Of the many staggering and sensational aspects of Jessica Krug’s exposure, the thing that has left the deepest impression on me is the video footage of her vituperative testimony before members of the NYC City Council. “I’m Jess La Bombalera,” she declares in an affected, charmless accent that sounds like Rosie Perez’s soaked in bleach; “I’m here in El Barrio, East Harlem.” Krug “calls out” a council member for having “sold my neighborhood to developers and gentrifiers.” Now, I’ve lost track of how many waves of gentrification Harlem has gone through over the years, but I know this is not a new problem. The footage, however, is from 2020; even “La Bombalera’s” grievance seems out of step with time and place, to say nothing of that damn accent.
Who could possibly be fooled by this? How?
Even now, I feel a blend of skepticism and perverse glee watching Krug’s poorly executed caricature; it’s as if Christopher Guest had turned his sardonic eye on my childhood. Her performance of a Black Nuyorican is especially disorienting for me: I was born in New York City and grew up between Times Square and East Harlem in the ‘80s and ‘90s. I still have family there. My best childhood friend for many years was Puerto Rican, and I spent countless days in his apartment — his mother’s Héctor Lavoe records often playing in the background.
Bandolera was my favorite. These past couple weeks, I’ve been amusing myself by inserting Krug’s alter ego into the chorus: ¡Aléjate Bombalera! Fittingly, Lavoe opens the song crooning, “Quien dice una mentira dice dos y dice cien.” Who lies once, lies twice, and lies 100 times.
Lauren Michele Jackson — a sharp and talented writer whose work I enjoy — unpacked Krug’s origin story, retracing her many deceits, in a recent piece for The New Yorker. In searching for the roots and motivating factors for Krug’s charade, Jackson lands on two culprits: “want of Blackness” on one side (or “affinity for Blackness as an instrument of authenticity,” as Jackson puts it) and colorism in the academy on the other (“gather us [scholars of Black studies] in a group,” she writes, “and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a tenure-track scholar darker than the proverbial paper bag”). Both of these things exist, and both certainly contributed to making Krug’s personal and professional minstrelsy a success for so long; neither, however, really gets to the heart of the matter. There’s something deeper going on here.
We actually get a glimpse of that something in the opening segment of Jackson’s piece. Therein, she details the recent social media fracas when Black Brits and Black Americans debated whether or not pop singer Adele’s Carnival getup — complete with Bantu knots in her hair and a Jamaican-flag bikini top — constituted appropriation of Jamaican culture (a debate that was equal parts maddening and informative to observe). At the center of the otherwise insipid Adele debate is a conflict over who gets to be the arbiter of Black authenticity, and what power that authenticity grants those who possess it: the power to judge, affirm, and rebuke all who are deemed to be inauthentic; the power to set the terms of grievance (Who gets to be aggrieved? For what? What license does that grievance grant them?).
Further down, Jackson also references the curious case of Black novelist and purported Cuban exile H.G. “Hache” Carrillo, who was posthumously unmasked as Herman Glenn Carroll from Detroit. The revelation of Carroll’s true identity plays a pivotal role in the timeline of events Jackson lays out in her piece: “Krug’s reckoning was finally set in motion,” she notes, “after another [George Washington University] professor, H.G. Carrillo, died, in April, at the age of 59, due to complications of the novel coronavirus.” And yet, how the complex deceptions of both Carroll (an African American man passing as Afro Cuban) and Krug (a white woman from Kansas City, Mo., passing as Afro “Boricua”) are part of the same twisted phenomenon is left largely uninterrogated.
Neither colorism in the academy nor want of Blackness (or rejection of Blackness and want of whiteness) adequately explains how and why Carroll was able to fool just about everyone, including his husband, into believing that he was “Hache” Carrillo. Even Krug’s case, for that matter, seems to me less about want of Blackness than aspiring to academic and cultural credibility and legitimizing the power that “authenticity,” so (hazily) defined, allowed her to wield as “La Bombalera.”
