Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2020

The AIH Transcript for October 23, 2020

Hosts: Carol Off and Chris Howden

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello. I'm Carol Off.

CHRIS HOWDEN: Good evening. I'm Chris Howden. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

CH: Tonight:

CO: Hitting close to home. A changing environment doesn't does make it harder for Indigenous people to live off the land. Human Rights Watch says Canada's failure to address climate change violates Indigenous rights.

CH: Deja vu in Lebanon. A year after mass popular protests forced Saad Hariri to resign, the ex pm is back in his old job. And this time our guest says people are too tired to fight back.

CO: The buried victims of a long buried event. Officials in Tulsa, Oklahoma, are still searching for the unmarked graves of victims of the 1921 race massacre. And this week, archeologists say they have found remains in a local cemetery.

CH: Primary sorceries. The last book he coauthored, The Lost Words, was the definition of an international success. And tonight, Robert Macfarlane joins Carol to discuss the new companion piece, The Lost Spells.

CO: No one liked the cut of his giblets. But rather than turn an aggressive turkey named Gerald into Thanksgiving dinner, a wildlife expert helped officials capture him by disguising herself as his favourite victim: an elderly woman.

CH: And chip and dip. The chip is the chip on the shoulder, a former Journey singer, Steve Perry, because of a story that's hung around since 1978 about Eddie Van Halen accidentally splattering him with guacamole. And that's the dip. As It Happens. The Friday Edition. Radio that's going to rock around the guac tonight.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: Northern hunter living hard reality described in new report on climate change

Human Rights Watch climate report

Guest: Sam Hunter

CH: Human Rights Watch says Canada's changing climate is making it harder for Indigenous people to support themselves from the land. And in a new report, the NGO concludes that Canada's failure to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions represents a violation of Indigenous rights. Sam Hunter was one of the people interviewed by Human Rights Watch's researchers. Mr. Hunter is the Community Climate Monitor in the Weenusk First Nation. We reached him in Peawanuck, a Cree community on the Weenusk River in northern Ontario, just south of Hudson Bay.

CO: Sam, I know you're having a lovely day up there. The weather's warm. In general, what has the climate been like in Weenusk River this fall?

SAM HUNTER: It's been very mild. Normally we would be having snow on the ground, it would be freezing, but the weather has been changing quite rapidly. I think this is the new normal.

CO: And what are those changes mean for your ability to feed your family?

SH: We have to adapt. We have to make changes. I used to go hunting on the weekend years prior, and now this year I had to be out along the coast for almost four weeks. Big difference.

CO: Well, what are you hunting and fishing for?

SH: When I was out hunting, I was hunting for geese and fish. Also we used to have a fish run for about four weeks, maybe five weeks, but now for the last couple years it has been like one week of the fish run. It was basically a migration river.

CO: And what does that mean for your ability to feed your family? What do they need from your hunting and fishing?

SH: Well, our people traditionally hunted season to season for certain animals. As 1an example, the geese, the fish, the caribou. But with these changes, if you missed one of those seasons because we tried to harvest enough to last 12 months of the year, if you missed that, if we missed this year's fish, you won't have any fish for a year maybe.

CO: I know there's a grocery store in your community. What would it mean if your family had to get all of its food from that store?

SH: We would be broke. We would not be able to afford it. We would either starve or die from diabetes.

CO: This report that Human Rights Watch has done about the Indigenous communities in Canada, it's called My Fear Is Losing Everything. And they document how many communities have, what they call, food insecurity -- that they'd can't get enough nutritious food and can't afford to buy nutritious food. Is that what you are seeing?

SH: Yes. I think there was a domino effect that started from the residential schools. We used to have the ability to collect plants, to eat and store, but we lost that knowledge. And one of the problems is that I applied for funds two years ago for climate change in one of the things that I found out was that they only had 600,000 dollars for all of Canada. There's over 500 native communities in Canada. And I think that in order to regain that knowledge and also we could build greenhouses, but we need some knowledge on science and traditional knowledge combined so our people can start feeding themselves properly.

CO: It's interesting what you're saying, because there's an effort to try to slow down climate change in some areas. But your community has to start adapting really fast, right? You need to have the means to change the way you gather food, the way you get food?

SH: Yes, according to the science, what used to take 4000 years it's happening in decades now. It's happening really fast. We can see our peatlands soaring and re-sinking into the ground. And the Caribou that used to migrate in the hundreds of thousands, they're no longer here. We just have the native caribou and there's a few. And people have to see and understand the changes we're seeing in all those frozen peatlands, I can see like bubbling methane. It's all going to the atmosphere. And that's really bad for not only for us, but for the whole world.

CO: Do you think that people and the rest of Canada are aware of what you're seeing? I mean, for people in many parts of Canada today, it might be a nice day. They're enjoying the weather. You're enjoying nice weather, but you're also seeing the effects of it. Do you think that people in Canada understand what you're seeing up north?

SH: Not really. I had friends, before I understood climate change and really studying the land, I had friends that said this happened before multiple times over the last million years or so. And I remember coming from Winnipeg, going to Thunder Bay, and I stopped at a little gas station and a woman said, what do you do for a living? A very nice lady. I said I am studying climate change. And she said, I don't believe in that, and I said, well, where it came from, permafrost melting, resources sinking, everything occurring at a wetland. And she really change her attitude because there's a lot of people down south that do not see the changes. And I want to say one more thing, I lived in Toronto for five years. He was from North Africa, an immigrant that immigrated to Canada. And he said that a lot of people are fleeing to Europe. And he said western media says it's [inaudible] war. But he said it is not war. It is all instigated by climate change. We got no firewood. We got no wood. And it comes to a place where people start fighting over the resources. We can see it happening in California too -- it's drying up.

CO: This organization, Human Rights Watch, that interviewed you and got information from you, they do reports on people suffering human rights abuses around the world. What does it say that it takes this agency to come and do this kind of report about the conditions?

SH: I think that it's really important for the people up here. It's like a wakeup call because it gives us exposure not only to Canada, but also to North America and Europe. And I think a lot of people think that Canada is a great place to live in. But some housing in the reserves is really bad. And the food they eat is terrible. And I think they need to be educated, the local community and also the people at [inaudible], our report -- they need to understand that.

CO: Sam, I appreciate you telling us what's going on up north. Thank you so much.

SH: Thank you so much.

