Susan Baur, an 85-year-old retired psychologist, was fed up with all the trash in a Cape Cod pond where she loved to swim. She shares in an interview with AARP Online, "I started the 'Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage' (OLAUG) because I was sick and tired of swimming through trash."
Susan is a swimmer, and the ponds have been her lapping ground for years. Back in 2017, she had been swimming with friends and thought, "There's too much stuff in here." She told AARP, "We commandeered a guy in a kayak and said, 'Follow us, we're gonna hand you trash.' It was fun, and it felt good to swim and see it so clean." She adds, "Someone said we’re a bunch of old ladies against underwater garbage, and it stuck."
Since then, each summer she leads 20-30 women on dives to clean up the ponds.
What kinds of trash do they find?
People tend to use bodies of water as dumping grounds.
Photo by Tobias Tullius on Unsplash
When it comes to what they dig out of the ponds, nothing is all that shocking anymore. Susan shares they typically find golf balls, beer cans, and even dog toys. "And then there's the really interesting stuff: garden gnomes, tires, a toilet." She thinks about it for a moment. "The toilet wins."
But it gives them a sense of adventure. "The dives are like treasure hunts for things that shouldn't be there."
Who can join the club?
Not just anyone can be a part of this Garbage Avengers team. She states very clearly, "The requirements for being a member of OLAUG are you have to be a woman over 64 and an excellent swimmer. We give tryouts every spring. Swim half a mile in under 30 minutes and be able to dive a minimum of 8 feet."
According to an interview on WGBH News, Susan is very strict about those membership rules. “There was a guy who absolutely wanted to join. I said, No. Often they’re men, very often they're not old at all, and they're quite miffed when they say, ‘But I could help. I’m stronger than you guys. I could do this.’ I said, ‘Yeah, there's nothing three women can't do.’'"
What are the women like?
Susan shares, "Many of these women have a career or even two careers. Some have lost their husband, lost their house, lost their health, and they never imagined that there would be such an adventurous next chapter in their life."
One team member, Marci Johnson (age 73), says the club gives her a sense of purpose. "Having retired, you lose that whole sense of what do you do? Who am I now? And this is something I can do and do well, and I enjoy it."
What's next?
The team has worked their magic on over two dozen ponds. And it’s not going to stop with Cape Cod. The squad is expanding "farther into Massachusetts." Susan exclaims. "There's even a woman in Southern Illinois who wants to do the same thing we're doing there."
The 1440Daily on Instagram, a daily news page, claims there are at least 30 active members in the club, with their dives helping to "support wildlife conservation and environmental preservation in one of Massachusetts' most scenic regions."
The comments on the thread are incredibly supportive. One rightfully points out that not only does this obviously benefit the ponds, but it has great health benefits for the women. "This is awesome! Plus the extra benefit of longer, healthier lives with all that swimming, coordination, and social interactions."
Susan herself is not surprised that she takes part in this but she's amazed that people have joined her. "It does not shock me at all that I'm swimming around picking up garbage. I'm just that kind of person. And when I'm 90, if I make it to 90, I’ll be swinging from trees or doing something strange and wonderful. But that these people would JOIN me, and wear orange hats and have the enthusiasm, it sets me back on my heels."
When Chefs Norma Listman and Saqib Keval opened their restaurant Masala y Maíz in Mexico City, the plan was not just to honor their cultural, culinary backgrounds but to create a new kind of hospitality. They’d have good food and a good restaurant, of course, but they also wanted to show having a life, valuing their staff, giving credit where it’s due, and creating community were not mutually exclusive. Listman and Keval have been able to realize their vision, creating dishes that draw from Mexico, East Africa, and South Asian cultural traditions. It’s a mestizaje, “an organic blending of cultures over generations often in response to colonization & displacement,” they write. Their restaurant has since become lauded the world over, named one of the world’s 100 greatest places, the subject of Netflix’s most recent Chef’s Table season, and so much more.