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Both of these false identities were built on an inviolable grievance and an unquestioned (and unquestionable) pain — two characteristics that exempt those who claim them from culpability while arming them with righteous indignation that can be used to deflect scrutiny and bully adversaries. Krug attempted to craft an unassailable victimhood rooted in the violence of gentrification, white privilege, and (most macabre of all) the fictitious rape of her mother by a white man; Carroll adopted the ultimate dispossessed identity of exile. Whole books can — and probably will — be written about the complex personal and psychosocial reasons people like Krug and Carroll had for crafting their alternate lives/selves. Like Rachel Dolezal, each will become a curious case study unto themselves. But I think there’s something going on here that greatly exceeds each racial impostor’s unique story, something about identify formation and the performance of self in the 21st century, something about how we define and measure (and reward) authenticity in the academy, and in society writ large — something, that is, that implicates all of us.
There’s something going on here that exceeds each impostor’s story — something about the performance of self in the 21st century.
My family has been in New York City since 1913. My mother had 14 siblings, all of whom grew up in Brooklyn and Harlem. Our neighborhood was initially filled with people who resembled Jessica Krug; eventually, gradually, it would be filled with people who resembled “Jess La Bombalera.”
We’ve lived the sort of complicated, challenging lives familiar to those consigned to the societal scrapheap by circumstances beyond their control. Our collective family narrative spans multiple public-housing projects and homeless shelters, premature death, addiction, and AIDS. Some lives took tragic downturns, but my family members also became businesspeople, activists, a famous rapper, a boxer, policewomen, a professional baseball scout — even a professor. Like all human beings, our lives have been rich and layered. Each household had its own set of traditions, its own microculture within the larger familial body. Individually and collectively, we survived through ingenuity, fortitude, and the struggle for dignity. We cultivated a sense of the intense joy of life; we learned how to prioritize the life-affirming over the soul-draining. Our lived experience gave us what James Baldwin, in discussing the blues, described as double-edged understanding; grievance and pain informed our collective experience. It shaped our sense of who we are in this world, in these bodies, but it could never define us.
Last week in one of my classes we actually discussed Baldwin’s “Letter from a Region in My Mind” in tandem with Ayana Mathis’s The Twelve Tribes of Hattie. One student presciently noted, “suffering is an insufficient foundation for community and identity.” So is grievance. Which raises the question: Why are so many Black thinkers and writers frequently willing to reduce Black identity to grievance and pain for consumption by a white audience?
To her credit, at the same time that she was performing and profiting from this identity forged in grievance, Krug’s peers and former students seem to agree she produced quality scholarship. Her minstrelsy, at the very least, didn’t appear to be a cynical ploy to mask mediocre thinking. But what do we make of the booming market for facile meditations that have been produced by this recent period of intense reckoning with American racism? A Black colleague recently referred to the dramatic uptick in performative Blackness and self-help books on anti-racism as “social-justice disaster capitalism.” The market has opened wide in the wake of crisis (killings by police, increasing economic inequity, the normalization of overt forms of racism we hoped were relegated to the past), and grifters and milquetoast scholars are rushing to exploit the demand — gettin’ while the gettin’s good. To quote my colleague again: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many poorly rendered books about race meet with so much success.”
In 1966, Joan Didion took stock of American delusion and pronounced “the dream was teaching the dreamers how to live.” In 2020 it strikes me that a distinctly white, capitalist gaze has taught Black people how to perform Blackness. Facile, uniform talking points dominate the discourse. Standardization within the clout economy has fostered a culture of boosterism rather than criticism; praise rather than scrutiny. I’m used to white people promoting mediocre Black thinkers and writers who regurgitate generic talking points to flatter their narrow understanding of Blackness; what I wasn’t prepared for was seeing Black people partake so willingly in such a routine.
The Black identity has become standardized: commodified, reproducible on an industrial scale, tailored and marketed to flatter the projection and needs of its white audience. Much as hip-hop has remained subversive in posture while its political core has shriveled, like rotting fruit, into a soundtrack for the crudest mainstream capitalist values, the mainstream iteration of Black identity has, likewise, become something to fill display windows — the artificially ripped and acid-washed trappings thrown on a faceless mannequin. The superficial markers of Black culture have been so successfully co-opted by mainstream culture that our very notion of Black identity has become flattened where it was once double-edged. There’s a sterility where once there was subversiveness; a goal to flatter the white audience where once there was the aim to provoke it.
Black identity has become standardized: tailored and marketed to flatter the projection and needs of its white audience.