CH: Sam Hunter is the Community Climate Change Monitor in the Weenusk First Nation. We reached him in Peawanuck on the Weenusk River just south of Hudson Bay. And you can find more on the story on our webpage: cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

Lebanon PM again

Guest: Nizar Hassan

CH: People in Lebanon have been demanding changes in the way their country is governed. But the new prime minister named this week is not new, and he's not a symbol of change. He's the same leader that protesters drove out of the job one year ago. In October 2019, massive demonstrations against the political elite forced Saad Hariri to resign. But yesterday, Mr. Hariri won a slim majority in parliament -- that means a fourth term as prime minister. And this time around, he faces an even bigger challenge. The port explosion in Beirut in August left nearly 200 people dead and turned people's lives upside down. Lebanon's economy is on life support and the country's debt is mounting. Nizar Hassan is a political activist in Beirut. And that's where we reached him.

CO: Mr. Hassan, how did it feel to learn that Saad Hariri would be Lebanon's prime minister again?

NIZAR HASSAN: Well, it's very disappointing. It was expected, but it's very disappointing still, because Saad Hariri is one of the main figures of the political establishment, the corrupt political establishment in Lebanon that failed to manage the country and led us to the crisis that we are in. So we were all very disappointed to see him back in the prime minister position.

CO: I know we're talking about Lebanon, and so it's very very complicated when we talk about changes in politics. But maybe you can just, as simply as possible, explain to us what led Saad Hariri to get his job back.

NH: This is really difficult to explain because the network of interests that governs Lebanon is quite complicated. But let's make it as simple as possible. There are two sides of power in Lebanon. One side is money, right -- the financial oligarchy, the bankers, the central bank, governors, and the politicians that represent this class, so this is the side of money and power. And the other side is weapons, and who in the case of chaos has more power and that is Hezbollah. When these two converge, then you have a government like Hariri's government.

CO: Saad Hariri is the man who was forced to resign in the face of huge anti-government protests that you were a part of -- that you helped to lead. And how are people feeling that after everything they did to try and get change, that he is back?

NH: Yeah, most people feel that this is kind of bringing back the country to square one, before the uprising of 2019 that you mentioned. So in the uprising, what was amazing is that people came together from across religious backgrounds, geographical backgrounds, class backgrounds, and said that we all have a problem with the same opponent or enemy, which is the political establishment. And back then, Hariri was the prime minister and he represented the establishment. So to see him back in the same place as if the ruling class in Lebanon is trying to take revenge against the people, against the people who did the uprising, because to bring Saad Hariri -- the man who had no success, be it politically or on the business side, nor personally nor as a politician and public official, and a person who doesn't represent a majority of the population and doesn't have a real agenda for reform and change -- it is very insulting. And for him to be the same person that we overthrew in the uprising in 2019, this adds to the insult.

CO: What drove people into the streets, as you say, from all walks of life, all political dispositions, was people were fed up with the cost of everything, the corruption, the lack of government, the lack of government services. But since then, things are even worse, aren't they? I mean, since the coronavirus now you've got a dire economic situation. You have runaway inflation. And I think you have probably people still very very disturbed by the giant explosion in Beirut this summer. So things are even more difficult than they were in 2019, aren't they?

NH: Basically, everything is worse than it was. The reality is much worse. However, people not in the same mindset that they were in one year ago. So I think your question leads to another question, which is: if it's much worse today than it was before the uprising, then why aren't people revolting today? And this is a very good question. But, you know, the situation has been so exhausting and people are very tired and don't feel that protesting and taking to the streets again will achieve anything. And there are many many reasons for that. The fact that the uprising was an unprecedented phenomenon in Lebanon's history and it broke all barriers between, you know, sectarian affiliations and religions and all of that. And still, the political class managed to do a counter-revolution and make sure we don't achieve anything. So after all of that, imagine going back to the streets will achieve things is a bit too optimistic.

CO: What about outside pressure? I mean, there are a lot of interests, a lot of sponsors of Lebanon, I'm thinking in particular of France. And President Macron has demanded government reforms in Lebanon. Will he follow that up with any kind of pressure? Is there anything that can be done from the outside, from France to encourage the new old prime minister to actually reform the system?

NH: What Macron did is he gave them the reform agenda, right? He gave them literally, he handed them a paper and said, this is what you will do if you want money. And the major, basically the only important task for this government that will be the upcoming government of Hariri will be to get money from outside. But it was very surprising to most people that Macron allowed Hariri to return. It's definitely not for the interests of the Lebanese. It's either because of a deal that happened between him and other foreign forces or because he knows that Hariri is a loyal friend of France and its economic interests. And what France would be requesting in the next period of time when Hariri is in power, they will be getting it.

CO: So all of these interests come to bear on Lebanon right now. And, of course, what you need, what Beirut needs, the city needs is a huge rebuilding project because of the explosion. Is there any hope that that will happen, that you will actually get the money that's needed in order to rebuild Beirut, will it appear?

NH: I mean, the size of resources that we need is almost impossible to get. Lebanon is going to be in a very bad economic and financial situation for a while to come, because what we have to understand about the situation in Lebanon is that reform and change is not happening, not because politicians aren't feeling like it or don't have, you know, the will -- it's because they have no interest. And this is why we don't believe that Hariri can do anything or any government by the ruling establishment.

CO: Mr. Hassan, I really appreciate your analysis. And thank you for joining us tonight.

NH: Thank you Carol. It's good to be here.

CH: Nizar Hassan is a political activist in Beirut. That's where we reached him.

[Music]

Gerald the Turkey

Guest: Rebecca Dmytryk

CH: When it came to the people he would mercilessly torment, Gerald had a very particular type. And that was his downfall. Gerald is a very grumpy turkey. And lately he's been causing chaos in a rose garden in Oakland, California, to the point where the garden was forced to close to the public. But then they called in the cavalry, in the form of Rebecca Dmytryk. Ms. Dmytryk is the director of Wildlife Emergency Services, and she was called in to capture and relocate Gerald. We reached her in Moss Landing, California.

CO: Rebecca, just how grumpy is Gerald the turkey?

REBECCA DMYTRYK: Gerald the turkey is probably pretty happy right now, I hope, in the wild where he'll have interaction with others of his kind instead of people. And he will have to look for his own food. But I think he's going to do much better than being in the rose garden in Oakland City.

CO: So what kind of trouble was he getting into in Oakland?

RD: Well, the first thing was people were feeding him and that caused him to lose his fear of humans. And then there's speculation whether COVID caused people to stay in more and that let him feel like he really owned the place. So when people started to venture back out, he was a little more aggressive than usual. He was probably there about two years. We got the report about a month ago, because reports have started coming in about him getting aggressive in March.

CO: And was there any way he was attacking people or types of people he was attacking more than others?

RD: Yes. He had a thing for kids, but not all kids. Not sure what triggered him. And then older people, maybe frail people that he could just feel were tentative about him. And then he would just make a beeline. It was weird. I mean, from a distance, you could see him pick out a victim.