Listman and Keval always wanted to decolonize what a restaurant could be from traditional Eurocentric ideals. It also became clear they wanted Masala y Maíz to be a feminist restaurant. “Decolonization and feminism go hand-in-hand. I don't think you can have one without the other,” Listman says. “You cannot have a feminist fight without fighting racism and systemic oppression.” Listman, who was born in Mexico but moved to the U.S. to work for many years, returned home in 2016 and came face to face with Mexico’s powerful feminist movement partly in the form of their large-scale International Women’s Day march. Last year, for example, 180,000 women took part to stand up for their rights, protesting violence against women. Masala y Maíz had been open on March 8th, the day of the march, to celebrate the day with special meals, but Listman realized she wanted to be at the march herself. So instead, for the last three years, Masala y Maíz has shut down on March 8th to become a safe haven for protestors. This year, they will also be celebrating the day before by hosting a dinner run by lauded female chefs Isabel Coss, Ana Castro, and Catalina Londoño Ciro.
GOOD spoke to Chef Listman about the International Women’s Day march, running a feminist restaurant, decolonizing vanilla, and driving your own narrative.
What was your first exposure to the International Women's Day March and Un Dia Sin Nosotras in Mexico? The march has been growing and growing. In the U.S., I didn't feel identified with the white feminism of the Global North. I came back home, and it hit me how big this was. The feminist movement had been happening for a long time here in the Global South, especially in Latin America. There are 10 women that are killed every day in Mexico that go unnoticed, where there are no consequences. The reality for us here is very different, and I feel a different sense of responsibility, also being a business owner and being in charge of a team that at one point was mostly women. Right now, it's half and half, but there were moments, especially at the beginning, where it was 90% women and women who live different realities to mine at home in some cases, who were going through really bad cases of domestic violence and whose lives were at risk. It was then that Saqib and I decided that the restaurant was going to be a feminist restaurant, and that we were going to focus on the well-being of the women in our team, specifically.
How do you use your work at Masala y Maíz to support the International Women’s Day March in Mexico City? I want to name two groups I work with directly. The younger generations of women in Mexico are teaching me. There's one organization we work with for domestic violence education that is called Lentes Purpuras, and the other one is Restaurantera Feminista and they're really at the forefront of making change. They're creating a labor union. They're doing a lot of education for industry workers, and they are the ones who are kind of like telling me ‘No, Chef’ or ‘Yes, Chef, this is how we're doing things.’ We do the marches together. A few times, we've met at Masala y Maíz to draw the panels that we're gonna use at the march, and then all go together because it's also a big march, and it could be quite intimidating for some women. I go through like 80% of the march because it starts getting more crowded and I feel suffocated. But they go all the way in, and they're super organized. It is one of the largest Women's Marches in the world. It is incredible. Outside of the march, for three years the restaurant has become a safer haven because I can never guarantee safety 100%, especially because we're in Mexico. We try. So if you need water, if you need to use a bathroom, if you are an elder or a child, you can always knock on the door. That day we're closed. There's going to be people volunteering inside, and we'll be there in case somebody needs anything. I started with celebrations on the day of, and then I started wishing I was at the march. And I was like, if I wish I was there, I bet you my staff wishes they were, too. The pandemic made us more clear in our vision of how we support workers and the restaurant that we want to be. Coming back from that, we decided we were not going to open on the 8th.
The first time you go to the march, you are in shock and you will cry because you have never experienced anything like this. It's beautiful, it's powerful, it's gentle, and at the same time, it's strong. Through the years, I've brought different women, and we always have this moment of, you get chills, and you're walking through the main avenue in Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City, and the skies are full of purple dust, and women are chanting. It's electrifying, and it's like an awakening to be a part of it, even if you just decide to go three blocks. I didn't see the relevance until I lived it, and then I was like, wow, there's elders, there's kids, there's Indigenous women, there's the people who are fighting and are marching for all the women that are gone. It's really beautiful.
