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On Friday morning, Donald Trump said, on Twitter, “Serious discussions are taking place between House and Senate leadership on meaningful Background Checks. I have also been speaking to the NRA, and others, so that their very strong views can be fully represented and respected.” In a second tweet, Trump added, “I am the biggest Second Amendment person there is, but we all must work together for the good and safety of our Country. Common sense things can be done that are good for everyone!”

Trump isn’t the only Republican talking up the possibility of expanding the current system of background checks for gun purchases. For months now, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, has been sitting on a universal-background-checks bill that passed the House of Representatives. During a radio interview in his home state of Kentucky, on Thursday, McConnell rejected Democratic demands for an immediate recall of the Senate from its summer recess. However, McConnell also said that the issue of background checks would be “front and center” when Congress reassembles on its regular schedule, in September. “The President called me this morning about this,” McConnell added. “He’s anxious to get an outcome, and so am I.”

We have been here before, of course. Early last year, after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, Trump called for universal background checks and raising the age limit for purchasing rifles. Shortly after having dinner at the White House with the leaders of the N.R.A., however, he abandoned these proposals, citing a lack of political support. This humiliating retreat demonstrated that Trump, despite his popularity with Republican voters, wasn’t strong enough, or determined enough, to break the N.R.A.’s veto over gun policy.

In recent days, commentators and Republican political strategists have offered a number of reasons that things may be different now. For starters, opinion polls show overwhelming public support for enhanced gun-control measures, including the elimination of loopholes in the current background-check system, which doesn’t apply to unlicensed gun sellers. In a Morning Consult/Politico poll taken this week, eighty per cent of respondents, including seventy-four per cent of Republicans and people who lean Republican, said that they strongly support requiring background checks on all gun sales. (The figures are even higher if you include people who said that they “somewhat support” universal checks.) “I think we’ve reached a tipping point,” Scott Jennings, a political adviser to McConnell, told the Times. “The polling clearly supports that notion, and as long as the president is going to be for something, I think there will be momentum for it within the party.”

The N.R.A. has consistently opposed strengthening background checks, and almost all other gun-control proposals, of course. In a statement issued on Thursday, Wayne LaPierre, the longtime head of the organization, declined to comment on his “private conversations with President Trump,” but he did say that “the NRA opposes any legislation that unfairly infringes upon the rights of law-abiding citizens. The inconvenient truth is this: the proposals being discussed by many would not have prevented the horrific tragedies in El Paso and Dayton.”

This response was eminently predictable, but the N.R.A. is facing a dual challenge to its grip on Capitol Hill. Internally, the organization is in turmoil, with supporters and board members questioning the lavish spending being done by LaPierre and other senior executives. After the Parkland shooting, according to a report in the Washington Post, LaPierre tried to get the N.R.A. to buy him and his family a 6.5-million-dollar, ten-thousand-square-foot mansion in a Dallas gated community, because he needed somewhere more secure to live. Last week, three members of the N.R.A.’s board of directors quit. In a resignation letter, they said, “Our confidence in the NRA’s leadership has been shattered.”

Externally, the N.R.A. is also under fire. The office of the New York attorney general is investigating the organization’s tax-exempt status. And, in many parts of the country, a reënergized and well-financed gun-control lobby has challenged it politically, and even outspent it during the 2018 midterms. “I’ve never seen them weaker,” John Feinblatt, the president of the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, told USA Today. “I think they have been very much sidelined.”

That sounds encouraging. Still, as Trump decamps for the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, there are plenty of reasons to remain skeptical, beginning with the calendar. The usual pattern, which the N.R.A. and other opponents of gun control rely on, is for the political momentum behind gun-control efforts to ebb as memories of the latest atrocity recede. Congress isn’t due back until September 9th, which is a full month away.

Also, it is Trump we are dealing with, and he is notoriously averse to crossing rural and suburban gun owners, who make up a key part of his base. Even if the polls currently show overwhelming support for expanded background checks and other measures, Trump will be sensitive to a possible backlash, especially if the opposition includes some of his right-wing media outriders, such as Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.

Furthermore, there is a possibility that Trump will try to tie any gun-control measures he endorses to immigration-law changes that Democrats oppose, such as lengthening the period for which asylum-seeking families can be detained after crossing the border. In a tweet on Monday, Trump suggested “marrying” immigration and gun control. On Thursday, the Times reported that he has told some advisers that he “would like a political concession in exchange” for acting on gun control. If he insists on this linkage, the chances of getting any legislation passed are slim.