CO: Right. He would get his bead on some weak individual and he'd just go after them.

RD: It could have been clothing. But it was more, I think, body posture and maybe movements. So slow shuffling kind of, and then timidness. When he approached them, if they were timid and started shying away from him, that just fueled the fire.

CO: Yikes. One of his victims -- this is a quote from her -- "I swear I was getting flashbacks to the Velociraptor scene in Jurassic Park as he was cooing at me and sizing me up. And before you laugh at all of this, I'm telling you, he was relentless."

RD: Yep. Yep, he was. And when he was making a beeline for somebody, he kind of go down into this like reptilians style -- his head down, flat back, and just that pace that, you know, you remember in the movie where there's these long strides. It was really wild. He was doing that yesterday, too, before I caught his eye.

CO: Okay. Let's go to how did it fall to you to be the person to get Gerald out of the park?

RD: Well, we were trying to use a piece of equipment -- a net gun. And we were kind of setting up that dynamic where we would put food out, have him come in and then we would use the net gun. But the net gun was not going to fire. We had to go back and get another CO2 cartridge. So during that time, after I had drawn him in with blueberries and his favourite sunflower seeds, I had his attention. But then my husband, Dwayne, had to take off down to the truck. So I was left alone with him. And all of a sudden I saw him stop looking at the blueberries so attentively and focus on me. And he had this look. And I've been working with wildlife for over 40 years, so I knew, aha, okay, he totally changed. It's kind of like when a cat or a predator looks at you a certain way, it's trouble. So he had this look and I'm like, okay, I'll play into this because that's what I want. And so I kind of hunched over a little bit and acted more frail and very very timid and scared of him, which just got him to come closer and closer. And I knew he was going to attack me, but I got him first. So what I did was I kind of crunched down a little bit, like brought my arms in, my elbows in. So what I wanted was to, you know, grab him. I would have this really long reach that he wasn't expecting. And that's what happened. His head came up and his attention was really on me. And I just nailed him in the back of the neck, just grabbed him like by the scruff of the neck. And instinctively, you know, having worked with really big birds before, you just wrap your arms around him, like hugging him -- not too tight, since they have to breathe. But just getting those wings folded was important.

CO: You faked him out, but you obviously knew what to do when he got close enough to you -- how to grab him.

RD: Yes. Never grabbed a turkey by the scruff before, but it worked.

CO: So are wild turkeys normally this much trouble?

RD: They can be. It's really the people that are the trouble. I mean, human behaviour started this and the poor bird didn't need to lose his life just because somebody was careless and irresponsible. And that is feeding them. You don't feed wildlife because if you do, it's going to cause trouble. They're going to become habituated and then other people are not going to like them or this will happen where their natural instincts come out to be protective, and then people really won't like them. And he was going to be euthanized -- like it was countdown -- if we didn't catch him yesterday, I think they would have shot him or whatever they were going to do.

CO: Was that important to you to capture him before they did that?

RD: It was important to all of us. I didn't start this thing. I was just brought in as a specialist. It was really the Oakland Animal Shelter, the director and the manager, both very compassionate people. And it was those guys that said, you know, he deserves a second chance. It shouldn't be that we just treat these animals like they're disposable.

CO: Okay, but where is Gerald now?

RD: Gerald is in the hills above Oakland. We were escorted by the Department of Fish and Wildlife into some private land where there are other turkeys. And he was let go by like a stream bed, there was a cattle watering trough and other turkeys in the area. So he's fine. He'll be fine and hopefully not getting into too much trouble.

CO: Lovely. Rebecca it's good to talk to you. Thanks.

RD: Thank you so much. Okay take care. Bye.

CH: Rebecca Dmytryk is the director of Wildlife Emergency Services. We reached her in Moss Landing, California. And we have some photos of Gerald up on our website: cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

Guacamole

CH: It's a moment in rock history that has long since passed into legend. The guacamole weeping incident and we all know the story, obviously, in 1970, Journey was touring with Van Halen. And at some point, Eddie Van Halen threw guacamole at singer David Lee Roth, but missed him and hit Journey singer Steve Perry, who cried. Well after the death of Eddie Van Halen this month, Rolling Stone magazine contacted Mr. Perry for his memories of the brilliant guitarist who became his friend. And we finally got his side of the story about the guacamole melee. Steve Perry told Rolling Stone the two bands didn't hang out much on that tour. But eventually he went to the Van Halen dressing room to give them props. He said, just as I was opening the door, a container of guacamole bumped off the mirror to my left and splashed against my most prized possession -- it was my satin tour jacket that had Journey on the back of it. Wearing that, I felt like I was finally somebody. The guacamole went on my left shoulder and my left arm. I still loved Van Halen, but I couldn't give them props anymore after that. I wiped my guacamole off my satin jacket. And he's very clear on another point, "There was no crying. I wouldn't cry over guacamole." Well, his memories do seem Zapruder film specific. I mean, his left shoulder and his left arm. So either that's the way it was or that's the way Steve Perry wants it. And as Journey themselves once said, 'Any way you want it, that's the way you need it.'.

[Music]

Part 2: Feature: The Lost Spells

Feature: The Lost Spells

Guest: Robert Macfarlane

CH: When illustrator Jackie Morris and writer Robert Macfarlane published their book, The Lost Words. Three years ago, The Guardian called the book a cultural phenomenon. You might remember our interview about it on As It Happens. The book contained words related to nature, words that had been dropped from the Oxford Junior Dictionary in favour of words about technology. Those last words included Acorn, Dandelion, Kingfisher, Otter and Willow, and the book contains spells to conjure them back to life. The last words received praise and multiple awards, but its success was broader than that. There were crowd-funding campaigns to get the book into thousands of schools in the UK. Its poems were turned into songs and its illustrations were printed on the walls of the children's ward of a hospital. Now Ms. Morris and Mr. Macfarlane are back with a new book. It's called The Lost Spells. And it will be officially released in North America on October 27th. We reached Robert Macfarlane in Cambridge, England.

CO: Robert, welcome back to As It Happens.

ROBERT MACFARLANE: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

CO: The last time we spoke was just when your first book, The Lost Words, had arrived in Canada and immediately became a huge sensation here, as it has around the world. Did you have any idea how your book was going to affect people, how it was going to become such a sensation?

RM: [Laughs] Not at all. It's been the wildest, weirdest, loveliest thing I'll probably ever be involved in -- you know, beside my children. Yeah, we just planted an acorn and, you know, healed the earth down around it. And then up grew this wildwood. It was by surprise.

