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The 2024 Paralympic Games opening ceremony illuminated Paris landmarks in a celebration of athletes who encourage others to dream big and develop their potential.
With 2 million tickets sold and 4,000 athletes competing in 22 sports, the Paralympics, held in Paris August 28 through September 8, will offer plenty for spectators — at least some of whom will watch in silence. To learn the reason why and a few other interesting facts about the Paralympics, read on:
Fans at Paralympic blind football matches applaud only when a player scores. During the rest of the match, the audience keeps quiet so players can hear the ring of the ball.
Blind football and goalball both use a ball filled with bells or rattles to guide visually impaired players. Blind football matches pit five-player teams against each other. While the goalkeeper may have partial or full vision, the other players must be nearly or completely blind.
Jade Sidot, a French fan, told the Associated Press that keeping quiet helps her focus on the game. “Even though we have to stay silent, I can feel that people are still really excited to be here,” she said.
The Paralympics have featured wheelchair fencing since the first Games in Rome in 1960. With wheelchairs fastened to the floor, fencers use their upper bodies to attack and defend. Fencers hold their sword — an épée, foil or sabre — in one hand, while using the other hand to stabilize their wheelchair as they lunge and recover.
“We’re using our body and our arms to move, not our legs, and this creates a very different dynamic from fencing,” U.S. wheelchair fencer Victoria Isaacson told the USA Fencing podcast. “We are still kind of the same sport but the technical skills, the timing and the distance is so different.”
The first player to score 15 points without their feet leaving the chair during the 3-minute match wins.
The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee awards U.S. Paralympic medalists the same cash prizes as their Olympic counterparts. While pay parity among U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athletes has existed since the Tokyo Paralympics in 2021, the 2024 awards are larger than those for previous years.
U.S. athletes earn $37,500 for gold medals, $22,500 for silver medals and $15,000 for bronze medals. Paralympians also may receive private-sector sponsorships. Other governments also reward their medal-winning athletes with cash prizes or gifts.
The stars of America’s favorite pastime have a new set of heroes to chase. In addition to familiar icons like Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, Major League Baseball’s record books have added the names of less well-known legends such as sluggers Josh Gibson and Buck Leonard.
Gibson and Leonard are among the 2,300 Negro League players whose records Major League Baseball has added to its record books, elevating stars who didn’t get their due during baseball’s decades of segregation.
“All of us who love baseball have long known that the Negro Leagues produced many of our game’s best players, innovations and triumphs against a backdrop of injustice,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said, announcing the change in late May. “We are now grateful to count the players of the Negro Leagues where they belong: as Major Leaguers within the official historical record.”
Updating the record books took three years as baseball scholars and fans combed old newspapers and scorebooks for information on Negro League players and their teams, which sometimes lacked consistent schedules and complete statistics.
While some African Americans, like Moses Fleetwood Walker, played in baseball’s earliest years, the sport excluded Black players in the late 1880s. According to Mark Ribowsky’s A Complete History of the Negro Leagues: 1884 to 1955, pitcher Andrew “Rube” Foster founded the Negro National League in 1920 and additional leagues followed. The leagues disbanded in the months and years after Jackie Robinson broke into the Major Leagues with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947.
Negro League teams earned money barnstorming — traveling from town to town competing against semipro teams and sometimes professional outfits with white players. Along the way, they built a reputation with fans and baseball experts alike.
Baseball Hall of Fame Vice President Jon Shestakofsky says Negro League players’ impressive statistics and winning record in matchups against all-white or integrated teams shows the “level of play and the level of talent in the Negro Leagues was very high.” Sources including Baseball: An Illustrated History, a companion book to Ken Burns’ documentary on the sport, say Negro League teams won roughly two-thirds of matchups against white teams.
The 1941 Negro League All-Star game, known as the East-West game, drew 50,000 fans to Chicago’s Comiskey Park. Fans flocked to see stars like pitcher Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige, a showman known as the king of the barnstormers. Also on the roster that day was first baseman Buck Leonard, whose .345 career batting average now places him in the top 10 of baseball’s greatest hitters.
Other Negro League stars added to Major League record books include Gibson, a catcher, and now baseball’s all-time batting champion with a lifetime batting average of .372, surpassing Ty Cobb’s mark of .366. Along with Gibson and Leonard, former Negro League stars Oscar Charleston, Jud Wilson and Norman Thomas “Turkey” Stearnes now rank among the top 10 in career batting average.
The Negro Leagues continued to impact baseball after Robinson integrated the Major Leagues in 1947. From 1949 to 1959, former Negro League players won nine of 11 National League most valuable player (MVP) awards. Those MVPs included 14-time all-star Ernie Banks, longtime home run king Hank Aaron, and Willie Mays, revered as one of baseball’s greatest all-around players.
While those names are familiar to any baseball fan, the inclusion of earlier generations of Negro League stars in the record books will help fans and modern-day players learn more about those who helped shape America’s most storied sport.
“It is a good thing for the game,” Washington Nationals pitcher Josiah Gray said. “It is really cool to see Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston and a lot of other names that baseball fans can learn about and for them to see there was more than Major League baseball back then.”
Growing protections help U.S. workers whose jobs put them at risk for heat-related illnesses.