What did you decide a decolonized, feminist restaurant would look like in practice? We're a labor rights restaurant, but one of the things that we do is we don't open at night. We have a lot of single mothers, and the reason is so families can be together, at least at night for a meal, to change the narrative that restaurant workers are martyrs, and that we work such long hours. We want to prove we can have a restaurant where people can have a life, where a woman can go home and be with her kids, or the younger women in my team who are single can go home safely. All of the leadership jobs are given to women and we give a lot of power to women in the restaurant. If we're doing an event that goes a little later at night, we hire private transportation to take them home. We have focused programs against domestic violence, and how to care for someone through a case of domestic violence, how to act, and give them tools and resources. Everybody has to take them. The industry has been run by men for the longest time, and there's a lot of oppression and silent oppression towards women. So we’ve fought it since the beginning. We do a lot of work with men too, in deconstructing patriarchy. And we do that actively–the way they communicate, the way they act, and it's not a restaurant for everyone. There are people who don't want to be a part of this program because they are not interested in deconstructing themselves. There is also a no-touch policy in the restaurant. In some countries, it might be obvious but you would be surprised when you're working in such close proximity. When we started Masala y Maíz, we had big hopes for a huge reach. We realized we would have a stronger reach by focusing on our immediate community, the restaurant, and how that would make an impact once they left.
If you look at the history of restaurants, most restaurateurs are always focused on the Eurocentric way of running a restaurant, also from the way tips are done. We always say customers are not always right. If you are not nice to our staff, you will have to leave the restaurant. We've kicked people out because they're inappropriate to women or men. Another thing we do is we use our physical paper menu to print slogans of different Global South fights and revolutionary movements aligned with our politics. We always credit everyone who has contributed to any of the recipes. This is something that doesn't happen usually in restaurants; even if a dish is created by a cook, it's the chef who takes the credit. We put the name of a person who created that dish on the menu–in a movie, you give credit. Or if you're writing an essay and you quote a book, you have to give credit. That's also very important in giving light to our team.
Chefs Saqib Keval and Norma Listman at Masala y Maíz,Ana Lorenzana
Given the violence against women we discussed, what is the relationship between hospitality and feminism in Mexico? Most of my mentors in the U.S. were men. When I moved back to Mexico, I realized the ones who set the foundation for what the food industry is in Mexico City are women. There was a group of chefs in the ‘90s that cemented the big Mexican restaurants, that were giving light to our cuisine and doing this Mexican bistro-ish thing, but it was all always women. It was really incredible to come from a very male-dominated scene in the U.S. to a scene where I didn't feel like I needed to fight for my place as a chef. Once we were able to prove our concept, that we were a good restaurant, and that our food was delicious, there was no questioning of me being a woman or having authority in the kitchen. It was very beautiful and refreshing to see a lot of women chefs leading this industry.
To be honest, in Mexico everybody thinks there's machismo, and yes, there is. We have this reality also that we live as women with a lack of safety. I will never forget, I felt I was going to get kidnapped, and because of the privilege and resources I had, I was able to call an Uber and go into a store. Mexican Uber knows this reality, so I just made him drive around before he dropped me off at home, and then I called friends to follow me. There's all of this reality that is very different from what I lived before in the U.S., that's on the one side. But on the other side, there’s this immediate recognition. The only places where I felt I really had to fight for my place as a woman, where it's more of a systemic oppression, was in the U.S.
What is it like having to make that choice? It doesn't feel great to have to fight for your place regardless. Here, it's crazy to feel unsafe and to live with this constant fear of watching over your shoulder. You get some things for others. I always had to fight, and I keep having to fight, especially white men in power. I am a fighter. I was raised in a matriarchy by women that are fighters, so I have a very strong voice and I've developed a stronger voice through the years. But not all women have the same privilege. I want to be an example in my industry but also give the tools to women I work with so they can learn how to have this voice as well.
Then last year, we were on Chef's Table, I was completely erased from my episode. I had to fight for them to put something of me in it. The whole thing is narrated by Saqib. They took out all of the feminist work we do at the restaurant, and they made it into a love story where I happen to fall in love with this highly politicized chef. That's a little mind blowing. A lot of young Mexican chefs who have different realities than me are gonna see that episode and are gonna see that love story of the man and the woman that falls in love with this man. I feel like chefs will miss such a good opportunity, and it makes me really upset because I have a responsibility for these women. They're just gonna see the show, and it's like, 'Oh yeah, it's a love story,' instead of having an opportunity to see a politicized female chef fighting for the rights of women in the industry. I had to fight. There's like five minutes of a 45 minute episode where you just tell Saqib's childhood story, where is mine? You have to put it in. They're like, okay, okay, but you know, they did a poor job. They did what sells, and I get it, but it's infuriating.