CO: This new one, The Lost Spells, is different, though, isn't it? Because the beauty of The Lost Words was that it was a work of art, that book. The images had gold accents through them and you would sit in some place flipping these giant pages around. But this is a petite little book. Why did you decide to make this one small?

RM: So all the art or the beauty, really, as Jackie Morris's -- this wonderful artist, my co-creator and one of my best friends now. Yeah, The Lost Words was huge. We always joke that, you know, you could use it as a bird hide or a coffee table or an umbrella if you were out. But The Lost Spells we think of it as its little sister. It's about a third of the size. It's longer. We wanted to make a book you could take out with you -- take to the woods or the river or the park. It's a field guide, I guess to everyday nature. There are 21 spells for 21 plants or creatures. A beach as in the beach tree, egrets, red fox, Jackdaw, Goldfinch, it names them and seeks to conjure them in image and word.

CO: It's a field guide like no other, because in a field guide you're going into nature with that guide to tell you what the things you're seeing. But this is to tell you the magic that you're seeing, right?

RM: Well, that's the hope, yeah. We wanted to make something that spoke to the heart, that children -- well, Jackie was, as you know, children aged one to 100, wanted to see with, to see through like a pair of magic binoculars, if you like.

CO: And you right in the opening, you say that in this book, in these pages, you've made swoop with Swallow or follow a seal, you can listen with owl ears, watch with the eyes of an oak, fox might witch into your mind or flocks of moths may left from the page to fill the air. How do you want people to use this book? Do you want them to get into it?

RM: Well, first of all, I want them to speak it aloud. I mean, these are spells in the old sense. Spells have an oral magic to them that they're almost always written to be uttered. And I think that's true of a lot of poetry and it's certainly true of the language that I try to use here. And I want it to jump around in the mouth like an otter tumbles in a stream. And there's a spell, the jackdaw spell. Maybe I'll read it to you in a bit. But I've set this as a sort of tongue twister learn-by-heart challenge for primary schools over here. And already they're going. It is just wonderful watching the kids take the spells to heart, learn them by heart and then almost perform them with their buddies, whole classes. It's lovely to see poetry living like this.

CO: I was going to ask you about the jackdaw later, but since you've mentioned it, we have to go to that because this is probably the most difficult one to read aloud. It is a real tongue twister. And just to tell people a bit about the jackdaw, because this is a bird that's been introduced to our North America and to Canada, but people might not be familiar with it.

RM: Right. Well it's one of the Corvidaeo. So that's the group that includes crows and ravens and hoodies and jackdaws and jays. They are wonderful, complex, very intelligent group of birds. And the jackdaw moves their flocks, very sociable, lives in Ivey, lives in barns, lives in ruins, but also lives in cities like many of the crows and Corvidaes. But they have this very high kind of call and a cry. So I wanted to write something that caught that chattery convivial, jumpy hip hop nature of the jackdaw. So here's the jackdaw spell. And I normally faint after I've finished it, but I'll try not to do that. [Laughter] Okay here goes. [Reading at quick pace] J-j-j-j Jackdaw, circling the back door, showing off your knack for, letting rip that high caw, cutting like a hacksaw through the evening's calm call, giving it the [inaudible]. Always with the comeback, callback, crackerjack, joker of the haystack, ready with the wisecrack, giving it the backchat. Castle clatterer, a silent shatterer, a tractor troubadour, a talker, and squakwer, in fable and folklore from farmyard to seashore, giving it a nevermore. King of the chimney stack, the belfry bivouac, bright eyed steeplejack from church tattered tarmac, giving it the snicker snack. Don't call her crow or rook or raven. As she is Jackdaw Grey-headed outpour, fighting the class war, dipping down on quick winds to hijack a wedding ring or ransack a knickknack or snatch up a gym crack, while giving it the guff. As dusk darkens, jackdaws gather to shake out feathers, jam packed the brickwork, pick through the tide rack, nestle in the bed straw, dug through the trap door, fossick on the barn floor, bushwack the Ivy, gospin, the Sycamore. This place to sleep. Still giving it their click clack. So why not learn that jackdaw beatbox. The Jackdaw seesaw, the jackdaw uproar, the zig-zag, rip-rap jackdaw soundtrack pulling on the ripcord furthermore and evermore giving it the chainsaw, the whip crack, the heehaw. Giving it the way for the wife or the therefore the j-j-j-j-j jackdaw.

CO: [Laughs] We'll let you catch your breath and I'll do a little identification here. You're listening to As It Happens. I'm speaking with Robert Macfarlane about his new book called The Lost Spells. And I'm sorry to challenge you so much, but it is among the favourite ones, isn't it? So many kids are now trying to recite that one.

RM: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm doing it. I can't remember it because I've got a 44 year old's brain. But these kids -- the videos are coming in on Twitter and Instagram in schools. And so we have a poetry by heart initiative, national initiative here that's now one of their texts. And yeah, it's wonderful. I mean, we talked earlier about field guides. I mean, field guides are to do with identification. You know, you see this creature, you identify this, this is its taxonomy, et cetera. But there's another meaning of identify and it's to identify with -- it's to feel a kinship with. It's to recognize the other life. And that's I guess that's the identifying Jackie and I want to do.

CO: You say in the opening that the idea is to enchant and the understanding of the word enchant is to both make magic and to sing and that they go together, don't they? You have to make these incantations aloud in order to have them effective.

RM: Yeah, yeah. And one of the wonderful, surprising things that's happened with this book and its big sister, The Lost Words, is that it's become song. Wonderful musicians, including Canadian composers, have picked up these spells and the art and turned them into song -- so that the Electro Women's Choir in Vancouver commissioned new compositions of several of the spells in The Lost Words, and they were all ready to perform these across Canada when lockdown came. But we hope, they'll do that next year. And so many kinds of musicians, folk musicians, through to experimental avant garde classical musicians have now taken to setting these spells. And that's thrilling to me is that watching them take flight in another form.

CO: We just have one of those, which is a primary school actually in Doncaster, England, posting -- this is a video of its students there performing your jackdaw poem. Let's have a listen to that. [Students performing Jackdaw poem from The Lost Spells]

CO: I love listening to that.

RM: Me too. I got a huge grin on my face at the end of a long day's teaching. The lovely thing about the film version of that is that there's one kid who is absolutely throwing shapes as people used to say here, his whole body, his arms are going in this dance. I showed it to my children and they were like, oh, yeah, that's a fortnight dance, dad. [Laughs] Okay, fine. It doesn't matter. Came from gaming. It's gone to natural history, I'm okay with that.

CO: You say, though, at the beginning, this are for children, they are spells, but they're for children as old as 100. And how do you want older people, adults, to approach these works?

