Ballet is an art in which adults partake in a fantasy world that is more often associated with children’s stories. Nobody speaks in a ballet–the classic story ballets are performed silently–although there is a sign language that one starts to recognize after watching several ballets. But no preparation is really required to fall into the magic of the ballet theater–besides, as with the great fairy and fantasy stories, an ability to let the world as we know it fall away as a fantastical world of magic takes its place. In the world of ballet, chickens (La Fille Mal Garde) and swans (Swan Lake) dance, fairies good and bad cast spells (Sleeping Beauty), pirate kings find true love (Le Corsaire), and Roman gods come to life (Sylvia). Watching ballet helps break through barriers between reality and fantasy. It is an art form that can speak to children and inspire young writers to let the dream-world that is in so much ballet enrich their stories. The digital world gives everyone access to some of the great performances of classic ballets. To get you started, we’ve added a few links below to You Tube videos of the UK’s Royal Ballet performing some of the ballets mentioned above. You’ll find many more yourselves. Have fun with the beauty of the movement and the music, and see if a balletic release into a fantasy world can help to get your creative juices flowing! Some simple exercises to try: Story-telling. What story might be conveyed best through dance? Is it an epic tale of fairies and unicorns, or a simple forest walk? Whatever the story is, which styles might you use tell that story? Many of the ballets below are based on full-length novels, or on short stories. Many people identify poetry in the movement of ballet. Once you know your story, and have written your story or poem, perhaps you could write it again in a different way–say, by writing a plot summary for the imaginary program given out in the theater. Art: What might your ballet look like? What is the scenery like, and what to the characters look like? Are they all human, or might they look like something never-before-imagined? Perhaps you can draw the sets, or the characters in their costumes. <iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/rryxZjqLtNs” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
The Atlantic Net Pen Collapse
The Salish Sea is a vast body of water, stretching from southwest British Columbia, Canada, to the northwest portion of Washington State, USA. It provides a saline habitat for thousands of animals. Seagulls squawk overhead, and sleek harbor seals make occasional appearances. Forests of kelp sway with the current. It is an amazing and unique place. But the Salish Sea is also home to non-native Atlantic Salmon. During the summer of 2017, over 200,000 Atlantic salmon escaped when their net pen collapsed. What are Atlantic Salmon doing in the Salish Sea? They’re being farmed. Atlantic salmon are a favored species for farming in cold waters. The species grows quickly, is disease resistant, and is more docile than native salmon. Northwest fish farming started in the 1960’s. Now, Washington State has eight large net pens, and British Columbia has over 20. The net pen collapse was catastrophic. The first incident occurred on July 24, 2017. At a Cooke Aquaculture fishery, strong currents dragged a whole net pen away from its mooring anchors. After this incident, Cooke promised to increase net cleaning, and add steel beams and plates to damaged walkways. About a month later, a combination of anchor dragging, strong currents, mooring attachment breaks, and net pen framing failure resulted in the whole pen collapsing. The net pen had been operating successfully for seven years, and had been designed to withstand the strongest of currents. Yet somehow, thousands of alien salmon were released into the Salish Sea. After the collapse, the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) investigated the site and found the net pen in poor condition. A primary cause was lack of cleaning, which led to biofouling, where mussels and other marine life collect on and damage underwater structures. Breakdowns in cleaning machines contributed to the dirty condition of the nets. The accumulated mussels blocked off net openings so water could not flow through, causing the net to drag. The drag force was so strong that it broke off the mooring points. All this added up to the net pen failure. Cooke Aquaculture said they tried to save the net, but their efforts were unsuccessful. Cooke extracted dead fish and salvaged the net pen as best they could. DNR determined that 243,000-263,000 fish escaped, as opposed to Cooke’s report of only 160,000 fish. DNR concluded that of the escaped salmon, 57,000 have been caught and 186,000-206,000 remain unaccounted for. Where are the Atlantic Salmon now? Are they in Washington streams, mating with native salmon? Since they’ve been domesticated for farming, they might just die in the wild. Or they could be competing with native salmon for food and breeding grounds. Because thousands of fish remain unaccounted for, who knows for sure? As the escaped salmon linger in the Salish Sea, consequences begin. The head of DNR, Hilary Franz, has terminated Cooke Aquaculture’s lease to fish farm on state tidelands. A report by DNR and other state agencies found that Cooke violated the lease and caused the net pen collapse. The Washington State Department of Ecology fined the company $332,000 for water quality violations, which Cooke has appealed. Furthermore, Cooke did not clean up the debris left at the net pen collapse site. The state gave Cooke 60 days to clean it up. “We went in there and we determined they did not remove it all,” Franz said. Since then, Cooke has sued DNR to reverse the lease termination. Franz hopes that Cooke will work with DNR to safely close the facility. Also, the Washington State Senate has passed a bill to phase out Atlantic Salmon net pen farming by 2025. The net pen collapse is a big wake up call. Right now, Cooke Aquaculture is at risk. California, Oregon, and Alaska are either phasing out or have banned fish farming at sea. If Cooke’s Salish Sea fisheries are closed down, many jobs will be lost. But do we want Atlantic Salmon in the Salish Sea? Native salmon are at risk of competition in their own habitat. Human decisions heavily impact the Salish Sea. That habitat is ours to create, to change and to help. What do you think? Whatever we decide to do will affect the Salish Sea and all the animals that live there. Bibliography ●https://www.dnr.wa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/aqr_cypress_investigation_repo rt.pdf?vdqi7rk ●https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/fish-farm-caused-atlantic-salmon-spill- state-says-then-tried-to-hide-how-bad-it-was/ ●https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/washington-state-cancels- lease-for-atlantic-salmon-farm-off-cypress-island/ ●https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/bill-to-phase-out-atlantic- salmon-farming-in-washington-state-nears-deadline/ ●http://www.theolympian.com/news/local/article185123728.ht
