future—with a port stop or two at Whimsy Island along the way. With subject matter ranging from Buddhist meditation for the age of anxiety to Africa’s central place in world history, our crew’s selections are sure to steer you boldly into a summer rich with ideas. But no need to look for an “X” to mark the spot on this treasure map—we promise a cruise through these picks will be a reward all its own.

Shop Zócalo’s 2022 summer reading list through our independent bookstore partners:

The post Zócalo’s 2022 Summer Reading List Charts New Waters appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Summer wouldn’t be summer without textiles.

Blessed with an abundance of cloth, we tend to take textiles for granted, all the more so when we aren’t bundled up against the cold. But textiles are among the oldest, most essential, and most pervasive of human inventions. Their summertime incarnations demonstrate just how central they are to defining who we are. Freed by higher temperatures from most of their protective functions, in the summer textiles reveal their social side, becoming signs of who we are and what we value.

A combination of warm weather and cultural imperatives probably drove humans to invent cloth in the first place. During the last ice age, loose blankets and shawls fashioned from animal pelts no longer provided humans with enough protection from the wind and cold. People began crafting skins into layers of clothing fitted to the body. Complex clothing replaced simple wraps.

Then, as the ice age ended around 11,500 years ago, the climate changed. The weather got warm and humid. Garments made from animal skins became sweaty and uncomfortable, sometimes dangerously so. The obvious solution would have been to get rid of clothes altogether. But that’s not what happened, even in hot climates.

Like Adam and Eve with their fig leaves, people almost everywhere continued to cover at least their genitals with loincloths and girdles. Only in a few places where the climate had never grown cold enough to require complex clothing, such as mainland Australia, did everyday nakedness remain normal until contact with people from colder regions. “After wearing complex clothes for millennia—from at least 40,000 years ago in the middle latitudes of Eurasia—it would seem that casual exposure of the naked body was no longer socially acceptable,” writes Australian archaeologist Ian Gilligan in his 2018 book, Climate, Clothing, and Agriculture in Prehistory.

To meet cultural expectations and climate constraints, people started turning string into cloth.

The oldest archaeological evidence of fabric goes back about 11,000 years—to around the time the world turned warm. Cloth required farming and herding to dependably supply enough fiber to make large quantities of yarn. A typical beach towel contains roughly five miles of yarn. A Roman toga required 25 miles. We owe agricultural settlement at least as much to the social desire for clothes as to the biological need for food.

The earliest surviving archaeological textiles demonstrate that cloth was more than purely functional. Fragments found in the Nahal Hemar cave in Israel’s Judaean desert date back nearly 9,000 years. They show signs of red pigment, as well as decorative stitching and embellishment with tassels, shells, and beads. At the Huaca Prieta mound on the northern coast of Peru, archaeologists have uncovered 6,200-year-old cotton cloth with stripes alternating natural beige with indigo-dyed blue, plus white highlights from a local milkweed plant. Someone went to a lot of trouble to create blue dye and make patterned cloth. Summer’s checked picnic blankets and striped beach towels, designed to do more than merely protect you from the dirt and sand, reflect the same decorative impulse—and the same basic knowledge of how to weave simple patterns.

Of course, textile technologies have changed a lot over the millennia, most of all in the 250 years since the first spinning mills opened in northern England. By making thread abundant, spinning machines changed the world. They reduced the time it took to spin miles of yarn from weeks to minutes—and eventually to seconds. By the turn of the 19th century, the speedy power looms invented in the mid-1880s had joined spinning mills to make textiles abundant for the first time in history, affecting not only clothing but sails and tents, sacks and sheets. These technologies made it feasible for a beachgoer to spread out on a towel whose thick pile of loops consume extra thread—terrycloth dates only to the 1890s—or for a bride to walk down the aisle in a special dress she only wears once.

Even more important for textiles’ cultural role was the development of synthetic dyes in the mid-19th century. Beginning with the purple that teenage chemistry student William Perkin accidentally concocted in 1856, dyes made in labs added every conceivable color to the textile palette. Hues that had once been difficult to achieve, such as intense blacks, purples, and greens, became commonplace.

Color not only gives cloth beauty. It imbues it with meaning. Just look at some of the world’s simplest textiles: banners and flags. The red, white, and blue of Independence Day in the U.S. and Bastille Day in France have symbolic meanings—valor, purity, and justice. Equally important, and the likely reason they are the most common colors of older national banners, is that blue and red are also easy to achieve with plant-based dyes: indigo for blue, and madder for red.

It wasn’t until the spread of synthetic dyes that the green and violet in the rainbow flag, and the intense blacks and greens of Juneteenth banners, became widely available.

Before then, greens were usually created by first dyeing with yellow and then with blue. The yellows tended to fade, which is why the medieval tapestries you see in museums often have blue grass. The best blacks, like the ones recorded in Dutch portraits, also required multiple layers of color, often starting with an indigo base. Ordinary people used brownish plant dyes, adding iron salts to deepen the color, to dye fabrics black. But none of these were as true as the blacks adopted as Pan-African symbols in the mid-20th century. Traditional African artisans were (and still are) among the world’s great masters of indigo, but the brilliant colors of African pride are products of modern chemistry.

Every new textile technology opens up new means of cultural expression, as people find ways to make fabrics their own and, through their textiles, to say something about who they are, where they belong, and what they love. In both substance and significance, cloth is remarkably fluid. Fabrics fold and bend and flap in the breeze, switch from two dimensions to three, conform to the contours of bodies and follow the terrain. In the sunny days of summer, especially, they become expressive declarations of identity and joy.

The post How Textiles Became the Fabric of Summer appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.