RM: Well, I don't want to prescribe anything because the lovely thing about these books, both of them, is that they've lived their own life completely beyond my premonition or prescription. And one of the things that's happened with The Lost Words is that it's been used a great deal in care settings where with dementia and Alzheimer's and other associated sort of memory loss inflections, grandchildren have sat with grandparents and they've turned the pages of the big book, and hopefully this little one as well. Yeah. Alzheimer's has these moments of lucidity, often long term memory is better than the very short term memory. And so sort of for people who are losing words, oddly, poetry and particularly art, Jackie's art, I think opens up these clearings in the forest. So there's that. And then I think just people have these very intense relationships with nearby nature, perhaps now more than ever post lockdown in pandemic. And it's a celebration of those things and actually how indispensable everyday nature is to us.

CO: One of the entries that speaks to what you're saying about that relationship with older people, with people in our families. And it's, I think, quite personal for you -- that's Goldfinch. Can you tell us about that and read it to us, perhaps?

RM: Yes. So I hadn't made that connection from the question you ask, but I'll just set the scene for it in that it was probably the first spell in The Lost Spells that I wrote and I wrote it sitting by my grandmother's bed while she slept close to the end of a very, very long life -- 102 years. And she'd been awake for a century, you could say and she wanted to sleep. But I was thinking of all that she'd seen in that time. And I must say, it had been a very bad day -- not long after Trump had been elected. And I was just feeling despairing about many, many things, but also astonished by the presence of my grandmother. So I wrote the first lines of this spell by her side. And this is how it goes. Goldfinch spell. [Reading] God knows the world needs all the good it can get right now, out in the gardens and fields Goldfinches a gilding the land of free, leaving little gifts of light, a gleam for the trees, a glint to the tree. Did you hear their high scattered song, their bright wings falling around you as flaks, as grains, as glitter? Imagine the loss of their luster, the lack of their sheen. No more shimmer, a worrying absence of guilt. Charm on Goldfinch, Charm on. Heaven help us when all your gold is gone.

CO: Yeah, that is one of the a-tear-to-the-eye poems that you have in this as well as the ones that make you laugh. And so obviously had an effect on all of us.

RM: Well, I should say there's hope in it too. Charm on I say at the end of Goldfinch -- I say there is this lovely group known for goldfinches, which is a charmer, charm of goldfinches. This is a group of them. And there were 30 in the tree in my garden yesterday making the most extraordinary glittering noise. And in Britain they're a success story, they're up around 80 percent in the past 30 years. And they are so, because it's a collaboration with us, we've learned what they like to eat -- sunflower hearts and seed. And lots of people put this food out in the back gardens and so now we have this wonderful population, charming us. And they were a huge presence in British gardens during lockdown. So there's hope there too that we can turn things around.

CO: There's another one of your poems that says that as well. And it really struck me the one: Swallow. And this is one that starts quite dark and then it flips to the light, as you point out. And it says soft as evening I lay listening to my child breathing slow and shallow in the darkness of her sleep when without warning, I fell deep into the gap that opened up between her breaths. And then this takes a very dark turn to where the stars are unshining, the sun unshining, the trees ungrowing, the birds transfixed mid-air amid song and grief beckons. How did that poem come around and how did you turn it into the light that comes at the end of it?

RM: I'm really touched that spoke to you -- it's about the first conversation I've had about that spell. You know, I'm a parent of three children and I've sat with each of them as every parent has while they're asleep or falling asleep. And there's a moment, I remember so clearly when you have a very young child by your side at the most fragile and beautiful thing you've ever seen. And they breathe and then they breathe in. And then there's a pause. And in that split second, you think they might never breathe out again. And then they do. And then the same happens again. And I suddenly thought that that split second is an abess. It's a chasm into which you topple. And down there there's no there's no light. There's no growth. There's nothing. It's this tiny, tiny death that is reversed. And you step out of it. It occupies immense space and time far beyond this, its actual presence. And in the spell, which is really a parent's spell, a swallow swoops down into the chasm and lifts the speaker out. And so shut the chasm. And then everything begins again. Plants grow. Stars shine. The planet turns. And the child breathes.

CO: She breathed in again and life poured back.

RM: Yeah. Life poured back, and it will. I mean, we see all of these extraordinary restoration programs, rivers that are given back their flow from unnecessary damming, salmon are back so fast you must see this across Canada. Give nature a chance and it will flow back.

CO: It's hard to see that right now, isn't it? Because we are looking to the south of Canada, we're looking at the wildfires in the US. We're looking to the north where the ice is melting and politicians rejecting even the idea that this is climate change and that we're confronted with the science. So is magic part of the solution to this crisis we're in?

RM: Two things. One hopeful, one not. I think that COVID has been an environmental catastrophe. There was a lot of what I came to call a pandemic utopianism visible or audible in the early months. The emissions are dropping. This is a reset in our relationship with nature, et cetera, et cetera. I don't think that's been born up. But more significantly, I think it's forced us into a necessary short termism of thinking. You know, we can barely see past the next week, the next month, as individuals, as polities. And that is hugely hostile and damaging to the kinds of medium to long term thinking that the big environmental change making requires. Well, the hopeful thing, I guess, turning back to your idea of the spell is that literature has always thought of alternative ways of being -- not only future ways, present ways too. It opens up other lives. Libraries are a galaxies, time machines, wildwoods -- you enter new spaces and new minds through writing. And I think literature and culture generally has this huge power to show us hopeful other futures. And it's still doing that. And in fact, it's moved to the centre of protest. I think the extinction rebellion protest, for example, are hugely creative in the work they do. So there is hope. But I think COVID -- we are going to look back on it as a huge setback.

CO: But at the same time, the pandemic has forced us out into nature, hasn't it? I mean, in this country more, I'm sure it's in yours, that people have less contact with humans and more contact with the natural world. People are out going for walks and hikes and looking at things. There's a bit of a paradox, isn't it?

RM: It is a paradox. Yes, I've come to think of this as when socializing indoors is almost impossible. I mean, I was just teaching outdoors today. My students, we didn't want to wear masks, so it was a warm southerly wind blowing today -- it's about 17 degrees. So I said, let's be outside. And so we talked, you know, sitting at a distance. But we could unmask in this fresh wind, goldfinches flying overhead, rooks cawing, we were studying Gerard Manley Hopkins' poetry in the world. The world felt briefly right again. But more generally, we are socializing perforce outside. And for me, that's interesting because it enlarges the social life of a space. When you're outdoors, particularly in parks, you're joined by trees and plants and flowers and birds and creatures. And even if you don't know their names, they're part of the conversation you're having. And I think you're right, people have recognized that deep need to be sociable with other creatures and not to enter what Wilson calls the [inaudible] in the age of loneliness, where we've lost sight and knowledge and even existence of so much of the life we share this planet with.

