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In 1990, a joint resolution designated November as Native American Heritage Month (NAHM), nationally recognizing what had previously been state-designated holidays. Throughout the month, Americans are encouraged to recognize and uplift the innumerable contributions, both past and present, of Indigenous people.
George Mason University’s student organization Native American and Indigenous Alliance (NAIA) is dedicated to promoting Indigenous culture, raising awareness of Native issues, and providing a safe environment for Native and non-Native students. We spoke with members of NAIA to hear about how they’ve found community here at Mason and their perspectives on the importance of NAHM.
The day I decided to die, I watched the sun disappear into the San Francisco Bay.
As the orange ripples spread through the water, I made my way to a subway station, sat on a blue steel bench and waited for the eastbound train to Oakland. I’d been drinking whiskey mixed with flat Coke all afternoon to work up the nerve to jump in front of the train, and I was drunk enough that my plan felt within reach. I was 23. Two months earlier, my mother had tried to take her life, and I had interrupted her attempt. This experience, compounded by years of depression and addiction, made me long to stop feeling. It’s not that I wanted to die, exactly, it’s that I didn’t want to live.
I stood, and took a few steps toward the platform’s edge.
The incoming train screeched. A gust of air blew up my sleeves.
“Excuse me,” said a voice to my right, “but would you mind taking my picture?”
I turned toward the voice. A wiry woman with pink hair and a titanium lip ring stood a few feet away from me, smiling and offering her phone. Her nails were painted silver. She couldn’t have been older than nineteen.
“I literally just arrived in San Francisco,” she said. “And I’m so excited to be here.”
It didn’t occur to me that I could have said no, that I was busy, that I had to catch a train.
I nodded and took her phone.
She skipped toward the blue steel bench where I’d been sitting, stood on it, flashed a peace sign, and grinned.
I took a few pictures. For the next ten seconds my attention was glued to her poses. By the time our interaction was over, the train I was going to jump in front of had slowed into the station, and I’d missed my chance. I could have stayed and waited for another train, but the interruption had thrown me off just enough to lose my nerve.
I left the station and walked uphill until I reached a park. Below me, clusters of people gathered on the grass, playing the guitar, drinking wine. I sat down, lit a cigarette and stared at the dark water behind San Francisco’s glittering skyline. I pulled out my phone and took a picture of a husky’s backlit silhouette. My hands shook so hard the image blurred.
Seven years have passed since the day I almost jumped in front of the train, and I know a lot more about suicide now than I did at 23.
The process of gathering data and information has helped me understand what almost happened to me. The child of a parent who has attempted suicide is almost five times more likely to become suicidal than the child of a parent with no history of self-harm. People with an alcohol misuse disorder are up to 120 times more likely to attempt suicide than those who are not dependent on alcohol. Roughly one in four people who complete suicide are intoxicated. (My mother and I were both drunk during our close calls.) What this means is that the completion of suicide often occurs when ideation, opportunity and a lack of interruption converge into a single unretractable moment.
Today, my mother is alive because I found her. Today, I am alive because a pink-haired stranger stopped me for a picture.
I call this woman my “interrupter.” Interrupters exist everywhere — there’s a man who has seized more than 400 people off the railings of the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge in China. There’s a retired police officer who has walked more than 600 people back from the ledges of the Tojinbo cliffs in Japan. And then there are accidental interrupters — the people who approach desolate strangers in subway stations.
Sometimes I wonder whether my interrupter saw my suffering rise from my body like steam. But even if the interruption was a coincidence, she saved me that night and gave me a tool that continues to save me to this day.
As I write this, I am in recovery, sober and in therapy. The combination of these factors has curbed my suicidal impulses, but I still have days when my despair threatens to burn through me like a wildfire. On these days, I take myself outside and ask strangers whether they’d like me to take their picture.
I tend to approach folks who are already in the process of photographing one another — couples, friends, families, people taking selfies. I also approach people who look sad, lonely, lost in thought. Often, I don’t have to say anything: I’ll hold up my hands and curl my right index finger as if I am pressing the button on an invisible camera, and they’ll hand me their phones with a smile.
To date, no one has turned me down. Thanks to this practice, I have a catalogue of sweet snapshots embedded in my memory: the teenage couple sitting on a bench enveloped in yellow daisies in a garden in Mendocino, a group of women with purple feather boas wrapped around their necks in the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, a pair of redheaded friends sipping iced chai on a wooden bench in a tiny town in Northern California, a man standing in front of a weeping willow, arms outstretched like wings.
