Southern Bookman

Highly deveoped Mayan network of cities, super highways revealed

When I was a young man, a friend of mine and I traveled to ancient Mayan ruins in the North Guatemalan jungle.

We flew on a small plane from Guatemala City to the site of Tikal, a city that flourished from 200 to 900 A.D., the high point of Mayan civilization.

Uncovered from dense vegetation that had overgrown the ancient buildings, the site includes the famous 184-foot-tall "Jaguar temple" pyramid and mysterious passageways decorated with the Mayans' artwork, writings, religious symbols and sophisticated calendars.

A Guatemalan whom I met on our trip to the central American country gave me a tile painting of the Tikal pyramid emerging from the rainforest. The artwork still hangs on my office wall some 50 years later.

Like others who've visited Mayan sites, I was astonished at the Mayans' accomplishments and perplexed about their mysterious collapse.

We saw their descendants in small villages, selling crafts and produce in markets and carrying out Mayan-influenced rituals at a Catholic Mass.

My admiration for the Mayans again took flight when I read a recent report that their civilization was even more advanced than previously believed.

Scientists using sophisticated radar technology to peer beneath the dense jungle have discovered 417 Mayan cities connected by nearly 110 miles of super highways, dating back to 1,000 B.C., according to a recent article by Washington Post reporter Charlotte Lyon.

The highway network found beneath 1,350 square miles of Guatemala's El Mirador jungle region represents "the first freeway system in the world," the article said.

New evidence of the Mayans' well-organized economic, political and social system means that they were not "hunter-gatherers" as long believed, the article said.

Begun in 2015, the investigations using lidar, or light detection and ranging technology, have uncovered a new chapter in human history.  The new discoveries confirm that Mayan innovations rivaled or surpassed those of ancient Egypt, Greece and other cultures seen as the foundation of Western civilization.

The Mayans were carrying out complex economic transactions and developing elaborate social structures long before Europeans came to the new world.

Although they lived long ago, the Mayans were like us, experiencing a world of wonder and creativity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Iranian Pulitzer-winning playwright Sanaz Toossi discusses immigrant experience, why she turned to TV

Sanaz Toossi, who won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize this week for her play "English," can't make a living as a playwright despite a burst of success in the theater.

The 31-year-old Iranian-American writer said in a New York Times interview Thursday that she supports herself by writing for television, which allowed her to buy health insurance.

Toossi's now on strike along with other members of the Hollywood writers' union seeking increased pay and benefits from TV streaming. But media landscape changes threaten the abundant era for TV writers that has prevailed for more than a decade.

As cable TV channels and streaming services like Netflix expanded, successful playwrights turned to TV writing to earn lucrative livelihoods.

Yet changes in media technology and audience fragmentation brought reduced compensation for writers in recent years, culminating in the walkout. As the strike continues, TV production has ground to a halt.

Playwright and TV screenwriter Alena Smith in a revealing article for the Los Angeles Review of Books mourns the lack of sustaining theater income for American playwrights.

But TV opportunities for writers have also eroded, as the strike exposes. Smith in a sobering assessment of the future says that the Internet and decline of cable will disrupt the TV landscape.

Smith, a Yale Drama School MFA graduate, said she earned only $13,000 as a playwright over six years, including a federal grant. She supplemented her income with odd jobs before heading to Hollywood, where she created the popular Apple TV+ series "Dickinson."

Broadway and the New York theater once sustained American playwrights like Eugene O'Neil, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams.

From 1920 to 1940, 130 new plays were produced on Broadway each year, Smith discloses. From 1980 to 2014, the number of new productions plummeted to 14 a year, and will fall even lower as revivals, musicals and juke-box confections vie for declining audiences.

Smith foresees a similar bleak ice age for writers as the TV landscape fragments.

Toossi, the single child of Iranian immigrants, has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the theater, capped by the Pulitzer.

"English," in which four Iranians take English lessons at a storefront school outside of Tehran in order to pass a language proficiency exam, premiered in 2022 at the off-Broadway Atlantic Theater Co.  Before capturing the Pulitzer, Toossi won the Lucille Lortel Award for outstanding Off-Broadway drama.

The play is frequently produced around the country, and Toossi has received commissions from several local theater companies. Her second play, "Wish You Were Here," a comedy about Iranian women's travails in America, was produced in 2022 by the off-Broadway Playwrights Horizon Theater.

But like other playwrights whose first love is the theater, she's turned to TV to survive.