CO: I was just transported, as were many people, by this idea of sitting outside in your university class as you talk about Gerard Manley Hopkins and goldfinches flitter around and the south wind is blowing. And that is a dream day.

RM: These are my first years, I love teaching first year students, I like teaching any student. But it's really special meeting for the first time today. And I suddenly realized that it was warming enough. And so we're laying plans, you know, blankets and warm coats and as long as we can, we will learn outside.

CO: Just finally, you wrote in the introduction, the opening of this book, 'wonder is needed now more than ever.' Why is that?

RM: Well, it's a survival skill in two ways, firstly, because our days are hard, everybody's days are hard. Now, some are far far harder than others. But we all struggle at times and wonder, first of all, the passions, as Descartes calls it, which might be it -- to me, you know, seeing a swift cross both through the sky and knowing a little of where it's come from or picking up the feather from the floor. These are things that anchor us and sustain us as individuals. And the second, I guess, is that as a species, we will not save what we do not love and we rarely love what we cannot name. And so we circle back to the idea that there is a profound goodness in in knowing and naming with love and with care and with honour the creatures and the plants that we share the world with. And that this is the acorn that grows change, I think. I'm not saying this, but we'll do that. I think that there's a much much bigger process that young people are leading the way with right now.

CO: Robert you have filled us all with wonder with what you've had to say today. And I really appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

RM: Thank you Carol. It's been an absolute privilege.

CH: Robert Macfarlane is a fellow of Emmanuel College at the University of Cambridge. His new book, The Lost Spells, a collaboration with artist Jackie Morris, will be released October 27th. We reached Mr. Macfarlane in Cambridge.

[Music]

Northwest Angle

CH: People who live in the Northwest Angle already feel stranded. The pandemic has only made it worse. The angle, as it's known as technically the northern most part of Minnesota. But in order to get to it, you have to cross an international border, drive through Manitoba and cross over into the U.S. again. It's bordered on three sides by Canada and by a body of water on the south. The anomaly is thanks to a map surveying error made more than 200 years ago. But if that quirk was once sort of amusing, it's now become annoying because since the spring, the angle has essentially been cut off from U.S. visitors. Paul Colson owns Jake's Northwest Angle Resort. He told CBC Manitoba that it has been a glacially slow tourism season.

PAUL COLSON: All of our business comes from the States. And if you live here, if this is your residence, you're allowed to transit through southeast Manitoba. And if you're not, you can't. So as a result, my business and most of the others, because we're all tourism based -- I called them up this morning and we're kind of ball-parking 85-90 percent reduction in, I guess, our sales this summer.

SAM SAMSON: What about Canadian visitors? Have they made up for the lack of Americans?

PAUL COLSON: There are some Canadians who I wouldn't call them visitors. They would be workers that are doing two very large sewer water improvements on the two Indian reservations. But there's, you know, maybe there's 40 people coming and going there. We're not mad that Canadians are allowed to come and go through here. We just wish we were treated the same.

SAM SAMSON: What do you mean by that?

PAUL COLSON: Well, it's apparently essential or Canada Customs feels that it's essential for the Canadians to egress through the angle. It's not essential for our tourists to get to us.

SAM SAMSON: So then how do you hope the rules change so you can get visitors from America?

PAUL COLSON: We're not looking for the Canadian border to be opened, per say. We're looking for U.S. people to be able to transit through southeast Manitoba. You have to understand that you don't even have to go through Sprague, Manitoba, to get here. There's probably 12 driveways -- it's gravel road, woods. There would be no risk whatsoever to Canadians if people were allowed to drive through here. It's like no contact travel. They could put their I.D. on the outside of the windshield wiper and talk to customs through the phone, looking at them through the window. I mean, there'd be zero exposure.

SAM SAMSON: So have you taken these ideas to a government like Canadian or American?

PAUL COLSON: Absolutely. We've definitely told our federal representations because this is a country to country matter. Me, because I'm in Minnesota and most of my federal reps -- all of them -- are Democrats, more of the shelter in place attitude, and there's other fish to fry with it being a political year. I'm looking to educate Canadians that there's a little tiny community that's being strangled.

CH: Paul Colson owns a resort in Minnesota's Northwest Angle, which you can only access through Manitoba. He was speaking with Sam Samson, host of CBC Manitoba's Radio Noon today.

[Music]

Part 3: Metropolitan Museum visitor finds a missing Jacob Lawrence painting

Tulsa massacre excavations

Guest: Michelle Brown

CH: The 1921 Tulsa race massacre left hundreds of Black people dead. And in 2018, the mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma, said his city owed it to the victims to find their unmarked graves. So the mayor restarted the search, but it didn't yield any promising results until now. When officials conducted the first dig in July, they didn't find any remains. This week, they dug again and unearthed at least 12 coffins they believe may hold victims. Michelle Brown serves on the historical narrative committee. That's part of the search. We reached her in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

CO: Michelle, how did you react when you heard that these remains had been found at Oak Lawn Cemetery this week?

MICHELLE BROWN: It was bittersweet. I was devastated. Although we expected for them to find remains, it was still bittersweet. It's taken us so long to get to this point, however we are so appreciative that we are finally here and that we are finally getting the answers which we have wanted and needed for so long.

CO: There have been other efforts to locate the remains of those killed in this massacre. And can you say what led the search team to this specific location in the cemetery?

MB: So there were several things. Over the years, we have collected the oral histories of many of our survivors. And principally there was a young White boy playing near the cemetery that years later testified that he remembers seeing White men putting bodies in a grave site there. His name was Clyde Eddie. And so there were numerous oral histories and then some documents from the cemetery itself that listed that there were African-Americans buried there that were unidentified, that were nameless.

CO: So these are unmarked graves in the cemetery?

MB: Correct.

CO: And can you describe, as gruesome as this is, I'm sorry to ask you this, but what exactly did they find?

MB: So they found 11 coffins side by side. And during their research in opening one of those coffins, they found the remains, which have identified the initial remains of being a female. That's all they can tell us up to this point, because of the weather conditions in Tulsa, as of today, they had to cover those graves. And we don't expect for the information to continue until sometime in the spring. We just do not have enough information yet to know exactly who these remains belong to.

CO: What we do know is that there was a massacre, that in 1921 there were White mobs who descended on this greenwood area of Tulsa, a very prosperous area known as Black Wall Street, and that hundreds of people were murdered. Most recently, we were telling this story because Donald Trump wanted to have a rally in Tulsa on Juneteenth, which is a very important day for Black people in the United States with the emancipation of slavery. And so we were talking about at that point. But if you can just put a few more details about what that massacre was about.