Saturday Newsletter: September 15, 2018
I vividly remember my mom, dad and stepdad around Tyler’s bed, each massaging a different foot and hand.Illustrator Sarah Dennis, 13 for ‘Together’ by Alex Miffiin, 12. Published January/February 2001. A note from William Rubel In the next few Newsletters I’d like to re-introduce to you the Stone Soup staff. As the current September issue marks the first anniversary of Emma Wood taking over as Stone Soup’s Editor, and she also has a new book out this week, we’ll begin with Emma. I’ll start with congratulations on her just-published translation from Russian, A Failed Performance: Short Plays & Scenes by Daniil Kharms. Daniil Kharms (1905-1942) was a Soviet poet, writer, and playwright who worked in the surrealist and absurdist literary traditions. Emma only told me her book (co-authored with C. Dylan Bassett) had just been published yesterday morning. I ordered a copy right away! Is surrealist and absurdist Soviet literature something I know anything about? No, I don’t. But I always order books written by my friends and I always learn something. While this is not a young adult title, I hope the many adult readers of the Newsletter will join me in supporting Emma by ordering her book. If you can also write a review on Amazon that will be extra great. Before I say more about Emma, I’d like to just say, thank you, Emma, for the extraordinary work you have put in this past year at Stone Soup. I can’t believe how lucky we are to have you. Thank you from my heart. In addition to being a translator, a poet, Editor-in-Chief here at Stone Soup, and an editor at other literary publications, Emma is a university instructor, a PhD student, and a marathon runner. I encourage all of you to check out Emma’s website. Like you, Emma sends her work to publications hoping to get published. Here are the literary magazines where her poems appear. I posted a link to this interview in which Emma talks about poetry when she first joined Stone Soup. Whether you are a young writer or an adult reader of this Newsletter, please listen to the interview. Even if you don’t understand the entire interview I know that each of you will find something in it. I find it inspiring. What is poetry? Listen to Emma’s answer. I’ll write more about the other people in the team who bring you Stone Soup next week. This week’s drawing and story from the archive Look at the drawing by Sarah Dennis. I mean, really look at it. What I find remarkable is the amount of information conveyed about the the scene around Tyler’s hospital bed. You see Tyler’s face is scraped up–note the big red patch on the right side of his face–and he has stitches above one eye. The story the drawing is linked to is about an awful car crash (it’s scary in parts–but, spoiler warning, everyone is fine in the end). The two figures in the foreground, Tyler’s mother and step-father, are massaging his feet while his father holds one of his hands. Everyone is looking in a different direction. We are observing an intimate family moment in which the participants in the scene are united around the injured Tyler. He is in physical pain. His family are in emotional pain for him. His grey-haired father looks very worried. I also read worry on the face of the man in the left foreground. His mother, with her red fingernails (nice detail) seems to be the calm one, despite the detail of her neck brace, a remnant of her own injuries from the crash. I sense that she may hold the family together through her calm demeanor and practical solutions. Somehow, I sense that she is the one who said, “Let’s massage Tyler’s hands and feet.” Inspired by this, here is your activity for the weekend: sketch a scene that involves an important moment with other people. Think of something from this past week or two where you were involved with two or three other people, united in a common purpose and doing something. It might be a moment in your family, with friends, out in a public place, or at school. I suggest the doing something part of the idea inspired by the strength of the hand gestures we see in Sarah’s drawing. Give thought to where each person is looking when you make your drawing snapshot. And, as always, if you come up with something you really like, please send it to Emma by uploading it on our online submissions form. Until next week Write a book and get it published: a brand new contest Do you think you can write a whole book? This week we announced a brand new contest, in partnership with MacKenzie Press, challenging you to you to do just that. Do you dream of getting it published? Well, if you win this contest, the prize will make that dream come true! The Secret Kids contest invites entries in three age categories, for longer fiction, either illustrated or unillustrated, in any genre. We’ll write more about this contest over the coming months–the deadline for entries is January 1, 2019–and for today we invite you to check out the contest information at our website (click the link above) and think about writing, revising, editing and perfecting your best work in time to submit your entry by the end of the year. Plus, one last reminder about the Concrete Poetry contest: you have until midnight (Pacific time) tonight to get your final entries in! More deadlines! The deadline for recipe submissions for the December food issue is September 30. As I’ve mentioned before, for Stone Soup we are interested in both the recipe and the headnote, the narrative that precedes the recipe that explains why it is important to you, the author. The December issue is not limited to holiday recipes. This week, I purchased the cookbook, The Bread and Salt Between Us: Recipes and Stories from a Syrian Refugee’s Kitchen. I’ve had the book a few days and my daughter and I can say that the recipes are good. But, what makes this book exceptional is the combination of the text and the recipes. Recipes can often tie us to a memory. Perhaps it is the memory of a dish that was a grandparent’s favorite, or a dish that you