Finally, Trump has already passed on the most urgent need in the issue: a restoration of the Clinton-era ban on assault weapons, which mass shooters used, in the span of a week, in El Paso, Texas; Dayton, Ohio; and Gilroy, California. During a back-and-forth with reporters on Wednesday, Trump said that “there is no political appetite for it from the standpoint of the legislature.” He made this statement even though, for years, polls have consistently shown that most Americans favor restoring the ban on assault weapons, which a G.O.P.-controlled Congress allowed to expire, in 2004. In this week’s Morning Consult/Politico poll, seventy per cent of all voters, and fifty-four per cent of Republicans, expressed “strong support” or “some support” for prohibiting such weapons. Among Republican women, the support level was at sixty-four per cent.

The public is ahead of the political system. Tightening up background checks would help prevent criminals from purchasing guns. Expanding so-called red-flag laws would help families and judges to disarm some people who are clearly disturbed. But many of the individuals who have carried out gun massacres bought their weapons legally, or got somebody else to purchase them. Often, family members and friends don’t identify shooters as serious threats prior to their rampages. (On Friday, the Times reported that the mother of the shooter in El Paso did express concerns to police about her twenty-one-year-old son purchasing an AK-47 assault rifle, but she declined to identify herself or him.) As other countries have demonstrated, by far the most effective way to keep assault weapons out of the hands of these individuals is to ban their sale in the first place. That isn’t going to happen.

When tasked with redesigning a Camperdown warehouse into a home, award-winning interior design studio Killing Matt Woods was met with an unusual brief from its owners: to create a concrete bunker free from ornamentation and the usual Sydney coastal accents. No seaside nods. No airy adjectives. And no clichéd industrial warehouse aesthetics (ahem, exposed beams).

The loft apartment is flooded with light from a full-height glazed wall.

The two design professionals commissioning the renovation live a minimalist lifestyle and wanted their home to reflect this. The goal was to create a space free from clutter and visual pollution.

Statement lighting creates character in the space.

Inspired by stark brutalist architecture of the 50s and 60s, as well as the inner-city neighbourhood’s industrial roots, the apartment utilises the precise yet modern appeal of rendered concrete surfaces – though very little actual concrete was used. In its place is glass reinforced cement, a material with far less weight. The concrete appearance of the walls and ceiling was achieved with Porter’s Paint in French Wash.

Porter’s Paint in French Wash was used to create a concrete-look on the walls and ceilings.

Sustainability was a priority. Construction was streamlined to minimise waste and multiple environmentally responsible decisions were taken, like using finishes free from volatile organic compounds, reducing chrome and cement in the build, and only working with Forest Stewardship Council timbers.

The kitchen uses film-faced plywood on cabinets.

American Oak joinery adds warmth to the kitchen.

Offset by a pared-back palette of grey and caramel, this loft apartment offers a bold, geometric solution to inner-city living. At once utilitarian and homely as well as cave-like and light-filled, this is one very special concrete-look bunker.

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Brass fittings temper the cement-rendered bathroom.

The mezzanine bedroom overlooks the living room.

Curves add grace and interest to concrete-look ceilings.

The kitchen island has a marble bench and fluted cement base.

Furniture was chosen for its geometric lines and muted colours.

Oak joinery also features in the mezzanine bedroom.

Plants soften strong lines in the bathroom.

The mezzanine bedroom features hardwood floors.

A well-placed mirror helps create a feeling of space.

The curved lines of the sideboard balance the hard edges of the staircase.

Image credit: Jérôme Galland

Just when it feels like England has gone totally mad (Brexit, anyone?), along comes Paris-based restaurateurs Victor Lugger and Tigrane Seydoux of the Big Mamma Group. Their newest 340-seat restaurant, Circolo Popolare (Italian for popular circle), recently opened in London’s Fitzrovia, is already bringing smiles to our faces, riotously-patterned joy to our hearts and delicious Sicilian-inspired dishes to our tastebuds.