MB: The massacre took place in part because of a confrontation between Dick Rowland, who was a young shoeshine boy, a young African-American, and a White girl named Sarah Page. There was some type of incident that took place in an elevator where Sarah Page was working. Dick Rowand was given special permission to go into the building to use the restroom and get water. Because of segregation he had to be given special permission to do so. Every day he would enter the elevator, where Sarah Page worked as an elevator operator. So we know that they were at least acquainted with each other. They saw each other every day. No one really knows what happened on that particular day, May 31st, 1921. What we know is that Mr. Rowland stepped into the elevator where Sarah Page was there alone. A few moments after the elevator doors close, there was a scream, the elevator doors open and Dick Rowland runs. And a person working near the Drexel building claims that she had to have been assaulted. The newspaper Tulsa Tribune picked it up in their evening edition. And there are reports that the evening addition came out with an article that said, looks like there's going to be a lynch in Tulsa tonight. Lynchings were all too common and it led to many Whites becoming angry and upset about what they believe happened, going to the jailhouse demanding that Dick Rowland be released into their custody because he had been arrested. At this point, Blacks who were concerned for his safety, who believe that he was innocent, went to the courthouse to help protect Dick Rowland. And a White man approached a Black man with the gun and he asked him, what are you going to do with that gun? He said, I might use it if I have to. And they began to struggle over the gun. And during the struggle, the gun goes off. And the White mob forgets all about Sarah Page and Dick Rowland. There's an all-out battle initially in front of the jailhouse. Blacks retreat to the Greenwood district. And Whites later invade the Greenwood district, killing innocent men, women, and children. We know that that spark led to the massacre. However, it was also fueled by racism, by jealousy and by greed.

CO: Well, for sure, racism. It goes without saying it was just a scorched earth campaign -- killed about 300 people, 40 square blocks of Greenwood burned to the ground, 1200 houses and the community never recovered, did it?

MB: Well, the community rebuilt Black Wall Street by 1925. And many people do not know that story. They're not aware of the fact that many of the Black-owned businesses reopened and were rebuilt. The massacre did not destroy Black Wall Street. Black Wall Street was rebuilt. But our community has never fully recovered. Our city has not fully dealt with the history of the massacre that took place. And there is still this segregated vision in the city of Tulsa. Our community is continuing to suffer from historical trauma, and the mass graves investigation has definitely contributed to that continued trauma. However, it's necessary in order for us to have the information, for us to be able to know our history in its entirety.

CO: Michelle I appreciate you telling us this story. Thank you.

MB: Thank you.

CH: Michelle Brown is a program coordinator and tour guide at the Greenwood Cultural Centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That's where we reached her.

[Music]

Richard Bartrem

CH: If you fly into Canada from any other country, you're looking at a two week quarantine. But Calgary's international airport will soon be offering an alternative. And WestJet Chief of Staff Richard Bartrem says that is some of the best news he's heard all pandemic. The province will begin rolling out the plan next month. And this morning, Mr. Bartrem joined the CBC's Edmonton AM to explain how it will work. Here's part of his conversation with Mark Connolly.

RICHARD BARTREM: Yeah. So, as we all know, if you are returning to Canada presently, there is a 14 day quarantine period in effect. And look, the government of Alberta announced yesterday is that you could now, upon arrival into Calgary, take a COVID test and then quarantine only for that length of time that it actually takes you to get that negative test back. So it could be as earlier, as quickly as one or two days back. But that allows you to be removed from quarantine -- pool, as it were. There is that subsequent follow up test between days six or seven. But instead of having to now be quarantined for 14 days, you move down to two and are then able to go about your lives.

MARK CONNOLLY: Now, is this anybody who's arriving from any international destination or are there certain qualifications?

RICHARD BARTREM: Yeah, it's for Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and then any foreign nationals who are eligible for travel into Canada and then they must stay in that quarantine period, whether it's these two days or 14 days, must take place within the province of Alberta. So this is terrific news. We're certainly appreciative of the government of Alberta's efforts on this. But you've got to make sure that you're doing that quarantine time within the province.

MARK CONNOLLY: So what kind of effect do you think this could have on international air travel?

RICHARD BARTREM: Well, I think, you know, certainly here in Calgary, this is now, I think, the third or fourth snow day we're going to have. And people are already starting to think about is it possible for me to get away at some point during the winter or is it possible as we approach Christmas that I'll be able to get away and get a quick little vacation with the family? And I think this will actually get the economy moving. And that's an exciting thing for us. It is an important balance between being safe about getting people to move once again, but at the same time getting the economy moving. So we did see yesterday, within an hour of the announcement, a spike in sales to some destinations that people now realize that they could begin to book confidently for those winter travel plans.

MARK CONNOLLY: In other words, if you want to go to one of the sun destinations, you fly to Mexico, you spend two weeks down there, you come back, you test right away, and you don't have to quarantine for two weeks if you're clear.

RICHARD BARTREM: Exactly. And this is entirely voluntary, I do want to mention as well. But then recognizing, of course, that if you choose not to participate, then you are quarantining for those 14 days. And I think that's what people are looking for, is the ability to get back to work, get back to school much faster than would otherwise be the case. This has probably been the first piece of good news that we have had since late February when we started to watch the demand fall off and it fell as low as 95 percent, where we lost 85 percent of demand and part more than 150 of the 181 aircrafts that we fly today. So to see what appears to be the opportunity to turn the corner here to do so safely is exciting news for us all.

CH: Richard Bartraem is the chief of staff at WestJet. He spoke to Mark Connolly, host of the CBC Edmonton AM this morning.

[Music]

Jacob Lawrence painting

Guest: Sylvia Yount

CH: Jacob Lawrence's artwork tells stories, narratives drawn from African-American life in history. But there's one series from the large body of work he left behind that is incomplete. It's called Struggle from the History of the American People. And several of the original 30 panels are missing. Now, an unwitting sleuth has tracked down one of those missing paintings. A visitor to an exhibit of Jacob Lawrence's work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York made the discovery. Sylvia Yount is the co-curator of the show and we reached her in New York.

CO: Sylvia, when this visitor came to you exhibit, what brought her to thinking about her neighbour's apartment?

SYLVIA YOUNT: Oh, well, she's a long-time friend of the owner of the piece and she had seen this painting hanging in their apartment since the 1960s. And she connected it to the struggle series, knowing that it was by Jacob Lawrence, knowing that there were missing panels.

CO: And how did she know there were missing panels? Tell us a bit about.