If whiteness depends on willfully misunderstanding Blackness in support of the delusion of normalcy, then aspiration to flatter whiteness depends on a similar distortion. Jessica Krug figured out what many of her Black peers have and tried to exploit it similarly: Black authenticity in the main has been reduced to an accumulation of talking points and catchphrases that have their roots not in lived experience but in replicating a replication of lived experience. Social media provides the accessible language and concepts that water down Black authenticity and flatten Black identity into performed grievance. In such an environment — one that relies on Black people learning to be Black through an essentially artificial, voyeuristic, and white-adjacent gaze — it becomes easier for the Jessica Krugs of the world to find maneuvering room.
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The diversity, equity, and inclusion sector has become a fascinating one to observe as its role in academe expands and increasingly mirrors its role in the corporate sphere. As I and my colleague Richard Purcell previously noted, the DEI sector becomes a hothouse of symbolic progressivism, where progressive and radical (and sometimes inane) ideas can be given lip service while institutions and systemic racism remains largely unchanged. Cliché programming, focus groups, town halls, anti-racism reading lists, testimonials of hurt, and confessions of guilt touch deep nerves and emotional wells in each of us as individuals, summoning up sadness, self-righteousness, love, and hate. But there is no measurable progress to be found as a result of these undertakings.
To whom does the performance of grievance appeal? Both those who are empowered by it, and those who are laid vulnerable by it. There’s a sadomasochistic aspect to the dynamic: White audiences want to absorb more and more grievance, which they misinterpret as a progressive and political act in itself rather than an ultimately self-centered one. Those who perform the grievance understand the point is to master the script — to learn the talking points and inflections of grievance and indignation, and weaponize it to be both victim and bully. The point of the show is not critical analysis, but the show itself.
What does it say about academe when we substitute role play for critical race theory? What does it mean to inhabit universities that demonstrate minimal to nil progressive attitudes about race, yet are willing to be aggressively progressive in employing gender pronouns and acronyms like Bipoc in their official emails to faulty and students? The trend of substituting acronyms and self-help culture for measurable progress and enlightenment encourages the Jessica Krugs of society. The grift of black grievance — these self-help books that posit anti-racism as a skill and language for white people to master — is part credentialism, part self-care, and wholly cynical as well as capitalistic.
Of course, Black people didn’t invent this routine; usurping identity isn’t an aberrational act in academe, where so many professors espouse radical race and class politics disconnected from their upbringings as well as their immediate realities. And if so many of us are performing, at what point do we lose the ability to separate the performance from reality?
CV Vitolo-Haddad, a Ph.D. candidate at Jessica Krug’s alma mater, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, confessed, “I have let guesses about my ancestry become answers I wanted but couldn’t prove. I have let people make assumptions when I should have corrected them.” Vitolo-Haddad is not alone. I encounter peers and even former classmates online and find they provide nebulous bios that indicate a claim to marginalized identity while also providing plausible deniability to backtrack if pressed. Regardless of context of class status or personal narrative, they might describe themselves as “an immigrant writer of color” or they might “partially identify ethnically as …” Over the past couple of years, a friend has sent me a series of social-media posts in which the same academic claims a different identity in each: “As a Midwesterner… As a Southerner… As an Appalachian.” The claim to identity does as much work as, if not more work than, the scholarship; the implied experience reaches for the credibility lived experience should provide. There’s a legion of academic pseudo-celebs who have adopted the rhetoric and techniques of social-justice discourse without any of the moral underpinnings; they seek and seize the spotlight by contriving controversies within which they are centered as victimized experts or champions of progress in opposition to a foe or value designed to win them easy retweets and allies. It’s a very cheap and transparent brand of public intellectualism. Jessica Krug is not so sensational a story: She is everywhere.
There is no singular, authentic way to be Black. But while Black intellectuals are quick to assert that Blackness is not monolithic, I’ve observed many of them do so in duplicitous, self-serving way, as a rationalization that justifies a class monopoly on Black perspective — regardless of lived experience, many feel they are entitled to speak on the entirety of Black experience. The reality is some of them have such little respect for the lived experiences of Black people (unless they can usurp them) that they couldn’t possibly identify an interloper like Krug if they tried; they’re running a similar con.