Table spread at Masala y MaízAna Lorenzana
I'm always curious about food as metaphor, and not just as it presents in mestizaje, with a feminist lens on a menu. Can you talk about that? I'm always trying to be so literal with my food and not so metaphorical. I do believe my food is very feminine and very gentle, and it balances. We use very strong flavors at Masala y Maíz, but we find balance in herbs and acid. If I would have to describe my feminism in a more metaphorical way, it would be that beauty. I studied art history, so I'm always looking at composition in the plates. I'm trying to be very direct and obvious so there's not a gray area in the consumption of a dish. For example, right now the most iconic dish at the restaurant is my shrimp with vanilla ghee and chile morita. That is a way to deconstruct and decolonize your palette and your taste. I'm being very intentional in telling the story of an ingredient and a culture where the Totonecs and the Olmecs used this combination of seafood and vanilla before me.
To me being this obvious is a way of giving credit to all the cultures and not taking to take like so much of the Global North does from our cultures, like the example of vanilla. This is an example of an ingredient that in Mexico was used in a savory manner, and then colonizers took it. Actually, the first suppressors to this culture were the Aztecs, and they were the first ones who first mixed it with cacao. And then the Europeans took them and made vanilla into a completely sweet thing. We think about vanilla, we think about white. How did that come about? In the dish, I’m stating the opposite to create a contrast. So when you eat this dish, it's spicy, but it fucks with your mind, because you smell the vanilla and you think pastry or a sweet, but it's not, and it makes you question everything you've ever believed about an ingredient. Here's the metaphor, though: I hope that the metaphor of this goes into the rest of your life and in how you question a belief system that you might never have questioned before.
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Astronaut Terry Virts captures incredible images of the pyramids
Astronauts have the privilege of exploring space - an experience available to limited humans. While most of us may have seen images of celestial objects captured by NASA, the visuals of how man-made wonders look from space are rare. Astronaut Terry Virts got the opportunity to fly around in space, and during his time at the International Space Station (ISS), he captured a crystal-clear view of the pyramids of Giza. Making the most of his time at the ISS, he was able to take a picture of this wonder of the world, as reported by IFL Science.
The American astronaut took to X and posted a picture of the pyramids from space with a caption that read, "It took me until my last day in space to get a good picture of these!" The story behind this photo was special for Virts as he had been trying to capture one particular view for the last six months, living and working on the ISS. However, his wish was fulfilled on his last day in space.
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This incident dates back to 2015, when the American astronaut was stationed at the ISS. Being a part of The Soyuz TMA-15M mission, he had been assigned as commander for Expedition 43, which was launched on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and docked at the ISS. He spent 200 days in space conducting scientific experiments and spacewalks before returning to Earth, safely landing in Kazakhstan.
“I was ready to stay up there because there were still pictures I wanted to take, there were still videos I wanted to do,” Virts told Time. “If you’re an astronaut flying in space, you gotta look at that as your last flight. And so you gotta enjoy it. And I’ve got the rest of my life to be on Earth.”
Safe to say, Virts had a productive time in his seven-month mission as he snapped thousands of aerial photos of Earth and life aboard the orbiting laboratory. To be exact, Virts shot 319,275 photos, the most anyone has ever taken in space, according to a report from Greenville Journal.
His book “View From Above: An Astronaut Photographs the World" includes photos of lightning storms over the Himalayan Mountains, the ice fields of Patagonia in South America, the pyramids of Egypt, and other stunning visuals showcasing the natural beauty of Earth.
In an interview shared with Greenville Journal, Virts also talked about the importance of taking photos from space as he said, "Most people will never get a chance to visit space, so my goal with this book was to share the experience as best as I could through words and photos. I touch on launches, landings, and just about all other aspects of living in space." The American astronaut retired in 2016, putting an end to his illustrious career in NASA. His contributions to technical roles significantly contributed to NASA's mission success and the advancement of human spaceflight.
You can follow Astronaut Terry Virts on Instagram and Twitter for more space-related content. If you are interested in space travel, you can go through his book "How to Astronaut."
A California start-up named Copper is reviving the discourse between those who cook with an electric stove and folks who swear by gas stoves. The company has created a viable electric stove that runs on 120 volts rather than the standard 240 volts, meaning that it can be used with a standard electric outlet rather than needing an electrician to adjust a kitchen’s wiring.
