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The Hindu
7 days ago
- General
- The Hindu
This botanical illustrator is charting the endemic and endangered species of the Western Ghats, one brushstroke at a time
At the intersection of art and science, lies the realm of botanical illustration. For Suresh Ragavan, a bird artist, who has served as a botanical illustrator at the Botanical Survey of India for over 33 years, this realm has not only been a source of his bread and butter, but inspiration too that kept fuelling his passion for Nature. This passion has now translated into a solo exhibition — titled, Brushstrokes of Endemic Echoes — of his creations, 157 of which adorn the Kadambari Art Gallery, DakshinaChitra Museum, Chennai. 'A botanical illustrator faces many challenges, both artistic and scientific. One of the biggest is achieving scientific accuracy — even the tiniest mistake in a leaf shape or petal count can lead to rejections from botanists. Getting final approval often means multiple rounds of corrections, especially when working on species with minute differences, like male and female plants or visually similar varieties,' explains Suresh, about the nitty-gritty of his artistic endeavours. 'Capturing microscopic details like ovary shape, stamen arrangement, or leaf venation requires intense focus and sometimes working under a microscope. There's also the challenge of interpreting incomplete or wilted specimens collected from the field. Above all, patience and precision are constant companions in this demanding, but rewarding work' he adds. A graduate of the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Chennai (1988), Suresh began his professional journey, driven by a mission to use art as a tool for conservation. In doing so, he has documented and painted a vast array of species, including wild animals, orchids, butterflies, and especially birds. He has studied and illustrated over 157 endangered bird species, ensuring that each anatomical feature — beak, feet, feather pattern, body posture, and even minute sexual dimorphisms between males and females — is faithfully represented. 'In total, I have nearly 550 paintings. This exhibition only showcases endangered birds in the Western Ghats that I have documented over the years. The list of endemic birds featured at the exhibition includes Pallas's fish eagle, mangrove pitta, Nilgiri thrush, Vigors's sunbird, great hornbill, Nilgiri Chilappan, flame-throated bulbul, Malabar grey hornbill and black-and-orange flycatcher,' he adds. The spectrum of botanical illustrators spans a colourful trajectory. Encyclopaedia Britannica cites classical pharmacologist, artist, and physician to Mithradates VI, king of Pontus (120–63 BC) Crateuas's drawings as the earliest known botanical illustrations. In India, the earliest form of botanical art traces its roots to depictions on early archaeological sites and in ancient manuscripts. This sphere of art flourishes even today, despite the convenience of high-end cameras and mobile phones. Why, though? 'Despite all the fancy cameras, a botanical illustrator captures what the lens often misses — clarity, emotion, and essence. Cameras can distort colours or miss tiny structures hidden in shadows, while the brush highlights them with precision. Illustrations unify multiple views — flower, fruit, leaf, dissection — into one clear visual story. There's a sensitivity in hand-drawn art that breathes life into the subject. The paintbrush doesn't just record a plant — it interprets it,' says Suresh. True to his words, Suresh's work stands out for its scientific accuracy and sensitivity to detail. He uses water colours on paper as his medium of expression. His illustrations have been widely acknowledged in academic papers, conservation reports, exhibitions, and they serve as visual records of species that are increasingly threatened by habitat loss, climate change, and human encroachment. Many of his paintings focus on endemic and endangered species of the Western Ghats and India, highlighting their fragile existence and the urgent need for their protection. On display at Kadambari Art Gallery, DakshinaChitra Museum, Chennai, till June 2; 10am to 6pm; weekends till 7pm. Entry is included with regular museum admission (closed on Tuesdays).
Scotsman
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
How a Dundee shop out-punked the biggest punk band of them all
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the punk movement of the late 1970s was 'often politicised', 'full of vital energy beneath a sarcastic, hostile facade' and 'armed with a critique of the music industry and consumerism'. So when a Dundee opticians hit upon the name, 'Spex Pistols', they may have thought the most punk of all the genre's bands would have been fine with it. After all, the Sex Pistols' debut single was called Anarchy in the UK. So anything goes, right? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Wrong. The band's lawyers sent a 'cease and desist' letter, highlighting similarities between the shop's logo and the band's. Not exactly a very punk thing to do. The biggest punks of all: the Sex Pistols perform in San Francisco in 1978 (Picture: George Rose) | Getty Images Following discussions, the lawyers agreed to live with Spex Pistols but wanted a new logo. However, rather than submit to their conditions, shop owner Richard Cook showed his own punk credentials and instead changed the name to Land O'Spex in tribute to former Dundee bakers Land O'Cakes.