The bulk of Black Americans have had experiences more similar to mine than most of the Black people I’ve encountered throughout undergraduate and graduate education, and certainly during my teaching: 37 percent of Black American households have a net worth of zero or worse; Black households have a median worth of one-tenth of their white counterparts. In my time among the educational “elite,” I’ve crossed paths with very few people who can speak directly to that experience. That doesn’t stop them from speaking authoritatively about it and even co-opting it. The examples are too numerous to recount, but there are two I revisit with consistent incredulity: a reading of an N-word filled nonfiction essay about — among other things — drive-by shootings, delivered by a distinctly upper-class Black man who was known to resist acknowledging other Black people in public, and a Pakistani author’s lecture comparing Rakim to Shakespeare despite his lack of familiarity with Rakim’s catalogue of music beyond the ubiquitous, global single “Paid in Full.” In each case the audience was essentially all white. Both writers spoke about experiences close to my own, but I was not the market.
While visiting my mother in early March, I stood in line at a new juice bar in her thoroughly gentrified neighborhood, where she is one of the rare Black holdovers. I noted the background music during my time in line: Main Source, Big Daddy Kane, Leaders of the New School. The vintage sound of New York City stood in stark contrast to the reality of modern Manhattan, and spoke to a desire for Black aesthetic and cool without Black people. It’s difficult not to reach a similar cynical conclusion about our neoliberal universities. I believe plenty of Blacks and Black-adjacent inhabitants of the academy have taken note and adapted.
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Satchuel Paigelyn Cole — the latest in a string of white-women activists outed for pretending to be Black — confessed, “I have used Blackness when it was not mine to use.” This transgression has not been unique to white people. The academy encourages such performance of unearned Blackness — a Blackness built on contrived grievance and opposition. Institutions of higher learning favor grievance without the aggrieved; they want to hear the song of the marginalized without doing anything to ensure more of the marginalized ascend to the university’s gilded platforms to sing it.
The Link LonkThe Dallas Cowboys are almost a quarter of the way through the season. Coming off a road loss to Seattle, the Cowboys (1-2) look to get back to .500 and stay perfect at AT&T Stadium, which could house up to 25,000 fans Sunday. They host the Cleveland Browns (2-1), who bring with them a stout run game and some stars in Baker Mayfield (Oklahoma) and Myles Garrett (Arlington Martin, Texas A&M) who’ll be familiar to Dallas-area football fans. Our panel of columnists, beat writers and special contributors makes predictions for the Week 4 matchup:
As bad as the Cowboys' pass defense has been the past two weeks, the defense ranks 23rd in rushing yards allowed. Not so bad per play, but they have trouble getting off the field and that’s a problem if Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt allow Baker Mayfield to play it safe in the pocket. The Cowboys' offense will put points on the board but won’t light it up like it did against Atlanta and Seattle, two miserable defenses. Browns 26, Cowboys 20.
The expected return of left tackle Tyron Smith (neck) offers an important boost to an offensive line facing the best defensive front it’s seen yet. If the Cowboys can protect him, Dak Prescott should outduel Baker Mayfield. Cowboys 27, Browns 24.
Nothing comes easy for these Cowboys, and this week will be no different. If the patchwork offensive line holds up, Dak Prescott should guide the offense in scoring just enough to pull out a victory. The defense? Best not to spend too much time worrying about it. Also, don’t discount the Cowboys' home-field advantage with up to 25,000 fans expected to be in attendance. Cowboys 27, Browns 24.
It’s been 13 years since Cleveland has found the north side of .500. No one thinks this franchise can win a road game against the Cowboys, do they? Well, the Cowboys' defense is in a bad way at the moment. If running back Nick Chubb pounds Dallas on the ground, allowing the Browns to control the time of possession and keep the ball away from the Cowboys' explosive offense, it’s possible. Very possible. Browns 27, Cowboys 24.
For the second time in my life -- the first being in 1994, when I was a cute 2-year-old -- the Browns are a legitimate threat to beat the Cowboys. The key for the Cowboys will be figuring out a way to slow Myles Garrett and Cleveland’s potent pass rush. If they can do that, I think Dak Prescott should pick apart Cleveland’s back seven en route to another explosive performance. I also think Baker Mayfield will gift the Cowboys a turnover or two that will be just enough for Dallas to secure the victory. Cowboys 31, Browns 26.
Kevin Stefanski’s goal is for Baker Mayfield to pass fewer than 30 times. Mike McCarthy wants Dak Prescott to throw no more than 40. If both get their wishes, the Cowboys win. Even if both throw more than that, the Cowboys win. Simply put: Dak is better than Baker, and he has more and better players to work with. Cowboys 31, Browns 20.