Image credit: Jérôme Galland

The restaurant’s look and feel are deliberately festive. “It tries to recreate the perfect moment I arrived at my best friend [and business partner] Tigrane’s wedding three years ago, overlooking the sea at sunset in Sicily,” says co-owner Lugger (the pair already have eight other restaurants in Paris and Lille, including the 4,500-square-metre La Felicità food market — apparently the largest of its kind in Europe). “Our musician friends were playing a tarentella [southern Italian folk music] and a smiling person handed me a glass of spritz. We wanted Circolo to be somewhere to relive that moment again.”

Image credit: Jérôme Galland

The party spirit certainly emanates through Circolo’s interiors. An array of 20,000 bottles of vintage spirits and wines line the cavernous restaurant’s shelves and a gloriously-scented forest of peppermint eucalyptus branches are woven with fabric flowers and strings of festoon lights, stretching across the double-height salvaged wooden beamed ceilings.

Image credit: Jérôme Galland

Framed photographs, postcards and travel posters, over two hundred vintage plates, and religious icons have been hung to fill almost every inch of every wall (including the stairwell leading down to the bathrooms). Shelves are crammed with Italian coloured glass collected from “an old nonna in Italy,” says Brooke Carden, Senior Designer at Studio Kiki, the team behind the restaurant’s design. “As she had so much of it, she’d arrange it by colour to be able to distinguish the pieces. We were so touched by her love for it that we wanted to carry on the tradition in Circolo.”

Image credit: Jérôme Galland

There are long communal tables to invite convivial sharing, which have been teamed with wicker chairs “collected over a long period from Italian vintage markets,” says Carden. White-washed tadelakt-plastered booths allow for more intimate dinners, with cushion seating made from hand woven North African rugs. “North African arts and crafts are a huge inspiration in Sicilian design, so this is our nod to that,” she says.

Image credit: Jérôme Galland

Other traditional touches include curtains reflecting the coastal textile patterns found in Sicily, Moroccan-style pendant lights supplied by an Italian producer, and lampshades made with parchment and rope. Dishes are served on Italian Majolica ware, hand made by Fima Deruta especially for Big Mamma. “The chicken motif is central to Fima’s identity and this beautiful crockery has become our signature,” furthers Carden.

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Image credit: Joann Pai

As for the cocktails, start with an ‘Amalfi Spritz’ (with limoncello, prosecco and passion fruit) or a fruity, gingery ‘Big Mamma vodka punch’. There are cute nods to British classics, like a full English breakfast with Tuscan pork sausage and Pigna beans, or the ‘Eggcentric’ Italian scotch egg made with cinta senese Tuscan pork sausage, lemon zest and fennel seeds.

Image credit: Joann Pai

Huge pizza ovens churn out metre-long pizzas with humorously named toppings like ‘John Malkofish’ (yellow tomatoes, briny tuna, anchovies and confit lemons) and ‘Elizabeth Regina’ (ricotta cream, Sicilian herbs, prosciutto crudo and mushrooms), or smaller sizes with toppings like fresh beef carpaccio or burrata with almonds, capers and olives. There are salads such as ‘Sunkissed Caprese’ – fresh Italian tomatoes, hand-torn mozzarella and Sicilian oregano – and ‘Crudo Crocante’ lettuce cups filled with Cornish sea bass, confit tomatoes, oranges and olives.

Main dishes are hearty and moreish thanks to Neapolitan-born and raised head chef Salvatore Moscato’s take on his own childhood memories of his mother’s feasts and his grandfather’s authentic nine-hour ragu. Silky pasta comes as Circolo’s ‘La Gran Carbonara’, with Italian cured guanciale and egg yolk, served in the whole round of pecorino; as ‘Sfoglia al Ragu’ giant handkerchief squares topped with Tuscan cinta senese pork ragù, aubergines and parmiggiano; or ‘Crab Me By The Paccheri’ pasta tubes ladled with crab, red gurnard, mussels and tarragon.

Image credit: Instagram.com/lateef.photography

At Gloria, Big Mamma’s 1970’s Capri-style sister trattoria which opened earlier this year in the hip East End area of Shoreditch, its dramatic, towering lemon meringue pie has caused a huge sensation; here the pièce de résistance is ‘Dessert Island’, an outrageously indulgent OTT take on the French classic ‘île flottante’ which comes 20cm high, covered with sticky caramelised popcorn which the waiter then finishes off with a generous pouring of rich crème anglaise. Extravagant? Absolutely.