The stove also has a built-in smart battery that can charge up when electricity rates are lower to avoid incurring charges during peak rates. This means that folks like building co-op treasurer Ed Yaker and fellow renters in the building, as reported by the Associated Press, can cook their food affordably while also not worrying about when his building’s aging gas line is shut off for for repairs.
But there are still advocates that strongly prefer gas stoves. Many of them cite that gas stoves offer better temperature control since you can see the flames when cooking. They also argue that it costs less to heat up a gas stove versus an electric one. The fandom is such that some politicians even balked against a U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recommendation for stricter safety regulation of gas stoves in 2023.
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While it’s become a topic in “culture war” discourse, gas stove usage probably isn’t as huge as you’d imagine. According to a 2020 report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, only 38% of American homes use a gas stove, with the vast majority of gas stoves being used in California and New Jersey rather than any traditionally red state. This makes sense as more and more new kitchens are built with electricity in mind to power up refrigerators, dishwashers, microwaves, and other appliances along with kitchen gadgets such as blenders and coffee makers. Also, per Consumer Reports, electric stoves are generally less expensive to purchase than gas stoves by hundreds of dollars.
When it comes to efficiency, electric stoves cook as good if not better than gas stoves. Many professional chefs are switching from gas to electric stoves for this reason. Another reason is that kitchens with electric stoves keep the heat on the food, not the whole kitchen.
“I had a meat thermometer in my chef coat at one old restaurant job, and I looked down one day and noticed that my thermometer read 135F,” executive chef Christopher Galarza told The Guardianregarding his gas stove kitchen. “We were able to drastically reduce the temperature in the kitchen [after switching to electric], which made us all more comfortable. And for me personally, I can tell you that my mental health was better.”
In terms of health of both humans and the planet, there is a growing concern regarding gas stoves. Aside from needing to be mindful of the burners to prevent a fire, gas stoves have been shown to increase the risk of respiratory illness considering that natural gas contains benzene, a known carcinogen, and a study revealing that one in eight childhood asthma cases were caused by gas stove pollution. Methane is also a potent greenhouse gas that impacts the environment, with one American Chemical Society study showing that a year’s worth of methane emissions from all U.S. gas stoves have the same climate impact as the annual CO2 emissions of 500,000 cars.
While there isn’t a call to arms to outright remove gas stoves should you prefer one, there are valid reasons why electric stoves are becoming more common in both regular homes and the restaurant industry. This new standard wall outlet electric stove is just making the concept even more accessible and commonplace.
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Jacqueline Kennedy after State Dinner, 22 May 1962 White House, Cross Hall
“What is your candid opinion of marriage?” Jacqueline Bouvier asked. The year was 1953. At that point, Bouvier–before she became Jackie Kennedy–was the journalist and photographer behind her own newspaper column, “Inquiring Camera Girl,” for Washington Times Herald. Every week between fall 1951 and early summer 1953, she produced several columns, asking people on the street their opinions about a particular topic and taking their photographs. By the time “Inquiring Camera Girl” was done, Bouvier had produced some 4000 interviews, 2600 images, and nearly 600 columns.
From the time she was young, Bouvier was creative, a talented writer, and whip smart–maybe even more than some people wanted her to be. Her first grade teacher cited her as "a darling child, the prettiest little girl, very clever, very artistic, and full of the devil." This continued well into high school, where her boarding school yearbook referred to her “wit, her accomplishment as a horsewoman, and her unwillingness to become a housewife,” according to The New Yorker.
U.S. First Lady Jackie Kennedy arriving in Palm Beach | Flickrwww.flickr.com
In 1951, Bouvier even landed a junior editor position at Vogue, winning what was then their annual Prix de Paris contest–six months editing in Paris and then work in New York. But her mother encouraged her not to go, afraid she’d stay in Paris. According to biographer Donald Spoto, her mother even suggested Bouvier perhaps wasn’t "sophisticated" enough for such a position anyway–it would be better if she’d try to find a husband. Despite promising her mother she’d give it up, Bouvier took the position but decided the world of fashion ultimately wasn’t for her.