Now that sanctuary is closing too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Al.com, Mississippi Today win Pulitzer Prizes, showing death of local news greatly exaggerated

Digital technology is killing local reporting. But not in Alabama and Mississippi.

Al.Com, owned by Alabama Media Group, received two Pulitzer Prizes this week. The digital site Mississippi Today was also honored with the prestigious award.

Kyle Whitmire of Al.com won the commentary Pulitzer for "measured and persuasive columns that document how Alabama's Confederate heritage still colors the present with racism and exclusion," according to his Pulitzer citation.

Mississippi Today reporter Anna Wolfe was a co-winner in the local reporting category for her investigative articles disclosing that former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant diverted state welfare funds to wealthy political donors, most prominently pro football great Bret Favre.

Wolfe's found that Favre received money for a volleyball arena at the University of Southern Mississippi. Favre's daughter played on the school's volleyball team.

Al.com's investigative team of Ashley Remkus, Challen Stephens, John Archibald and his son, Ramsey Archibald, shared the local reporting honor for "exposing how the police force of the town of Brookside (Ala.)preyed on residents to inflate revenue."

Founded in 2016 to report state capitol news, Mississippi Today now covers a variety of beats, including sports. The nonprofit digital site. which depends on reader subscriptions and donations, "is now one of the biggest newsrooms in Mississippi," according to its web site.

Al.com recently announced that it would switch to an online-only operation, no longer printing its newspapers the Birmingham News, Mobile Press Register and Huntsville Times, all of which have a long history.

The Alabama news site, which also won a Pulitizer in 2018,  runs a digital newsroom of 110 journalists, an impressive number as news staffs shrink or disappear elsewhere.

Amid all the gloom about the future of local news, Al.com and Mississippi Today cover their states like the dew.

 

Columnists Maria Saporta, Bill Torpy battle over MARTA plan to extend Atlanta streetcar to Beltline

A media duel has broken out over plans to extend the Atlanta streetcar from downtown to the Beltline.

Longtime business columnist and civic booster Maria Saporta enthusiastically supports the $230 million project, approved by MARTA's board April 13.

But The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Bill Torpy in a column Monday expressed skepticism about the plan, pointing out the streetcar's dismal ridership along its limited downtown route.

Torpy also fretted that costs likely will rise, an especially heavy burden to taxpayers because MARTA and the city are not seeking federal funding for the project.

The streetcar extension from downtown Atlanta to the Beltline and Ponce City Market is part of an MARTA expansion funded by a special half-cent sales tax approved by city voters in 2016. 

Saporta in a column for her Saporta Report web site praised MARTA for remaining with rail for the streetcar extension after changing to rapid bus transit for its other expansion projects.

While rail costs more to build initially, its continuous operations cost less than buses and rail brings more commercial development, she said. 

In contrast, Torpy disparaged rail as a nostalgic relic of 19th century technology. He also said that space is limited for rail along the popular Beltline, already crowded with individual walkers, families with strollers, bikers and skateboarders.

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and Atlanta Beltline Inc. support the streetcar extension, which led to the MARTA board's approval on an 8-0 vote, with two abstentions.

Dickens and the Atlanta City Council recently imposed an audit of MARTA's project delays.

Saporta talked to Beltline originator Ryan Gravel, who welcomed the extension as an opportunity to make the streetcar a successful transportation system.

Gravel told Saporta he envisions the rail line as embedded upon grass, instead of paving, and running alongside the Beltline's pedestrian and bicycle path.

Opposition is stirring in neighborhoods along the streetcar expansion, which will run down Edgewood Avenue to the Beltline at Irwin Street before going along the Beltline to the Ponce City Market. Five stations will be built.

The work is to be completed by 2030, if not derailed by opponents.

Trip to Athens brings memories of football games past

On our annual visit to Athens, the home of the University of Georgia, I again reflect upon my long history with this hip old college town.

I first came to "the classic city" with my parents for a game between Charlie McClendon's LSU Tigers and Vince Dooley's Dawgs.

A young man then, I'd recently moved from my native Louisiana to Columbus, Ga., to work for the morning newspaper the Enquirer. The Ledger was the mill town's afternoon paper.

Later, after marrying and moving to Atlanta, I attended a series of intermittent LSU-Georgia games at Sanford Stadium.

I witnessed one of LSU's rare victories with childhood friends who drove up from Baton Rouge. In subsequent years, I drove over to Athens from Atlanta with my son, who followed in my family's footsteps and graduated from LSU.