We’re only in Week 4, but this game already has a desperate feel to it. A win over Cleveland will calm the city. If the Cowboys protect the football and their defense -- run it more, just not on first down -- then they’ll emerge with yet another high-scoring victory. If not, there will be some sad singing and slow walking as they exit AT&T Stadium. Dallas 31, Cleveland 27.
The Cowboys' defense is still learning, but if the communication issues don’t subside against the talent level of the Browns, expect some problems. We know the Cowboys can score, they have too many weapons. What worries you is that defense. Can they stop the run? Can they get a scrambling Baker Mayfield? Probably not. Browns 28, Dallas 24.
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Find more Cowboys stories from The Dallas Morning News here.
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Joe Biden declined to embrace the Green New Deal during Tuesday's presidential debate, but stakeholders should not take that as a sign that a Biden administration will shy away from major energy policy changes, including adopting elements of that proposal, experts said at a panel discussion on Wednesday.
While Biden is likely to pursue policies that could disrupt the oil and gas sector, industry is not as concerned by a potential Biden presidency as observers might believe because companies are able to adapt to and work within any framework and because Donald Trump's administration has created "chaos" for the sector in many respects, said Frank Maisano, senior principal with Bracewell LLP, representing various energy companies. He also suggested the industry could "squelch the worst aspects of the progressive movement" and work with a Biden administration toward bipartisan compromise on energy policy.
The unexpected discussion of climate change at the debate and the fate of the Green New Deal pending the election outcome were major topics of conversation during a virtual session at the Society of Environmental Journalists' annual conference on Wednesday.
"I certainly was surprised as much as anyone [Tuesday] night to hear Chris Wallace ask the climate change question," Maisano said, noting that "climate Twitter exploded when that happened."
"Of course, the answers we got weren't very substantive" as debates do not lend themselves well to answering complicated climate questions, he added.
Biden declined to support the Green New Deal — introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. — which outlines a plan for addressing climate change. The Congressional resolution on the Green New Deal outlines several potential impacts if global warming continues at a rate at or above 2 degrees Celsius beyond pre industrialized levels, including causing more than $500 billion in lost annual economic output in the United States by the year 2100, wildfires that by 2050 will annually burn at least twice as much forest area in the western United States than was typically burned by wildfires in the years preceding 2019, and a risk of damage to $1 trillion of public infrastructure and coastal real estate in the United States.
"One of the things to come of the debate [Tuesday] night was apparently nobody likes the Green New Deal and everybody kind of agrees that we're not there," said Tim Charters, executive director at the Congressional Western Caucus. "But the key with all of these issues on the energy side is balancing — to find a way to act on climate change with a way to balance with the needs and the jobs of the American people."
Jim Lyons, an independent consultant and former U.S. Department of Agriculture official, said "There are elements that Vice President Biden has endorsed, but he hasn't endorsed the entire package and he worked that out with the various supporters of the Green New Deal."
Referencing a potential Biden win, Maisano said "I don't think industry is concerned as much as people might think they're concerned. The reason I say that is because we really do operate in the environment that we're in. For instance, the last four years have been difficult for a lot of the folks that I work with in sectors across the board because of the uncertainty and the chaos that this administration has presented."
Biden will pursue "easy" climate solutions if he is elected such as mandating climate risk disclosure, addressing the social cost of carbon and re-engaging in the Paris climate agreement, Maisano said. "Those are the things that are going to be quick wins for Biden should he take office," he said.
But Biden could also pursue major changes for the oil and gas sector such as eliminating leasing on federal lands, eliminating its tax depreciation benefits or shifting its tax credits to the renewable energy sector, the speakers noted.
"I take Biden at his word that they're going to go, particularly on the oil and gas side, very aggressively," Charters said.
But Charters said most of the stakeholders he works with are not preparing for a Biden presidency.
"I think folks are still convinced that the president is going to win re-election," Charters said, adding that an infrastructure package that includes transmission and renewable energy buildout could emerge in a second Trump term.
Renewable energy development, though, will continue to face challenges, including in states where voters express support for such projects in polling, according to the speakers. For example, the Maryland Department of Environment denied a permit application in August 2019 for a 32.5 MW solar project that would have provided power to Georgetown University.