Bouvier wanted to see the world, and she wanted to write. As a graduation present, her parents gave her a trip to Europe with her sister Lee, later Lee Radziwill, who had just graduated high school. Bouvier chronicled the trip and it ultimately became her book One Special Summer, her only autobiography, published with Lee some 23 years later in 1974. Bouvier had long been a talented writer, driven by wit and whimsy, with a penchant for drawing–this book is one of the few places these drawings live in print.
Bouvier’s stepfather helped her get a job working in the offices of Washington Times Herald, but after a successful pitch, she became a reporter. Her column “Inquiring Camera Girl” arrived that fall--as biographer Carl Sferrazza Anthony, who wrote the 2023 book Camera Girl: The Coming of Age of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy to great acclaim, shared on TikTok (see below), the column had been anonymously titled "Inquiring Fotografer" before she made it a success. It led to not just interviews with Washington heavyweights like Richard Nixon, then one of California’s senators, but to coverage of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidential inauguration and Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation.
In September 1953, Bouvier married a young senator from Massachusetts named John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Her writing work didn’t stop there. Carl Sferrazza Anthony found that she actually worked on several of JFK’s speeches. According to TIME, “While the pair were dating, she wrote an 84-page report for the then-Senator on France’s political, social, military, and economic control of Vietnam…JFK used sections from the report in his first major foreign policy speech to the Senate in 1953.” The following year, he also used the report in a speech “that earned him his first national press coverage as a potential presidential candidate, helping to pave his path to the White House,” the magazine shared.
Bouvier’s love of the written word never ended. She even worked on The White House's first guidebook in 1962. According to the JFK Library, "with the newly appointed White House curator, she approved the guidebook's text, chose which photographs would be featured, and designed the layout." In 1975, she not only wrote a piece for The New Yorker covering the new International Center of Photography, she became a consulting book editor with Viking Press, later quitting to work at Doubleday. Throughout her nearly 20-year career in the book publishing industry, she “acquired nearly 100 works of fiction and nonfiction,” Town & Country wrote, “working as an editor continuously until her death.” Even while undergoing cancer treatment, she was reading manuscripts and providing feedback. Indeed, it was because of her that the now-lauded Joseph Campbell text The Power of Myth even made it to bookshelves.
Even then, in the 1970s, the age of liberation, she had to endure the question of why she wanted to work–perhaps because at that point she had inherited $26 million from the estate of her deceased husband Aristotle Onassis. The question was posed by Ms. Magazine, and in 1979 she was the magazine’s cover star. Answering “Why Does This Woman Work?” for the magazine was none other than Jackie herself. In a piece she penned for the publication, she remembered the lives women were told to lead, to put their families first and forget about themselves and their ambitions. “There they were with the highest education and what were they to do when their children were grown? Watch the raindrops coming down the windowpane? Leave their fine minds unexercised?” she wrote. “Of course, women should work if they want to. And you have to do something you enjoy; that is the definition of happiness: complete use of one's faculties along the line of excellence and a life affording one's scope." As her high school yearbook foretold, she always craved so much more.
Being a student who’s blind makes learning a bit different compared to their sighted peers. Most artwork is experienced through audio descriptions, an animal’s appearance is often imagined than known, and the phrase “bird’s-eye view” means very little when reading a map. However, 3D printing is literally putting more knowledge at the fingertips of blind and low-vision students at the South Australia School for Vision Impaired.
Through the work of models 3D printed by researchers at University of Sydney and Modash University, the visually-impaired students are able to receive a more enhanced learning experience to better understand certain subjects on par with sighted students.
"We've had a lot of those wonderful 'aha' moments where people who've not been able to understand a concept from a description, once they're handed the 3D model, all of a sudden they understand," said Monash University’s Dr. Leona Holloway to the Australian Broadcasting Company. "I was talking to someone who doesn't use maps at all because they don't understand what a bird's eye view is, whereas if you can provide that map in three dimensions it makes sense."
3D printing has had a great impact in helping blind students learn. By touching a 3D model of a blowfish, they can better understand how it looks when it is fully blown up and spiky versus when it is deflated and unthreatened. They could even “see” the iconic smile of the Mona Lisa painting by “finger glancing” a raised smile among other details in the 3D printed version of it.