I will never see these photos or these people ever again. And if I did, I probably wouldn’t recognize them — nor would they remember me. Our entire relationship lives and dies in the amount of time required to take a picture. My temporal existence collides with their temporary experience to create a frozen frame that will outlive us all — a sliver of visual proof that says “we were here, smiling.” Then, we go our separate ways — I leave them with a tangible reminder that our paths crossed, briefly, even if they forget about me. And they leave me with a jolt of connection that interrupts my hopelessness and makes me feel that being alive matters, just a little bit.
Sometimes I close my eyes and try to recall the picture I took of my interrupter, seven years ago: how she stood on the blue bench in the subway station, how her pink hair stuck out in every direction, the way her grin was so wide it looked like it might fall off her face. The more time passes the harder it is for me to remember her expression, but what has stayed with me is a feeling of sharp, profound gratitude. Maybe one day someone will feel this way about me, too.
If you or someone you know needs help, call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. You can also visit suicidepreventionlifeline.org.
Billy Lezra is a freelance writer who is working on a book about intergenerational addiction.
Introducing Rakewell, Apollo’s wandering eye on the art world. Look out for regular posts taking a rakish perspective on art and museum stories.
At the height of her colossal fame in the late 1960s and ’70s, Barbra Streisand epitomised a kind of unfashionable earnestnesss that ran completely counter to the counterculture of the time. No turning out, tuning in or dropping out for Streisand, whose performing persona was the very definition of trying hard. (Too hard, some critics said, but who among them has lasted the distance the way Barbra has?). Sincerity has always been Streisand’s modus operandi – and her doorstopper of a memoir is no exception.
Your roving correspondent will, we hope, be forgiven for skipping over many of the triumphs and a few of the setbacks contained in the 992 pages of My Name is Barbra. Rakewell is, however, completely riveted by what Streisand’s lifelong love of art and her collecting says about her own personal taste, the way the art market was and the value of persistence (as well as the power of deep pockets).
Streisand writes winningly about hanging up a ten-dollar print of Rembrandt’s Woman Bathing in a Stream in the railroad apartment she rented after being cast in her first Broadway show in 1961. (It smelled of fish and was so small she had to wash the dishes in the bathtub.) She writes equally winningly about her excitement at seeing the real thing at the National Gallery some years later.
She also describes wandering around New York galleries, wondering what it would be like to actually own one of their paintings. In 1964 she took the plunge, thanks to the success of her first album and her starmaking turn in the stage version of Funny Girl. She wasn’t entirely sure about the Matisse she bought for $55,000 from the late Richard L. Feigen – but he offered to buy it back after 18 months if she was still unsure. Streisand even had it authenticated by Matisse’s son Pierre, who told her that it was genuine, but not a particularly special painting. (‘That’s when I realized that just because it’s by a great artist doesn’t mean it’s a great painting.’) This didn’t stop her going ahead, but shortly afterwards, she fell in love with a Modigliani nude at Klaus Perls’s gallery, on sale for $70,000: ‘But I had no money left… I had just bought the Matisse.’ Barbra notes ruefully that she ended up returning the unloved Matisse, and that the Modigliani she missed out on now hangs in the Met. Not only that, but a similar nude recently sold at Christie’s for $170.4m.
Barbra is, of course, nothing but tenacious. Modigliani became her favourite artist and some 50 years later in June 2013, she finally got her man. It’s touch and go – the painting she wants is being auctioned at the same time that she is singing at a gala for Shimon Peres’s 90th birthday in Jerusalem. Streisand’s anguish is real: ‘Why does everything happen at once?’ (She is also referring to the misery of the month before, when she was in the dentist’s chair when another Modigliani, The Jewess, was being sold. On that occasion she was already on Novocain when she commanded the dentist to stop so she could place an unsuccessful phone bid). Fortunately, when she comes off stage after singing for the Israeli president, her heroic personal assistant Renata is yelling, ‘You got it! You got it!’
Streisand stresses that she doesn’t see herself as a real artist – that’s a claim that can only be made by the likes of Rembrandt and, of course, Modigliani. So it’s a heart-warming coda when she’s talking to her old pal and co-star Robert Redford backstage at an awards ceremomy in 2015 (Babs is presenting Bob with an award). Redford tells her, ‘I didn’t want to be an actor, I wanted to be Modigliani.’ It’s always possible to surprise even old friends, it seems.