Image credit: Jérôme Galland

For warmer summer nights in the city, diners can head to the uber-cool and leafy and terrace – packed with terracotta pots of herbs, lavenders and ferns, overlooking the gardens of newly-developed Rathbone Square, a stone’s throw from Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road.

Image credit: Joann Pai

Circolo Polare’s whacky menu and friendly staff are a draw card, but it’s the eclectic interiors, packed with vintage finds, which make the restaurant feel so unique. “We try to reuse and recycle, instead of discard, these old gems diligently sourced across France and Italy at vintage markets and from wizened old dealers,” says Carden. “Every piece is different and has its own story,” she furthers. “We’ve drawn inspiration from the best bits of everything we’ve seen in Italy, and then built layer upon layer to get this final OTT result.” In the end, Circolo Poplare is a celebration “of sharing and enjoying festive Italian life through food and charm,” says Carden.

Visit: BigMammaGroup.com

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22nd Aug 2019

COMPETITION

With an Oscar nomination already under her belt, any project Australian actress Margot Robbie is involved with or is in, is a must-watch. And, Quentin Tarantino’s hotly-anticipated love letter to 1960s Hollywood, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, starring Robbie in an all-star ensemble cast that includes Brad Pitt and Oscar-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio, is no exception.

The film is set in 1969 Los Angeles and follows an ageing Western television actor, Rick Dalton (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), and his long-standing stunt double/best friend, Cliff Booth (played by Brad Pitt), as they navigate a different Hollywood than in Dalton’s career heyday.

Robbie plays Dalton’s neighbour, actress Sharon Tate, who has moved in next to Dalton with her husband, Roman Polanski (played by Polish actor Rafal Zawierucha), and the actress reportedly gives a brilliant performance.

Watch the trailer below.

 

If you’ve been counting down the days until the movie hits screens, here’s your chance to be one of the first to see it. Sony Pictures Releasing and Vogue are giving you the chance to win tickets for you and a friend to see Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood at the movies, which will be in cinemas August 15.

Here’s how to enter.

Twenty (20) winners will receive: 

  • One (1) x double pass to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (in cinemas August 15), valued at $40.00 each. The double pass will admit up to two (2) adults to any participating cinema. Ticket terms and conditions apply. Tickets not redeemable for cash and not transferable.

Enter by telling us in 25 words or less: why do you want to see Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood? 

You can read the full T&Cs below.

© 2019 CTMG. All Rights Reserved

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18th Aug 2019

COMPETITION

The countdown is officially on for one of Australia’s most highly-anticipated fashion events: Melbourne Fashion Week (MFW). This year, the fashion-filled event will be taking over Melbourne’s thriving style scene from August 28 until September 5 with more than 150 events including runway shows held at various locations including Melbourne’s iconic Town Hall; fashion exhibitions; retail events; talks from designers and fashion industry experts; and of course, opportunities to be part of and see the best street style Melbourne has to offer (see the full program here).

The event looks set to be a must-attend for fashion fans, up-and-coming designers, fashion students and lovers of cutting-edge Australian style. And, the ultimate way to experience this fabulous event is sitting front row at one of the premium Town Hall runway shows and enjoying the hospitality in the VIP Lounge. 

Sitting front row at a fashion show is an experience to remember. When you’re that close to the models strutting down the runway, it’s impossible not to get swept up in the intoxicating atmosphere only a live fashion show can deliver.

In addition to sitting front row, the VIP Lounge at Melbourne’s Town Hall is the only place to be at MFW. The VIP Lounge this year will play host to designers, media personalities, fashion influencers and celebrities ready to mingle and talk all things fashion. There’ll be delicious canapés to nibble on, fine wines to sip and food carts to sample from. Does this sound like your perfect day out? Read on.

MFW and Vogue are giving you the chance to win tickets for you and a friend to sit in the front row at one of the Town Hall runway shows, plus entry to the MFW VIP Lounge at Melbourne Fashion Week in Melbourne on September 4.

Here’s how to enter.

Five (5) winners will receive:

  • One (1) double pass front row tickets to Town Hall Runway 5 including access to the MFW VIP Lounge on Wednesday 4 September at 6.30pm. Or, one (1) double pass front row tickets to Town Hall Runway 6 including access to the MFW VIP Lounge on Wednesday 4 September at 8.30pm.