There are many applications for 3D printing to explore.Photo credit: Canva
While 3D printing for visually-impaired students is new, using tactile methods for educating the blind isn’t. However, models used in the past were commonly handmade by teachers, making them extremely limited in quantity and varied in quality throughout different schools and settings. With 3D prints, more effective models can be made in less time and at the same standard of quality with the press of a button.
Since these new models are made quickly, cheaply, and with guidance from blind participants and educators, there is now less reliance on raised drawings of these concepts.
"For example, the raised-line drawing of a building ... it's difficult to understand tactilely because it's using concepts like perspective and occlusion," said Dr. Holloway. "For a blind person, that's not the way they interpret the world … whereas a 3D model is a lot more easy to understand."
While 3D printing has become a great method in educating the visually impaired about the world around them, there are several other applications that 3D printing is contributing to help improve the world in big and small ways. Parents have found 3D printing to become a more affordable hobby that allows them to make fun toys for their kids. Members of the National Science Foundation are experimenting ways to create delicious foods and desserts using 3D printers in the hopes of creating convenient processed yet nutrient-dense food.
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One of the biggest contributions is that 3D printing could innovate organ transplants. Researchers at Harvard University have experimented on “bioprinting” organs since 2019 and showing promising results so far. If proven viable, this could help millions of people who need a new bladder, kidney, or lung transplant in the future, along with creating hope for 3D printing other organs, too.
It will be interesting to see how 3D printing impacts not just the lives of the blind, but the lives of all people in the coming years.
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Christina Cavanaugh can still rent videos even though her local shop is closed.
As a person with Down syndrome, routines are very important for Christina Cavanaugh. Nearly every day for the past 15 years, the Pocatello, Idaho resident and her mother would go to the Video Stop to rent a movie for her to watch. She became such a valued customer that new employees would be trained on how to interact with her and check out her movie choices, as Christina is nonverbal. With the advent of streaming taking over the home video rental market, it appeared inevitable that Video Stop would close. However, thanks to the store’s owner David Kraning, she can still rent movies out of a section built in the convenience shop next door.
While Video Stop has ceased all rentals, Kraning took a small selection of film titles and built a small video rental section for Christina into the adjacent K&B Kwik Stop. While the section is affectionately known as “Christina’s Corner,” a small group of other loyal customers can also rent from the collection held there. For Toni Cavanaugh, Christina’s mother, it was a relief.
Video stores are dying out due to the popularity of streaming. Photo credit: Canva
“[Christina] doesn’t understand things closing,” Toni told East Idaho News, recounting a time when another video store Christina visited closed down. “Her and I drive over and I let her get out of the car and she goes up and there’s nothing there, and the doors are locked. She still wanted to go in, and it is really heartbreaking to watch the anguish.”
Knowing how much the store meant to Christina, Kraning decided to keep the video rental business, but smaller. After seeing a corner of his K&B Kwik Stop meant for deli storage fail to take off, he decided to change it into a small video rental section.
“That area was going unused, and I thought, ‘OK, it wouldn’t be too much terrible work to just retrofit it, put some shelving in there, and move some of the movies over, and just create kind of a mini video store corner for this kid, so she still could have her normal routine that she’s used to,’” said Kraning.
David Kraning poses in his now-closed video store.Photo credit: East Idaho News
Now Christina continues her routine of picking out a movie with her mother as the staff of K&B Kwik Stop welcome them like “family,” according to the store manager Jennifer Klassen.
Getting access to physical media can be important to many people, not just folks like Christina. While streaming services are convenient, the costs to maintain subscriptions have significantly increased across the board over the years since its inception. There is also not a guarantee that the streaming service you subscribe to will keep the movies you frequently watch as a part of their library, as services like Max permanently remove titles while other streamers like Netflix and Disney+ follow suit.
While they aren’t built for big business that require growing monthly profits or answering to shareholders, the small business market is welcoming the cult-like revival of video stores for film buffs in the mid-2020s as vinyl records were for music fans in the 2010s. Many revival stores have sprouted or survived in the video rental business in recent years such as Vidiots in big city Los Angeles, California and Symsonia Video in small towns Symsonia, Kentucky. If not a brick and mortar business, local libraries have also become hubs to check out blu-rays and DVDs.