Over the years, I've grown fond of UGA's beautiful campus, and Athens' historic downtown area. Generations of students have come and gone over the years.

Walking the old part of the campus, I saw students already taking photos in their graduation caps and gowns. I silently gave them my best wishes for the future.

United Talent Agency's arts exhibit space elevates Atlanta's cultural scene

Atlanta's receiving a burst of attention as a fine-arts center.

The United Talent Agency, which represents actors, comedians, screenwriters, musicians and artists, recently opened a fine arts exhibit space at its Atlanta office in Midtown.

That's a significant boost for the Atlanta arts scene. The Atlanta gallery is only UTA's second, following an earlier one in Beverly Hills.

The new gallery gives Atlanta artists fresh hopes that they no longer have to go elsewhere to find success.

Yet an article Wednesday in The New York Times Arts section raised doubts about whether the UTA space will benefit Atlanta and Southern artists, or mainly represent those with already established international reputations in New York or Los Angeles.

Writer Tariro Mzezewa's feature titled "Can a Global Talent Agency Make Atlanta an Arts Destination" expressed local arts boosters' expectations that regional artists will find the UTA a nurturing home. 

Displaying a regional awareness, the new gallery opened with Atlanta artist and musician Lonnie Holley's exhibit "The Eyes Were Always on Us," which continues through the end of April.

The black Birmingham native's works examine racial violence in the South, the struggle for civil rights and the perseverance of black culture.

While the new gallery should aspire to encourage regional talent, a mixture of international exhibitions will boost Atlanta's global stature, moving away from from the city's long-established provincialism. As a major international presence, the UTA center can accomplish multiple objectives.

UTA's arts gallery is another jewel for Atlanta's Peachtree cultural corridor, encompassing the Woodruff Arts Center, the Museum of Design Atlanta and the Peachtree branch of the Fulton County Library.

The Fox Theater rises a few blocks south, near the Atlanta History Center's Margaret Mitchell House, which has not yet reopened after shutting down during the Covid epidemic.

While Atlanta's fine arts and entertainment scenes flourish, the city's theater community suffers from declining audiences and funding.

As the city's movie lovers welcomed the imminent reopening of the Tara Theater, the Lyric Theater announced its closure after 42 seasons.

The Lyric's shutdown mobilized the Atlanta theater community, which issued an emergency letter calling for more financial support from corporations, business leaders and local and state government.

Atlanta's theaters are spread across the metro area. The failure of a campaign to build a grand opera house at the Woodruff Arts Center led to the Atlanta Opera Company joining the Braves in moving to Cobb County. The Atlanta Ballet Company also performs outside the city.

While suburban theaters have done admirable work through the years, Midtown's art district needs more live theater along with the Woodruff's Alliance and the Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern.

A new professional company on Peachtree would showcase the original work of regional playwrights, as well as perform worthy plays from elsewhere. Midtown also needs a new music venue for classical, operatic and popular performances

The UTA gallery is only one step in Atlanta fulfilling its artistic dreams.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Biden administration's stringent tailpipe emissions proposals to boost electric vehicle production

A Rivian SUV rolled down my street the other day.

That was my first sighting of a vehicle manufactured by the electric truck company, seeking to build a huge factory east of Atlanta.

Electric vehicles will receive a huge boost from the EPA's proposed new tailpipe emissions standards, which could lead to EVs comprising 67 percent of the U.S. auto market by 2032.

The stringent Biden administration proposal announced Wednesday clashes with his recent approval of Conoco-Phillips' Willow oil drilling project in the Alaskan wilderness. The petroleum company plans to keep drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve for 30 years.

If electric vehicles increasingly dominate the auto industry, Conoco-Phillips will find its Alaskan venture unprofitable. But the company is already gearing up to produce more petroleum, according to a recent New York Times story.

Biden's EPA rules likely will be reversed if a Republican is elected president in 2024, or if the GOP takes control of Congress.

Auto companies were already planning to boost electric vehicle production, and California has imposed strict emissions rules that are pushing the shift to EVs.

The EPA proposals signal a major move toward the United States reducing emissions to meet global climate-change goals.

Biden's actions have set into motion competing futures for the U.S. economy, one of continued  fossil fuel domination, the other a shift toward alternative energy sources.

If the new economy develops, Rivians and other electric vehicles will be a common sight on streets and highways.