The Spinoff
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
An alarm bell: The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey, reviewed
Books editor Claire Mabey unravels the dark questions at the heart of the latest book by one of Aotearoa's most prolific and successful novelists. The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey is a propulsive experiment in excavating, at a slant, a certain kind of Britishness. Not only is this experiment page-turning, it is deeply serious work. The unravelling of the novel's central mysteries and mythologies ultimately compel the reader to evaluate what it means to be alive in a human body that can learn, dream and think for itself. 'In this world,' says Chidgey's character, Mother Morning, 'it's not possible to have everything we want. Everything we think is right. Sometimes we have to make difficult decisions. Yes?' This stern line of thought comes on page 11 while Mother Morning is taking a lesson with her three boys – identical triplets Vincent, William and Lawrence who live in Captain Scott house, one of a string of Sycamore houses, and who are looked after in shifts by Mother Morning, Mother Afternoon and Mother Night. The boys study from The Book of Knowledge (strangely reminiscent of that skewed and limiting artefact known as the Encyclopaedia Britannica); they report their dreams to Mother Morning who religiously scribbles them down in her Book of Dreams. Their misdeeds – both minor and significant – are recorded in The Book of Guilt. The boys are sickly, and require an ongoing regimen of pills, syrups and injections to help them beat 'the Bug'. And if they do, if their Mothers and the doctor ever deem them healthy enough, they might just wake up one morning to find a brochure on their pillow: a pamphlet filled with the promises of Margate. Where all the healthy kids go, with its Dreamland fun park, its sun and 'vast expanses of gold sand' … 'It's a children's paradise, with trampolines, roundabouts, swings, rock pools, seawater swimming pools and the sunniest and driest weather anywhere in Britain.' Margate becomes a central container in the novel for illusion-by-design. The cover of The Book of Guilt is a segment of a real, vintage 1950s poster used to promote travel to the seaside town. Even without knowing a thing about the events to be unfolded in The Book of Guilt it is an image we might unpick as spectacularly uncanny on face value alone: the mother figure is barefoot but wearing a tidy, 50s housewifely dress, pearl earrings, and her hair is set. She has a wide open mouth, her teeth are perfect. The boy leaping by her side is the picture of health. The skies are almost perfectly clear. The sea is flat and friendly. In the background a man is seated in a striped deckchair, reading the paper, absorbed in news. Two other boys, one with his thumb in his mouth, look after the mother and the healthy boy, bouncing away from them. Fading seaside towns are microcosms for faded histories and dreams – and the UK's coastline is littered with them. The layered architecture of eras gone by affects a kind of haunting; the bright surfaces and ice cream shops pasted on top peddle dreams of beachside holidays often, in reality, rudely spiked by hyper-aggressive, Hitchcockian seagulls. Pastel-coated shopfronts and dusty vintage stores soften the detection of darker underbellies and thinly disguise the failures of capitalism to inject the buoyancy required to keep the nostalgia at bay. In Chidgey's hands, Margate is a poster child; a symbol of a national mythology that embedded itself in England's green hills after the end of Chidgey's version of World War II. What would England be like had World War II been resolved by treaty and not victory? This is the speculative heart of The Book of Guilt. What if Hitler had been assassinated and Germany negotiated with? What if concessions had been made and 'difficult decisions' arrived at? Chidgey's latest novel is uncannily similar to Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (which she has not read). It takes similar aim at British identity by puncturing its society with the normalisation of skewed medical ethics. What both novels have in common are questions of nature versus nurture and the eternal thought exercise of what does it mean to possess a soul? The two writers share an interest in the dehumanising potential of such questions. Both Ishiguro (one of the greatest novelists of all time) and Chidgey (fast becoming one of the greats herself) investigate how whole societies, entire countries, can enter a path of gross moral corruption one person, one concession, at a time. The Book of Guilt is being billed as a huge novel for the UK's publishing year. And it will be: Chidgey's prose has a hungry quality. There is an energy in it that demands we embrace the characters (the book shifts between child narrators and adult ones) and see all the things. The book is littered with the artefacts of 1979: Spirographs; TV shows Mork & Mindy and Rainbow; Stickle Bricks; dainty sandwiches; and carved soaps of pale green. Chidgey's prose is alive with the stuff of place and environment that launches the reader wholly into her worlds. Take this, from the first page: 'Before I knew what I was, I lived with my brothers in a grand old house in the heart of the New Forest. It had blue velvet curtains full of dust, and fire surrounds painted like marble to fool the eye, and a panelled Entrance Hall hung with old dark mirrors. And oak griffin perched on the newel post of the creaking