"Everybody raises their hands and says 'I'm all for the environment, I'm all for building renewable energy,' but the reality is how do we deliver that," Charters said. "I'd love to see this stuff built. But in Maryland, one of America's bluest states, Georgetown University … couldn't build it."
Lyons noted that the permit was denied in part because of the forest clearing that would have occurred due to that project. The project would have cleared 249 acres of a 540-acre protected forest area, according to the department's letter denying the permit.
"Siting becomes a critical question which can be addressed," Lyons said.
"But if you can't build it in Maryland, where are you going to build it?" Charters asked.
Transmission challenges continue to be an issue when discussing the shift to renewable energy, with Maisano linking them to power issues in California.
"That's one of the reasons why California earlier this year had rolling blackouts because they couldn't get enough power generated because they have challenges managing the grid when the sun goes down because they have a lot of solar," Maisano said. "Now, it's not renewables' fault totally, but they're going to have to have reliable backup because traditionally their reliable backup has been to borrow from other states and they just couldn't do it because the other states were facing the same problem they were facing."
A June 2020 report by staff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission outlined the obstacles to transmission development, including permitting and planning challenges, access to existing rights-of-way, and federal action that may unintentionally disincentivize transmission planning and development.
"I think these fights over transmission, over building large-scale, economy-wide energy systems on federal lands, particularly in the West with transmission and new development, is a real challenge and I don't think folks take seriously how hard it is to build this infrastructure when they talk about the dynamic of 'we're going to be fossil fuel free in the energy space by 2035.' You can't build anything by 2035," Charters said.
"The idea of building dozens, 20, 30 major transmission lines, hundreds of major wind farms and solar farms in places around the country, building massive storage facilities, there's just no way," Charters added. "You can't even invest enough to make it happen."
Offshore energy, meanwhile, has "its own set of problems," including challenges securing necessary permissions under the National Environmental Policy Act, Charters said. In July, President Donald Trump announced his administration finalized changes to NEPA to reduce the number of projects that require federal review and narrow the scope of effects considered under those reviews. In September, a group of New Jersey legislators asked the state's Board of Public Utilities to suspend approval of a proposed wind energy project off the Atlantic City coast over concerns about its economic benefits.
"You have an industry that apparently everybody loves, but is probably still a decade from any significant actual development coming online," Charters said. "That is just the reality of the way the process is going to work."
Maisano noted that he has been working on wind turbine projects since the beginning of 2009.
"If you had told me that I'd be sitting here 11 years later and we would really not have any significant offshore wind projects in the water, I would have told you (that) you were crazy because I would have thought we would have done it by now," Maisano said. "But that just shows you the physical, administrative and procedural challenges that you often face even where a state or regulatory body is somewhat supportive of it."
The Link LonkEveryone has a foreign language they’d like to master at some point in life. For most, its French and Spanish. These are languages revered for their smooth and romantic connotations. Living in a community where you have to intermingle with people from different cultural backgrounds could really help in learning the language of your choice. However, it all starts with having the passion and interest in learning a new language. Its really not easy for adults to learn a new language as it is with children but with the right tools and interest, learning a foreign language is achievable. To help you out, below are easy tricks to help you learn a foreign language.
Now, not so many people will concur with the idea of enrolling in a language class. Most will see it as a waste of time and money. But all things considered, this comes with a lot of benefits because for starters, you’ll have professionals teaching you the foreign language.
Truth be told, there are languages out there that are tough to master even with all the tricks and tips laid on the table. The best part is that you don’t have to learn a foreign language in a physical classroom and this ultimate guide to learning Japanese is evidence enough. Online language courses are convenient and cheap at that. Such sites will help you to master the most intricate features in a language including correct grammar, vocabulary, correct pronunciations, and how to read the language through written words. As you can see, a language course comes as a full package. In a nutshell, you have nothing to lose.
First off, speaking a new language, let alone reading the words fluently, can prove to be challenging. You’ll want to start easy and learn the most common words used. These may include greetings and appreciative remarks. Grow out of it by learning joining words and build your way up to more complex words and phrases. Keep repeating these words in your head and play them till they stick. Rome was not built in a day and learning a new language is no exception. It’s all about creating the time for it and trusting the learning process.