 

Joe Biden chooses declining Chicago over prosperous Atlanta for 2024 Democratic Convention

"Say It Ain't So, Joe," said The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's headline after Joe Biden selected Chicago over Atlanta for the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

The clever headline echoed a young fan's despairing cry to star outfielder Shoeless Joe Jackson over one of Chicago's darkest moments, the 1919 Chicago Black Sox scandal.

This time, it was Atlanta repeating the slugger's reputed reply outside of a Chicago courtroom, "I'm afraid it is, kid, I'm afraid it is."

Biden and the Democratic Party's decision shocked Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and Atlanta boosters who thought the Georgia capital had won the political extravaganza.

Long maligned for rising murders, political dysfunction, fleeing companies and declining population, Chicago with its heavy union presence will host next year's Democratic Convention, its second since the disastrous 1968 DNC ended in police violence against leftist protesters.

Biden cited Chicago's union power, reflecting his program to remake the American economy "from the ground up."

That struck a discordant note with reports that Illinois' billionaire Gov. J.B. Pritzker pledged to cover convention expenses. Pritzker's offer smacks of top-down economics, sounding like the bribes that gamblers allegedly made to Shoeless Joe and his teammates, who were acquitted of  charges they fixed the 1919 World Series but banned from the game.

Atlanta, the capital of a reputed "battleground" state, lost out to declining Chicago although the Sunbelt metropolis is booming with new jobs and a soaring population. Unlike with Chicago, Atlanta's hotels and businesses are not heavily unionized.

Political pundits said Biden made his decision to shore up Democratic power in the Midwest's "blue wall." Outside of Georgia, the Democrats have pretty much written off the South.

Chicago is one of the GOP conservatives' favorite targets as a disastrously run Democratic city.

Biden, expected to run again at age 82, has turned to an aging, battered city desperate for rejuvenation as the Democratic Party's standard bearer.

 

 

 

 

 

Baseball pitch clock drawing raves

Baseball's new pitch clock is an overwhelming hit.

Because of the clock, most Major League games this season have ended in a little more than two hours. Before, games all too often seemed to last forever, giving the impression that the outfield grass grew faster.

A televised game now shows the seconds clicking down as the pitcher prepares to throw. Hitters can no longer wander out of the batters' box or they're assessed a strike. When I watch a game now, the Jeopardy theme silently plays in my mind.

In an effort to bring more offense into the game, the infield shift has also been banned. To encourage base stealing, bases are bigger and pitchers' throws to first restricted.

Perhaps the streamlined games will attract more fans in the short-attention-span generation. For now, the rule changes are exciting old sportswriters.

PTI's Tony Kornheiser on Monday's show called the clock a wonder drug that will rejuvenate the sport.

Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke on ESPN's Around the Horn also gushed about the faster games. In true hack fashion, Plaschke noted the quicker pace will make it easier for him to make deadline.

For years, World Series ratings have dropped because of late starting times, frequent pitching changes and pitchers and batters dawdling between pitches.

With the pitch clock, kids might now be able to watch World Series games that end before midnight.

 

 

 

 

John Feinstein's return to Washington Post a gain for NCAA basketball fans

It's been an entertaining NCAA tournament, marked by upsets, dramatic three-point shots and play-making excellence. 

And John Feinstein is back writing about March Madness for The Washington Post.

Feinstein in his tournament columns shows why he's one of our most entertaining story-tellers. He's written about Tennessee coach Rick Barnes saving a lost dog, a pioneering black referee's retirement, Howard University's appearance in the tournament and the tarnished career of Iona and now St. John's coach Rick Pitino.

After the death this week of NBA great Willis Reed, Feinstein recalled going to Madison Square Garden as a student to watch Reed and the New York Knicks play in the years they won two championships. Feinstein said that he never lost his hero worship of Reed, even as a sportswriter covering Reed when he was a Knicks executive.

Feinstein was one of the legendary Post sportswriters who left the newspaper for TV and radio. Unlike fellow alums Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon, Feinstein didn't find permanent success with broadcast media and was even fired by CBS Radio. Along with appearances on ESPN's sadly gone "The Sports Reporters," Feinstein gave commentary for the Golf Channel.

While continuing to publish best-selling sports books and popular novels for young readers, Feinstein recently returned to the Post, restoring some of the luster lost when Thomas Boswell retired. Feinstein and Sally Jenkins give the newspaper a dynamic one-two sportswriting punch.

Like legendary columnists Red Smith and W.C. Heinz, Feinstein knows that stories are the heartbeat of sports.