Enter by telling us in 25 words or less: what excites you about attending Melbourne Fashion Week? 

You can read the full T&Cs below.

Enter now

What excites you about attending Melbourne Fashion Week?

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Welcome to LaGuardia. We hope you had a safe and comfortable flight! You may have noticed that the airport is currently under construction. We’re working around the clock to bring you a brand-new, twenty-first-century LaGuardia, filled with modern amenities, exciting shopping and dining options, and absolutely zero psychotic motorcycle gangs tearing through the terminals on rusty scrap-yard choppers decorated with human bones.

We’re building a new, non-apocalyptic LaGuardia Airport—and you’re invited!

For many years, LaGuardia has been known for its cramped terminals, dated facilities, and roving bands of leather-clad, drug-addled super mutants setting innocent travellers on fire. Well, those days are over! We’re building the airport of tomorrow, with your comfort and safety in mind, featuring more seating at the gates, more charging stations for your electronic devices, and fewer flaming car wrecks scattered throughout our terminals.

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The new LaGuardia was conceived using human-centric design principles, to create a more pleasant travel experience. We contracted award-winning Scandinavian architects to create an innovative steel-and-glass structure with retractable skylights, bathing all of our terminals in natural light. We also contracted a ragtag crew of international mercenaries, known as the Immortal Ones, to take back our runways from the evil mutant leader Lord Sludge, who has taken up residence in our air-traffic-control tower. At the new LaGuardia, our runways are for airplanes to take off and land, not for hordes of violent super mutants to gather and worship our radar dish as a god!

But enough about our long-standing skirmishes with an anarchy-loving demagogue—we can’t wait to tell you about our dining options. At the new LaGuardia, you’ll discover a world of choices for relaxing and enjoying a meal, from grab-and-go staples to sit-down bars and restaurants. And they all take modern forms of payment, like credit cards and Apple Pay. That’s right—the days of bartering gallons of precious diesel fuel or wheelbarrows full of scrap metal in exchange for bags of irradiated rat meat are finally over!

We’re also doing away with those long security lines. The new LaGuardia will feature “smart” lanes to eliminate the excessive wait times that have plagued our terminals for so long. We’re also working to eliminate the actual plague that has turned so many of our friends and loved ones into horrible, radar-worshipping super mutants.

But, although we’re excited about the future, we don’t want to forget our past. That’s why we’ve commissioned a mural commemorating the Great Battle of Terminal D, which gave rise to the toxic super mutants we know and loathe today. And, of course, our makeshift monument to the fall of mankind, Our Lady of the Eternal Trash Fire, will continue to burn in perpetuity.

Now, these changes won’t happen overnight, and there are bound to be some growing pains. You might notice construction sounds here and there, not to mention the distant, tortured screams of the damned, as their internal organs are harvested and turned into Pump, the highly addictive drug of choice among super mutants, made from rendered human adrenal glands. But we prefer to think of that as the sound of progress.

Thank you for visiting LaGuardia. We hope you’ll pardon our dust, and, Lord Sludge willing, we hope to complete our construction by late 2020.

The Last Presidential Salmon

August 9, 2019 | News | No Comments

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For almost a century, the first Atlantic salmon caught each season was delivered to the President of the United States. The first of these fish, an eleven-pound silver, was sent by Karl Andersen, a Norwegian house painter in Bangor, Maine, to President William Howard Taft, in 1912. Andersen had caught the fish in the Kenduskeag Stream, on April 1st, when the water would have been flush with ice, and cold enough to numb his legs. He used a pliant bamboo rod, and sent the fish as a gift from Bangor; he hoped it would “contribute to the city’s need of honor and respect.” (His bet didn’t pay off: Bangor is now best known as the model for Stephen King’s Derry—a fictional town populated by cannibalistic clowns and reanimated zombie pets.) On April 12th, he packed the salmon with straw and ice and placed it on an overnight train to the capital. Taft ate it poached whole, with cream sauce and a garnish of parsley.