DVDs and blu-rays have become a niche product that still has a strong loyal consumer base that is in part due to folks like Christina that prefer or can afford the rental store experience or people who have become collectors of physical media and enjoy being able to have certain movies available to them without needing to pay a subscription or risk having that movie taken offline.
These shops fall into the same category as vinyl record stores, comic book shops, and action figure toy shops. While they’re no longer products widely found in big box stores like Target or Walmart, or were items sold in defunct national chains like Blockbuster, Sam Goody, or Toys R Us, there is still need for them as a function, a collector’s item, or (in some cases) an archive for media
If you have an interest in movies or film, you may want to investigate if there is a similar video store in your area to support—and maybe find community there, too.
On February 18 2025, an Iowa House subcommittee recommended passage of House Study Bill 158, a bill that would make bringing a person under the age of 18 to a drag show a felony, punishable with “up to five years in prison and a fine between $1,025 and $10,245,” the Des Moines Register reports. The bill would also fine owners of a venue where said child saw drag $10,000 for every child in attendance, and charge them with a felony as well.
According to the bill, parents whose children saw drag could also “institute a civil action for damages in the amount of not less than ten thousand dollars and up to fifty thousand dollars for each violation.” The bill would additionally bar “a state agency or public entity that receives state funds” from displaying drag performances, also at risk of a $10,000 fine per child.
And this isn’t even where the problems of the bill end. Drag is defined in the bill as “a performer who exhibits a gender identity that is different than the performer’s gender assigned at birth through the use of clothing, makeup, accessories, or other gender signifiers.” This means that the bill could potentially outlaw classical theatrical productions like William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, in which one of the female characters masquerades as a man, and it could outlaw beloved film classics like Mrs. Doubtfire, according to them. Most hurtfully, though, because the language of the bill is so broad, it could actually bar transgender people from speaking in public at all. Republicans tried to demur–Iowa Republican State Representative Helena Hayes said the bill’s ultimate language would change in the future “so there are not unintended consequences such as banning minors from art performances,” the Des Moines Register wrote, but she mentions nothing about how the language as is would affect transgender individuals. If the bill passes it could still be damning to an entire community of people, not just artistic works.
Iowans spoke out against the bill’s outrageous overreach, citing that not only was passage of such a bill a disrespectful infringement on free speech, queer and trans civil rights, and parental rights, it was also totally useless and a waste of time. “I'm really getting tired of these culture war bills that are being introduced to grab headlines when we have real work to do here and we haven't done much real work to help Iowans," House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst told the Register a few days earlier. But Konfrst wasn’t the only one. Of the 121 pages of public comments from the February 18 meeting, many shared similar sentiments from concerned Iowans.
“I oppose this bill. I am a transgender person and a drag performer. Labeling my existence as ‘adult’ is labeling my daily life as obscene and explicit. Doing this is attempting to push me and people like me out of public life and existence itself. This is injurious to so many people, including the children this bill claims it seeks to save. Please vote NO on HSB 158,” shared citizen Kayden Ellis.
“I oppose this bill because it serves no function besides hurting the trans members of our community and pandering to our country's conservative fringe. Iowa needs leaders who will actually make our lives better not just hurt an already severely victimized minority group,” citizen Grant Manwaring said.
“This is a pointless bill. Can we please focus on something more useful, like gun control or poverty? Or how about taking care of our veterans, or how about the rising cost of food maybe? Drag Queens and Drag Kings are not the problem,” citizen Lindsey Coram shared.
This is not the first time Iowans have rallied around progressive causes–we learned at the end of last year that of those surveyed about Iowa’s ban on abortions after six weeks, 59% opposed the new law, and 64% supported legalized abortion.
So there’s no guarantees for this bill, HSB 158, yet. It will still have to pass the Senate and the Judiciary Committee to become law. But if Iowa Democrats have anything to say about it, hopefully it’ll never make it there.
People tend to use bodies of water as dumping grounds.
Photo by 
Chefs Saqib Keval and Norma Listman at Masala y Maíz,Ana Lorenzana
Table spread at Masala y MaízAna Lorenzana
U.S. First Lady Jackie Kennedy arriving in Palm Beach | Flickr
There are many applications for 3D printing to explore.Photo credit: Canva
Video stores are dying out due to the popularity of streaming. Photo credit: Canva