Learning a new language shouldn’t be an all serious business. You’ll make a few mistakes, point of correction, a lot of mistakes when pronouncing some of the most, inarguably, hilarious words that could bring out a different meaning. Embrace this but be keen not to overdo it. You could also interest yourself in pronouncing words and phrases in a new accent. This is what makes learning a foreign language more interesting. Among other interesting things you might consider (that actually work) when learning a new language include:
Not that you are to date a native person or anything but having a friend or a lover – for that matter – can prove to be useful when learning a foreign language. Friends will help you in constructing meaningful sentences and they’ll correct you whenever you make a mistake with your pronunciations. This could be through online chatting platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp. Whatever your inclinations, you’ll always have someone to help you make sense out of the most challenging words. Be sure to ask as many questions as you possibly can. That’s how you learn.
Living in such a technologically advanced society has its perks. Today, you have Google Translate as your language teacher. So grab your notebooks and let’s get started. Actually, you don’t need a notebook or a physical classroom with Google translate. All you need is an internet-enabled device and you are all set. With google translate, you can type any word in your language, and on the other side, Google will translate it for you in whichever foreign language you choose.
There you have it! Learning a new language is as easy as it can get. There will, however, be moments that you’ll doubt whether you are making progress or not. As earlier mentioned, trust the process and be patient with yourself. Some people can have an easier time learning a foreign language while others, well, the same cannot be said. It’s all about being passionate and having fun when it comes to learning anything new in life.
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Will the biggest of all art forms, grand opera, survive the pandemic? Will die-hard Durango fans ever gather again Saturday mornings at Fort Lewis College for The MET Live in HD?
Who knows?
As of last week, The Met canceled its entire 2020-21 season at Lincoln Center in New York City. The closure included a stellar lineup of streamed performances in the popular MET Live in HD.
In the interim, the company has taken bold steps to stay connected to its fans, and that includes Durango opera nuts. For more than a decade, we have huddled together most Saturday mornings in a darkened movie room at the college. We see a matinee performance livestreamed to us in rural Colorado.
Well, that is gone, but every night through the Met’s general website, encore productions from The MET Live in HD stream. And it’s free. See the sidebar for operas this week and next. If you want the full schedule, it comes out in three-week packages, which MET organizers bundle according to composers. Last week belonged to Puccini. Now, it’s all Mozart. Next up is that overbearing German composer – Wagner. Cut-glass Donizetti will follow.
Streaming daily at 5:30 p.m., the operas range from new productions like George Gershwin’s “Porgy & Bess” to the hot, 2011 version of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.”
Favorites such as “Butterfly,” “Bohème” and “Tosca” fill the slots. But look for operas you’ve never seen. For me, that included a lavish 2008 production of Berlioz’s “La Damnation de Faust.” It had a huge set with ominous film projections to underscore Faust’s downfall – and a Mephistopheles in a red leather suit.
Puccini’s only operetta, “La Rondine” (“The Swallow”), which I’ve never seen, turned out to be a frothy dollop of whipped cream served over fairy-tale gingerbread on Art Deco plates. Set in 1920, the MET’s sumptuous production glammed up Puccini’s retelling of famous romantic tragedies like his own “Traviata” or “Bohème.” Magda, the heroine, doesn’t die of consumption; she returns to her aging sugar daddy, cigar in hand, who again willingly supports her extravagant habits. The composer initially railed at the candy-coated commission, but, like Magda, he, too was for sale.
The MET’s high-quality broadcast standards include striking panoramas and dazzling closeups. A host sets everything in motion, but intermission interviews have been excluded. Puccini’s operetta ran a scant 90 minutes without any intermission.
If free nightly performances weren’t enough, the MET also offers recitals by some of its most compelling singers. The recital series can be accessed separately at MET Stars Live in Concert. Tickets are $20 online. Signing in is easy with a credit card or through PayPal. The MET reminds you as recital day approaches, and you can rewatch the event for a limited time thereafter.
A caution: The next two recitals have been rescheduled because of illness and hospitalization. Soprano Anna Netrebko will now perform live on Jan. 23, 2021. Sondra Radvanovsky and Piotr Beczala’s dual recital has been rescheduled for Feb. 6, 2021. The website makes the program available. You can print it out before the recital. All the other recitals appear to keep to original schedules.
Check out metopera.org/metstars for the recital series.
Judith Reynolds is an arts journalist and member of the American Theatre Critics Association.
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