The Kenduskeag, which in the language of the local Penobscot Nation means “eel weir place,” had long been famous for its salmon runs. But by the time Andersen landed his fish the salmon population was already in freefall. Hundreds of dams were installed on New England’s rivers during the industrial revolution, presenting unnavigable walls for the migratory fish. As early as the nineteenth century, the Penobscot begged the governor of Maine to address the falling salmon numbers, but the condition of the waterways only worsened. A 1960 report by the city’s health department claimed that Bangor was using “the same sewage treatment facilities as that given to the crewmen of Samuel de Champlain’s ship in 1604.” It described “sewage solids” accumulating on the Kenduskeag’s banks, children and animals playing in a mixture of feces and “thick green scum,” and, strangest of all, a city program that drew water from a particularly sewage-heavy section and sprayed it on I-95—apparently in an effort to control dust.

Andersen, whether wittingly or not, enshrined a local tradition. President Franklin Roosevelt accepted thirteen salmon—a record that no other President has come close to matching. The annual gifting continued through to Dwight Eisenhower’s Presidency, when the Penobscot River, which the Kenduskeag flows into, became so polluted that all fishing in the region paused for some years. In 1964, after fishing resumed, President Lyndon Johnson ate a fish from the Narraguagus River that had been sliced into steaks and poached in a French style. (For culinarily-inclined readers, the science writer Catherine Schmitt has catalogued almost all Presidential salmon meals in her book, “The President’s Salmon.”) But the salmon population continued to dwindle. Since 1986, no commercial fisherman has reported landing a wild Atlantic salmon.

In 1992, the final Presidential salmon, weighing nine and a half pounds, was caught by Claude Z. Westfall, a sixty-four-year-old fisherman, in the Penobscot River. (The following year, Westfall’s son caught what would have been the last salmon, but due to what Westfall cryptically called “politics” the fish was never delivered.) As the president of the Veazie Salmon Club, Westfall kept tabs on who fished on opening day and what they caught, so he knew that he was the first person to land a salmon that year. He kept the fish cool while he fished out the rest of the morning. When he got home, he slit its belly from gill to vent, reached inside, and pulled out its organs. Then he packed its cavity with ice and placed it in his freezer. Once frozen, a fish can be thawed only once before being eaten.

Most Presidential salmon were shipped to the White House, or occasionally hand-delivered by Maine politicians hoping to get a special audience. But Westfall refused to let anyone else deliver his fish. On May 25th, he and his wife, Rosemae, placed it in a cooler in the back seat of their car and drove three hours to the compound of President George H. W. Bush, in Kennebunkport. Security guards checked their car, their bodies, and finally disappeared into a shed with the fish. “I don’t know what they did with it,” Westfall said. Five minutes later, they returned with the fish and waved the couple through.

Claude and Rosemae spent the afternoon with the President and the First Lady. Bush was an avid Atlantic salmon angler himself and particularly loved fishing up north in Canada. While they spoke, Bush pointed out the Coast Guard cutters by the bay and the photos of state leaders that sat framed on his walls. After the visit, they kept in touch. At one point, Westfall—who had spent around sixty years fishing the rivers and streams of the northeastern U.S.—invited the President to join him on a trip in Maine. Bush, citing a busy schedule, respectfully declined. Today, one of Westfall’s most prized possessions is a photo of the four of them. In it, Westfall displays the glistening fish while the President and the First Lady smile at the camera. Rosemae points—mouth open in delight—at the Bush family’s two dogs, who are leaping at the salmon. “Not too many people get an opportunity like that,” Westfall said.

Bush was the last person to receive a Presidential fish. Eight years later, in 2000, Atlantic salmon were listed as endangered.

Fishermen call salmon “leapers” because, when they spawn, they leap out of the water and flash in the sun. I learned this in 2014, when I moved to Alaska. I sold salmon for a nonprofit and occasionally went out with the fishermen to catch the fish myself. I spent most of the trips throwing up over the side of the boat, but I learned to scan the horizon for jumping fish, because the sight of one would almost always mean many more below. Salmon are anadromous. They are born in freshwater; migrate hundreds of miles within the ocean, quickly adapting to salt water; and then return to their natal streams to spawn. They are muscled, powerful fish, and, if you’re lucky enough to see one at the start of its journey, the way it swims through rushing water takes your breath away. Salmon expend all of their energy on their upstream migration—they don’t eat—and the transition from cool salt water to warm freshwater physically stresses their system. Atlantic salmon can survive two or three spawning seasons, though many die after just one. Pacific salmon literally disintegrate in the water at the end of their journey.