The prospect of buying another Modigliani even got Barbra back out on tour in 2016 – but that’s an altogether less heart-warming story, according to the star.
Got a story for Rakewell? Get in touch at rakewell@apollomag.com or via @Rakewelltweets.
There’s an impetuous, unpredictable energy to the pictures captured by the late Tish Murtha, the Tyneside documentary photographer who turned her lens on to marginalised communities in the north-east of England. There’s also humour in the shots, and no small degree of anger. And as this engrossing, affectionate film by Paul Sng reveals, there is a great deal of Murtha’s prickly, uncompromising personality reflected in the photographs she took.
A clear kinship is evident between this documentary and Sng’s previous film, Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché, about the X-Ray Spex frontwoman. Both are portraits of trailblazing female artists who struggled to find acceptance; both films also provide a window into wider societal issues. Poly Styrene dealt with racism and sexism in the music industry; Tish confronts class prejudices and unemployment. And both films were made in collaboration with the daughters of their subjects. Tish Murtha’s only child, Ella Murtha, is an engaging guide to her mother’s life and legacy; her openness and candour imbue the film with its considerable emotional impact.
Graph Adversial Technology Experimental Log is a new photography event in Genshin Impact 4.2. During the event, you are required to take photographs of creatures and objects with different characteristics and help Lepine-Pauline with her research material.
Each day, you will get a new objective, and you can capture up to 10 pictures a day. Completing the tasks will get you Primogem and other in-game rewards.
This article will cover the best locations to take photographs for the first three days in Genshin Impact’s Graph Adversarial Technology Experiment Log event.
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The best spots to take photographs of opponents having wing-like structures are in Brightcrown Canyon, Mondstadt. You can find more than 10 Anemo Slimes in this area. Start by teleporting in Brightcrown Canyon using the waypoint and head northeast to find five slimes. Take their pictures and teleport back to the waypoint.
Next, head south and glide down from the edge to find more Anemo Slimes around a giant tree.
Note that any item that is round counts as a ball-shaped product in the Graph Adversarial Technology Experiment Log event. The Stormbearer Mountain is the best location to get photographs of Basically Ball-Shaped Teyvat Products in Genshin Impact.
Teleport to the waypoint in the Stormbearer Mountain and head west. You will find five Pinecones on the ground. In addition, you can find a couple of Apples and Valberries nearby. It is worth mentioning that there are several Hilichurls in this location, so you may have to engage in a battle.
The two best spots to get photographs of Basically Blue Wild Creatures are around the Statue of The Sevens in the new Fontaine area. You can start by teleporting to the Statue near the Marcotte Station and turn around. You will find two Flatcrest Fulmars near the bush. After getting their pictures, walk slightly west to find four Hydro Crystalflies.
Next, head to the Statue of The Seven in the Morte Region. You don’t have to move from your location since you can find all the blue creatures you need right where you are. If you turn around, you will see four Hydro Crystalflies on the stairs. Additionally, you can find a couple of blue-colored birds flying around the Statue.
Completing all the tasks will reward you with at least 180 Primogems and other in-game items.
Emirates Post, the official postal operator and leading express provider in the UAE, launched the Postal Portraits Photography Competition with the aim of fostering connections within communities through the art of photography. The competition, initiated last month, invites participants to capture the essence of the UAE’s rich cultural heritage and way of life.
Structured around distinct quarterly themes, the competition will offer a dynamic display of the diverse way of life that define the Emirates’ cultural landscape. Running until September 30, 2024, this initiative invites participants to capture the vibrancy of the Emirates’ postal experiences through their photographic lens.
Participants in the competition can showcase their talent but also win rewards. Each month the photographer with the best submission will receive AED 2,500, in addition to carefully curated giveaways.
Emirates Post encourages all photography enthusiasts in UAE to participate in this photographic venture. The initiative demonstrates Emirates Post’s commitment to promoting community engagement and capturing the rich cultural heritage of the UAE.
Interested participants can visit https://www.epg.ae/postal-portraits-photography-competition for further information and submission guidelines.
For further information, please contact:
Orient Planet Group (OPG)
Email: media@orientplanet.com
Website: www.orientplanet.com