staircase; we touched its satiny wings for luck whenever we passed, and whispered the motto carved on the scroll across its chest: Verité Sans Peur.' The quality of Chidgey's writing – its richness, its pace – means that this is not a book you can easily put down, despite the sinister drag of its undertow and queasy anticipation of its secrets. You can spy the twists and the slow revelations, but you hope you're wrong; and then the story twists again and it hurts. The Book of Guilt is inevitable in the way that another book published this year is inevitable: Crooked Cross by Sally Carson was published in 2025 by Persephone Books, which specialises in republishing old, often forgotten books, mostly by women. Crooked Cross was originally published in 1934 and the author died in 1941. Carson's novel is about a German family in Bavaria and how each of them responds to the rise of Nazism and the dehumanising of the Jewish people. It's a profoundly affecting read not in the least due to the knowledge that Carson (who was British but who travelled to Bavaria frequently) was using the novel form to document the violence of her times, and because the outcome of the story is … well, history. Chidgey's book is speculative historical fiction. But the project of it resonates with Persephone's project of republishing a novel that witnessed the rise of fascism and how the scapegoating of a group of people was seeded, and took root, among an entire population as justification for genocide. By changing history, and introducing us to a Britain which used treaty concessions to open the door to grotesque medical mistreatment, Chidgey asks the reader what Carson asks hers: What would you have done? Would you have had the moral courage to resist? What grievances, what perceived fears might you allow to get in the way of the preservation of life? Would you attempt to argue the nature of a soul? Would you allow yourself to take part in a project of dehumanisation, even if it was framed to you as necessary for the greater good? These books settle in the mind as totems: through the vicarious qualities of fiction they scream at us to wake up from whatever illusions we might be under and pay attention to the history we're living through right now; to remember that history can, and does, repeat. The novel form lets us into the heart of the humanity at stake, the humanity we're letting slip: the mind sets, the papering over of reality with skewed politics, with facades, and what narratives dictate what some deserve, but not others. The Book of Guilt is not only a terrifically compelling read – it is also an alarm bell. purchase at Unity Books.
USA Today
05-05-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Removed Harriet Tubman info from website was 'done without approval,' park service says
Removed Harriet Tubman info from website was 'done without approval,' park service says Harriet Tubman was an abolistionist and freedom seeker who led many others to safety in the north. Her photo and quote have been restored after being removed from a federal website. Show Caption Hide Caption Who Was? Harriet Tubman Learn more about the life of Harriet Tubman. Encyclopaedia Britannica Information about Harriet Tubman has been restored to a National Park Service website about the Underground Railroad. The National Park Service said Monday that a portrait and a quote from Tubman had been removed 'without approval.' As the internet archive Wayback Machine shows, the website "What is the Underground Railroad" in February began with a picture and a quote from Tubman, the formerly enslaved woman who helped shepherd others to freedom in the North. But by the end of February, the website heading showed a collection of stamps honoring those who helped people escape slavery, including Tubman among others. The website change was first reported in a Washington Post investigation. In a statement sent to USA TODAY on Monday, the National Park Service said the change has now been undone. 'Changes to the Underground Railroad page on the National Park Service's website were made without approval from NPS leadership nor Department leadership. The webpage was immediately restored to its original content,' a spokesperson said. More: Jackie Robinson article removed from Department of Defense website has been restored The NPS website was among several that were changed in the face of President Donald Trump's efforts to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the federal government. NPS also edited out "transgender" from its website for the Stonewall National Monument, a small park dedicated to an LGBTQ+ uprising where trans activists were key players. Two Department of Defense websites dedicated to Black veterans, including baseball star Jackie Robinson and Medal of Honor recipient Army Maj. Gen. Charles Gavin Rogers were also temporarily taken offline before being restored. Harriet Tubman picture had been removed, page's intro rewritten Before the change was undone, the website no longer featured a quote from Tubman: "I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say – I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger." A comparative look on the Wayback Machine shows that the description of the Underground Railroad was pared down, especially in the introduction. Originally, and currently, the introduction reads: The Underground Railroad – the resistance to enslavement through escape and flight, through the end of the Civil War – refers to the efforts of enslaved African Americans to gain their freedom by escaping