Salmon are an indicator species: in a fracturing ecosystem, they’re among the first to die off. States across New England have spent the past half century trying to bring back the fish. They’ve dismantled dams, stocked fry, and instituted fishing regulations. Connecticut alone spent eight and a half million dollars over the past thirty-two years on restoring salmon, largely without success. The last significant wild population left in the continental United States is in Maine. (There are still scattered populations across North America—mostly in Canada.) Each year, Maine’s Department of Marine Resources and United States Fish and Wildlife Service stocks the rivers and streams with millions of salmon eggs and fry and thousands of parr and smolts. In 2018, only about a thousand seafaring salmon returned home.

Last spring, I visited Rory Saunders, a fisheries biologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who grew up in Bangor and now works on restoring Atlantic salmon in Maine. When Saunders was growing up, several paper mills dumped polluted wastewater directly into rivers. Through the sixties, “paper mill sludge rafts” (floating collections of mill pollution and trash) regularly drifted down the Penobscot. He’d fish the stream and catch yellow perch or smallmouth bass—fish that, as he delicately put it, “aren’t very demanding of water quality.” He still remembers his parents scolding him for playing by the water. “We’d come back smelling like a sewer,” he told me. “Of course, things are a lot better now.” During the seventies, Bangor began cleaning up the Kenduskeag because of the Clean Water Act. The mills surrounding the city were prevented from dumping waste directly into the water, the city built a sewage-treatment plant, in 1968, and the river began to recover.

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The Kenduskeag is now a swift-running stream that flows through the city to the Penobscot. Some fish have started to reappear. In 2015 and then again in 2017, a single, lonely salmon redd, or nest, was spotted in the gravel. Saunders tells me that he’s hopeful. Right now, he said, the federal government plans to delist Maine’s Atlantic salmon population in about seventy-five years, providing that “everything remains steady.”

That “everything” refers to fishing regulation off the coast of Greenland, water temperatures, ocean pH levels, and, notably, federal funding for NOAA. Global warming makes the Atlantic salmon’s future uncertain. The increased acidification in the ocean that comes from rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, for example, has the potential to interfere with salmon’s ability to smell, which makes it difficult to sense predators, find food, and navigate to spawning grounds. Shallow streams are more vulnerable to both daily and extreme temperature swings than oceans, and, as freshwater temperatures soar, traditional runs in the South won’t support salmon populations. Developmental stages—the transitions between the eggs, fry, parr, smolt, and returning salmon—are governed by changes in water temperature, and warmer waters can disrupt the salmon’s life cycle by triggering stunted growth or premature hatching. Over the next thirty years, we will see mass extinctions on a scale that humans have never witnessed before. A recent U.N. report predicted that a million species—about an eighth of the estimated species alive today—are likely to vanish unless something changes drastically. When I see salmon running, it feels like I’m watching something that will soon disappear.

On the same day that I went to see Saunders, I visited Westfall at his home, in Orono. I’d spent nearly seven hours in the car that day, and, when I arrived at our interview five minutes early, I parked in the driveway and closed my eyes to stretch. When I opened them, Westfall, now ninety-one, wearing a plaid shirt and a cell-phone holster and holding a large black cat, was standing next to my door. “Well, come in when you’re ready,” he said.

Inside, the house was neat and orderly. Rosemae had died seven years earlier, and these days, Westfall told me, it was just him and the cat. He took me into his basement, where the walls are covered with exquisite, framed fishing flies. Periodically during our interview, Westfall pointed to one of the frames and asked me to guess how much each was worth. (Between five hundred and three thousand a fly, apparently.) At one point, he rifled through boxes, pulled something out, and pressed it into the palm of my hand: a hand-tied foxfire fly, made of dyed squirrel fur and black ostrich herl, ribbed with silver tinsel—perfect for catching salmon.