SY: So I can tell you a little bit more about the exhibition. This is a series that Jacob Lawrence painted between 1954 and 1956, 30 panels. Five of those panels are now missing. And that's largely because when the series was last shown in New York in 1959, it was purchased by one individual with the understanding that it would not be broken up, that it would be kept as a series. But there was nothing in writing stating that. So within a year or two, he started selling off the panels. So we've known for some time that there were 30 produced, five are missing. We know the titles of those five. But in the exhibition itself, we decided to leave those absences present, as it were, by doing a kind of vinyl space on the wall. Again, we have the titles. So we have labels for them. Two of the five we did not have images for. And this is one of those panels that we actually we didn't even have an image for. We just had a title for.

CO: And the hope was, is that people would see this and it might jog a memory, connect something.

SY: Absolutely. From the beginning of doing the research for this project, the two coordinating curators and organizing curators, they wrote an article actually in 2015, I believe, saying these are our missing pieces. Can you help us find them? It was in a national arts magazine in this country, And crickets, nothing. Nothing turned up until a year and a half ago where one of the panels did turn up at an auction. It was acquired by a collector who owns 14 of the other panels. So we have his 15 in the show, as well as a number of that are in private and public collections.

CO: Okay, so this visitor had an inkling that perhaps he knew something about it. She came to see it and then did she go and see her friend...

SY: She went immediately. Apparently, she went back to her friend immediately and told her friend, you really need to reach out to the MET about this painting. She's a lifelong New Yorker. She, you know, grew up taking her kids to the MET to do art classes. She has many artists in the family. So when she did finally connect with us, she emphasized that she was really doing this for her relationship with the MET, for the city, and actually for the artist, most importantly for Jacob Lawrence, who always intended for these works to be seen together.

CO: Okay. So this woman who doesn't want to be identified. Is she a big collector?

SY: No, not even a collector. Someone who through, again, relationships at different points in her life, was able to explore some art acquisitions but not a serious collector at all. And this is a painting that she cherishes deeply, she and her husband. And again, it's been hanging on their wall since really the day they bought it in 1960 at a charity auction for a music school on the Upper West Side of New York City.

CO: She had no idea that it was so valuable?

SY: Well, not about the value. She didn't know was part of a series. I mean, certainly, Jacob Lawrence is a leading 20 century artist, the leading African-American artist in this century. So she certainly knew who Jacob Lawrence was and that he was a very important artist. But she didn't understand that this panel itself was part of a larger series looking at early American history.

CO: What did she say to you when she contacted the museum?

SY: We didn't hear from her directly. We heard from someone who had a connection. It's all about relationships, always in all things. So there was someone -- a family friend who had a relationship with another curator here at the MET. And my co-curator, Randy Griffey, on this project was basically copied into a long e-mail chain. And then we were able to explore sending our conservator to take a look at the work. And we're very sure once we saw the image that this was one of the missing panels. This all just happened last week, Randy and I took a look at it last week. And then we immediately realized we just had to do all we could to bring this back for the last two weeks of the exhibition.

CO: This is panel 16 from this series of the 30 panels series called Struggle. What does it look like? Can you describe it?

SY: Yes, it's a really striking panel. It actually depicts a little known historical episode, very important in U.S. history, it's called Shays' Rebellion. And it was actually marking a moment around 1786-1787, when Massachusetts farmers who were war veterans, had fought in the Revolutionary War, and they were being taxed to death, basically. So it was kind of a taxation without representation theme. So there are five figures of new American soldiers, not British soldiers, but actually American soldiers who were actually in conflict and having this confrontation with five farmers, including a woman who's also included in this scene. And so it's actually a depiction of a militia one could argue, and of a notion of early civil strife. So we've won the war. We've, you know, succeeded, fought against Britain. And here we are. Still, the struggle continues. And it was actually this historical episode that led to the gathering of The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia that led to the writing of the U.S. Constitution.

CO: Striking how it ties to contemporary issues right now in the country.

SY: [Chuckles] Doesn't it? What's happening at this moment as we're going through our own struggle, of course, as a country on so many different levels, but also just really underlining that essential theme which runs throughout the whole series, that it's the responsibility of the citizen of the individual to create a more perfect union, to really try to preserve democracy, to advance democracy. It's about women. It's about African-American artists. It's about Indigenous Americans. It's a much more inclusive history and certainly a radical history for the time that was painted in the mid 1950s.

CO: What was it like for you to be in that apartment and seeing this missing piece of this series?

SY: It was an incredibly joyful moment, just an extraordinary opportunity to make this happen. And the fact that it was discovered by one of our visitors, no less, not by a curator, that it was someone who actually came to the show, remembered this painting, of course, from her friend's collection, and really encouraged her, as did other members of the family, to reach out to us and to try to make this happen. We felt, I think, Randy and myself felt that if any more panels were going to turn up, it would likely happen while the show was at the MET in New York City, given the profile the exhibition has attracted that it has. But also the fact that the artist Jacob Lawrence came of age in Harlem. He spent his life working in Harlem, in New York. So it just all seemed to be part of that -- just incredible kismet. You know, it was predetermined in some sense.

CO: History piled on history there.

SY: Exactly. Exactly. Multiple layers.

CO: Sylvia, thank you.

SY: It's a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you for your interest.

CH: Sylvia Yount is the co-curator of Jacob Lawrence The American Struggle at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And she was in New York. And if you'd like to see an image of that painting, just head to our website: cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

Dino butts

CH: At first glance, it's hard to understand why it's such an exciting find. But paleontologists aren't always looking for the stegosaurus spikes, T-Rex teeth, and velociraptor claws that we might be after. They're looking for answers to questions that have eluded them for years. Like: what did the dinosaurs anus look like? Let me back up. Earlier this month, big news broke in dino circles when a team of scientists published a paper titled Crocodilian Style Cloaca in a non-avialan dinosaur. Title needs work. And I could explain how a cloaca is a multi-functional orifice used for reproductive, urinary, and excretory systems. But to save you that lecture and what's left of your dinner -- basically, the team learned dinosaurs have rear orifices that looked and functioned a lot like the ones crocodiles have. Now, that is a big deal because paleontologists know what dinosaurs looked like. But the dinosaur derriere specifically has always remained an anatomical anomaly. And in particular, the ever elusive Jurassic anus. That's because it's extremely rare to find well-preserved mummified fossils, which include softer, fleshy tissues in addition to bones. The fossil in this study of a horned dinosaur called the Psittacosaurus was one of those rare fossils. It included a preserved anus sample like no other. It's a lot to digest. But the researchers think it's something we can all get behind and that their study puts all other theories to rest. No ifs, ands or butts.

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

October 23, 2020 Episode Transcript

More Stories Like This