bondage. Wherever slavery existed, there were efforts to escape. At first to maroon communities in remote or rugged terrain on the edge of settled areas and eventually across state and international borders. These acts of self-emancipation labeled slaves as "fugitives," "escapees," or "runaways," but in retrospect "freedom seeker " is a more accurate description. Many freedom seekers began their journey unaided and many completed their self-emancipation without assistance, but each subsequent decade in which slavery was legal in the United States, there was an increase in active efforts to assist escape. That introduction had been replaced with the following, which notably didn't mention slavery: The Underground Railroad – flourished from the end of the 18th century to the end of the Civil War, was one of the most significant expressions of the American civil rights movement during its evolution over more than three Underground Railroad bridged the divides of race, religion, sectional differences, and nationality; spanned State lines and international borders; and joined the American ideals of liberty and freedom expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to the extraordinary actions of ordinary men and women working in common purpose to free a people. Contributing: Fernando Cervantes. Kinsey Crowley is a trending news reporter at USA TODAY. Reach her at kcrowley@ Follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley or Bluesky at @
Epoch Times
01-05-2025
- General
- Epoch Times
Philly's Own ‘Temple of Doom' Has Fossils in the Floors, Stars in the Ceiling, and an Egyptian Room
By Stephanie Farr The Philadelphia Inquirer As I entered the Masonic Temple in Center City and walked between two sphinx statues guarding the entryway staircase, and over a royal purple carpet featuring Freemasonry's iconic Square-and-Compasses symbol, I thought: 'What's next? A pyramid with the disembodied Eye of Providence floating on top?' Alas, it was just the front desk, but that was good too since my husband and I were there to cross a tour of the temple off our Philly bucket list. There's no mistaking where you are as soon as you enter the 97,000-square-foot Masonic Temple at 1 N. Broad Street, across from Philadelphia City Hall. There's more symbolism in here than a Dan Brown novel, more thrones than in Buckingham Palace, and more paintings of old white guys than in the 'America's Presidents' collection at the National Portrait Gallery. But there are delightfully unexpected quirks too, like a golden turkey sculpture nesting above a door, 66 million-year-old fossils in the floor, and a 17-foot-tall Benjamin Franklin statue that comes with a cloaking device. And you may not think you need to see a stained-glass window of President Theodore Roosevelt wearing an apron, but you do. It's hard to say why it took me this long to visit the temple, which is Pennsylvania's headquarters of the Freemasons, which is said to be the oldest and largest fraternal organization in the world. For many years, I didn't realize you could tour the imposing, cathedral-like building, and when I found out it was possible, the mystery of what was inside this enigmatic part of Center City's landscape felt more intriguing than reality ever could be. Related Stories 4/26/2025 4/22/2025 But I'm a journalist and my curiosity for the truth—especially when it comes to Philly—always wins. In the days following my incognito visit, I spoke with the temple's executive director, Mike McKee, and learned I only saw about 30 percent of the building on the public tour. Does any of that other 70 percent include secret passageways, I asked him knowingly (because I also asked this question on my tour). 'Between the walls, because of the maintenance and way it was built, there are walkways that are eight feet wide,' McKee said. 'Above each of the rooms, there's rooms between rooms and floors between floors that serve as storage areas.' And so, the Masonic Temple retains some of its mystery, even after I've been inside. The Masonic Temple's "Norman Hall" features Celtic symbolism. Monica Herndon/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS 'The Goal' We were joined by 16 others for a 1 p.m. tour, which felt like a healthy group. According to McKee, 12,863 people toured the temple last year, even more than the 11,886 people who took tours of the nearby City Hall. Our guide was John Hopkins, who told us he previously worked at Christ Church and is not a Mason. 'I only know what I'm allowed to know,' he said. Now, I'm not here to explain Freemasonry to you (Encyclopaedia Britannica describes it as 'the largest worldwide secret society') or the history of Philadelphia's Masonic Temple (it opened in 1873, making it older than City Hall). But in simple terms, the Masons are a fraternal organization, so that means men-only (there are a few female and coed lodges, but not here). Members must be at least 18 and believe in a 'supreme being,' though it doesn't matter which one. Prospective Masons must also be of 'good moral character' and pass a background check, which includes a home visit, Hopkins said. Despite the belief-in-a-higher-power requirement, members are not allowed to talk about religion or politics at lodge meetings and they can't come under the influence of drugs or alcohol, McKee said. The temple serves as the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Pennsylvania—there are about 70,000 Masons statewide—and 24 lodges meet here, with about 45 meetings taking place a month, McKee said. Lodges are led by a 'worshipful master' and grand lodges are overseen by a 'grand master.' Masons discuss issues and have guests, including women, speak on a variety of topics. Charity and community service work also factor heavily into membership. 