Westfall is one of the greatest Atlantic salmon anglers left alive. In addition to serving as the president of the Veazie Salmon Club, he was a founding member of the Maine Council of the Atlantic Salmon Federation. But now most of his days follow a more familiar pattern: he has lunch with one of his friends at the senior center and then spends the afternoon in his basement, puttering around his collection of salmon memorabilia. (He also has a giant model tractor in his basement that he built out of discarded beer cans.) He still goes out to fish, and, when I spoke with him, he was planning a summer camping trip up north, near the border. He told me that he didn’t expect to catch much. I’d spent the past two weeks reporting on efforts to bring back wild Atlantic salmon and had spoken to scientists, fishermen, and conservationists, most of whom had mustered some optimism about the future of the fish. Westfall was the only person to tell me that he thought the salmon were never coming back. He gestured around his basement and at the artifacts on the walls. “But that’s why all this matters,” he said.

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Daily Cartoon: Tuesday, August 6th

August 9, 2019 | News | No Comments

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On Sunday, the Indian government of Narendra Modi revoked the semi-autonomous status of Kashmir, the Muslim-majority region on the border between India and Pakistan, and brought it under control of the Indian government. Imran Khan, Pakistan’s Prime Minister, condemned the move as another policy decision designed to promote Hindu supremacy in India. Outrage among Muslims in the region may also affect the ongoing peace talks between the United States and the Taliban in Afghanistan, where the capital, Kabul, was the target of a terrorist attack on Wednesday. Dexter Filkins joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the situation in Kashmir and its ramifications around the world.

Toni Morrison, the Teacher

August 9, 2019 | News | No Comments

Whenever I think about Toni Morrison, I think about my favorite teacher, Deborah Stanford, a black woman who, when I was in high school, helped me to understand that to read seriously was a discipline and a privilege, and that an author who helps us to do it is a kind of hero. Her brand of stern, fertile New Criticism (I’m pretty sure I learned that term from her) was rooted in the completeness of her respect for writers and their intentions. Why stray from the text when it had been so painstakingly prepared? Ms. Stanford instigated my lifelong relationships with Flannery O’Connor and Adrienne Rich, among many others, but it always felt obvious that the truest joy of her job was to teach Morrison. (Uncannily, she even looked—to me, at least—a bit like Morrison in her early dust-jacket photos: fair-skinned, with a shortish, feathery Afro; wide-mouthed and fiercely funny around the eyes.) I took her classes in my sophomore and senior years, and, during those years, read “The Bluest Eye,” “Song of Solomon,” and “Beloved,” revelling in how long we could linger on just one line, or image, or passage, tossing it around to shake loose (and, at Ms. Stanford’s insistence, to support) new meanings. Maybe the first great symbol of my life as a reader was the riddle of Pilate’s nonexistent navel, from “Song of Solomon,” still my favorite of Morrison’s novels. We talked about that uninterrupted tummy for an hour straight, scraping at the idea until my head felt oddly clean.

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Toni Morrison’s writing in The New Yorker.

People who are roughly my age, lucky to have entered high school when Morrison was already a legendary figure, will disproportionately, I’d bet, think of Morrison’s work as an early exegetical playground. From her, we learned what it could mean to be alienated from the past, or traumatized into new and freakish modes of sight, and we learned just how total an experience a haunting—a memory or “re-memory”—really is. We were reading her even when we weren’t, because we read everything else with her somewhere in mind. Such was, and is, her importance. I have learned to read in other ways since high school—“Beloved” is a structural marvel, a kind of medieval cathedral, and it’s hard to see that as a kid—but I will always, on the deepest level, think of Morrison in terms of moments and images: huge, generous, quickly multiplying trees, offering endlessly parsable fruit. She shared with O’Connor a Catholicism whose tradition of rigorous, many-tiered scriptural reading, detailed in “Christ and Apollo,” one of O’Connor’s favorite books, parallels the tough process of reading Morrison with sufficiently satisfying depth.

It’s only right, then, that Morrison was an editor and exhaustive curator of black writers—what’s an editor but a friendly pedagogue?—and that her classic literary-critical study, “Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination,” has become an unfailing guide to all kinds of American phenomena. There she goes, teaching us Cather and Melville just as we were once taught Morrison herself. I can think of no other writer whose work, and the cult of its consumption—still, surely, in its very first stages—embodies the ideal of writing and reading as a community practice, meant more for the enrichment of a people than for any individual’s private therapy or entertainment. “We don’t need any more writers as solitary heroes,” she once said. “We need a heroic writer’s movement: assertive, militant, pugnacious.” Her writing opens up into other writing, richness into richness, in a way that will help such solidarity come to pass. But two things can be true. Our teacher is our hero, too.

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