'The goal of the Masons is to make good men better, to provide an environment where we have decent men who teach younger men how to behave appropriately in society, and teach them about arts and sciences along the way,' McKee said. Notable 'It Gets Freaky' The hour-long tour of the temple takes you down ornate hallways and through seven lodge meeting halls, several of which are elaborately decorated in styles from other cultures, from Greek to Norman. "Corinthian Hall" in the Masonic Temple is designed to make visitors feel like they are in a Greek arena. The massive room stretches 52 feet from floor to ceiling. Monica Herndon/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS 'Masons try to be better by looking at cultures that came before,' Hopkins said. 'Oriental Hall' (which could use a new name) is modeled after the Alhambra palace in Spain. The ceiling in this room alone is worth the visit. It's patterned with an intricate, geometric cobweb of gold latticework I felt I might lose myself in if I looked up for too long. "Oriental Hall" in the Masonic Temple was inspired by the Alhambra palace in Spain. Monica Herndon/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS 'Egyptian Hall,' with its walls and columns ornately decorated with hieroglyphs and Egyptian art, is a crowd favorite, and, according to McKee and Hopkins, all of the decorations are historically accurate. "Egyptian Hall" in the Masonic Temple in Center City, Philadelphia. Monica Herndon/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS 'We have to come in these rooms at night,' Hopkins said. 'It gets freaky. It feels like I'm in the Temple of Doom.' Some of the elements can feel a bit like cultural appropriation today, particularly in Egyptian Hall, but this is a building from another time, when traveling wasn't easy, most people's knowledge of other countries was limited (at best), and there was a burgeoning interest in Egyptian archaeology. 'The grand masters at the time (of the building's construction) decided to find places that would illustrate the beauty of architecture around the world,' McKee said. 'The halls were designed to excite the imagination and hopefully inspire people to come out and learn more.' Each room has multiple thrones for grand masters and worshipful masters during lodge meetings, and guests are encouraged to sit anywhere while guides discuss the spaces. I highly recommend taking a throne seat because when else do you get to do that in life outside of the bathroom? 'A Ben Reveal' Even the hallways in this elegant edifice are stunning. In a dim, long one on the second story, stars cut into the ceiling shine overheard where skylights used to be. And don't forget to look down. In some black limestone tiles of the checkerboard hallways you can see spiral fossils of shelled cephalopods called ammonites that went extinct 66 million years ago. A fossil of an ammonite, a cephalopod that went extinct 66 million years ago, in one of the floor tiles at the Masonic Temple. Monica Herndon/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS I wish we had more time to look at the art in the halls, which included lovely portraits of Franklin and George Washington (also a Mason) and marble sculptures by William Rush, one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. The final stop on the tour is the 'Grand Ballroom,' which features an impressive 17-foot tall bronze statue of Franklin in his Masonic apron—a ceremonial garb worn in honor of stonemasons of the past—standing atop a three-tiered podium. Hopkins pointed out a curtain around the top of the statue that can be pulled to cloak Franklin when the room is used for any of the 60-to-100 events held here annually, including weddings. 'Nobody puts Benny in a curtain!' I said, horrified at the thought. McKee later convinced me it might not be totally sacrilegious though. 'Now we have a Ben reveal,' he said. 'After the ceremony is done, Ben comes out to greet everybody for dancing.' Other features of the ballroom include a golden turkey sculpture above a door frame and four large, stained glass windows of former presidents who were Masons, including Roosevelt, Washington, Harry S. Truman, and Andrew Jackson. Make sure to check out the symbolism on the presidents' Masonic aprons, including skull-and-crossbones, the Eye of Providence, and coffins. Even though I can't become a Mason in Philadelphia—in the year 2025—I still enjoyed learning more about them, and I loved pulling back the veil on this Philly landmark I've passed by so many times. The exterior of the Masonic Temple at 1 N. Broad Street in Center City, Philadelphia. Monica Herndon/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS If You Go Tours are given Wednesday through Saturday at 10 a.m., 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 2 p.m., and 3 p.m. Tickets, which are $15 for adults, may be purchased at the front desk or in advance online at A security screening is not required The cool sticker you're given of the Masonic Temple to wear during your tour fits perfectly on the back of your tour ticket as a souvenir when you're done. Tours are ADA accessible. Copyright 2025 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Visit Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. 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