High temperatures and recent heat waves affected some 2.4 billion workers worldwide. But in the U.S., says the International Labour Organization’s Halshka Graczyk, efforts to protect construction workers, farm workers, warehouse workers and others are “a success story.”
At the industry and company levels, Graczyk sees momentum in adding air conditioning to transport vehicles and requiring scheduled rest breaks for workers who do jobs outside in the heat. (Forbes reports that a new contract negotiated by the Teamsters Union and UPS will result in trucks being equipped with air conditioning, heat shields or fans.)
In recent years, cities and states, often called the “laboratories of democracy,” have adopted standards that kick in with higher temperatures or heat indexes. And federal workplace rules protecting workers from heat may be on the horizon (the rulemaking process takes time and does not always end with enactment).
Phoenix, where temperatures average 38 degrees in summer months, this year passed an ordinance that ensures that its construction, engineering and airline workers toiling outside have access to shade, drinking water and time for rest.
What’s more, these Phoenix workers are trained to identify signs of heat stress on the body. “This heat safety ordinance will change my life and the lives of my coworkers,” said Filiberto Lares, a food-service worker for an airline in Phoenix.
In Colorado, temperatures between 27 degrees and 35 degrees trigger particular requirements to protect farm workers. “We are ensuring that our agricultural workers have the necessary equipment and breaks to continue their important work,” says a spokesperson for the state’s labor department.
Colorado requires employers to teach workers to quickly address any heat-related health situation. Ryan Allen, of Washington State’s Department of Labor & Industries, says workers’ ability to self-identify and prevent symptoms of heat-related illness is essential.
California, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington state have their own standards. And Maryland is likely to follow, according to the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is advancing a nationwide safety standard.
A rule is being promulgated through the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Labor Department’s arm that requires employers to provide workplaces free from hazards likely to cause serious physical harm or death.
The proposed rule would trigger two levels of action if the heat index (a combination of temperature and humidity) reaches 27 or 32 degrees. Broadly, under either trigger, workers would be assured access to cool water; a break space with shade or air conditioning; and would receive training to recognize the signs of heat illness. The higher heat index would require more frequent breaks and buddy systems so that workers and their supervisors watch over each other’s condition.
“This new rule will substantially reduce heat injuries, illnesses and deaths for over 36 million workers,” President Biden said July 2.
After Narsiso Martinez came to the U.S. from Mexico at age 20, he spent summers picking produce to pay for school. Years later, his portraits of America’s laborers hang in museums and pay tribute to the farmworkers he once worked alongside.
Martinez, of Long Beach, California, paints and sketches farmworkers on canvases of old produce boxes to emphasize the role of workers in bringing fruit and vegetables to U.S. grocery store shelves.
“By drawing a simple portrait on these produce boxes, I can create that connection” between field workers and the rest of society, Martinez told PBS NewsHour.
This Labor Day, September 2, ShareAmerica highlights Martinez and other artists whose work pays tribute to America’s working men and women.
Juan Felipe Herrera’s upbringing as the son of migrant laborers informs his poetry and prose, including his 1995 childhood memoir Calling the Doves.
A California native, Herrera’s writing blurs styles and genres and combines English and Spanish verse. He served as U.S. poet laureate from 2015 to 2017 and wrote Peeling Chile Green with my Sister Sara, Brazito, New Mexico, 2014 for ShareAmerica. The 2015 poem recalls Herrera’s father providing for his family after coming to the United States in the 1890s.
In a 2020 interview, Herrera told Pen America that poetry and prose help people “to respond to the overarching stories of who we are, to generate dialogue — the key to peace and vibrant world humanity.”
Honoré Sharrer worked as a welder in a San Francisco shipyard during World War II and later painted detailed scenes of workers’ lives. For her 1951 masterwork, Tribute to the American Working People, Sharrer, who died in 2009, sought inspiration in Farm Security Administration photographs of farmers and migrant workers during the Great Depression in the 1930s.
The painting is in the format of medieval religious art but features a factory worker and scenes of ordinary Americans at school, work and relaxation. Her 1943 painting Workers and Paintings depicts American families beside paintings by Pablo Picasso and other famous artists, suggesting art should be more accessible to working class people.
While Sharrer’s artwork also explores myths and fairy tales, she remains best known for her sympathetic portrayals of working Americans.
Americans continue to fly Ukraine’s flag in big cities and small towns across the United States two years after the Kremlin’s illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In the immediate aftermath of Russia’s February 2022 further invasion, many Americans flew the blue-and-yellow flag in solidarity with Ukraine. Flags appeared coast to coast, outside homes and businesses and from cell towers, while iconic landmarks such New York’s Empire State Building and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington were bathed in blue and yellow lights. U.S. flag manufacturers could barely keep up with demand.
Two years later, U.S. flag vendors still field requests for Ukraine’s flag even if the initial rush has subsided. “Usually it’s not big quantities, like we had two years ago, but it’s still a consistent flag with regular sales,” says Artie Schaller III, president of the National Flag Company in Cincinnati.
Jordan Ahlstrom, co-owner of Flagman of America, in Avon, Connecticut, agrees. “There’s still a demand,” he says. Ukrainian flags are displayed in neighborhoods in Avon and in nearby towns like Simsbury and Windsor, Ahlstrom says, noting that Connecticut, near New York City, has a significant Ukrainian American community. “Connecticut is very supportive of Ukraine, overall,” he says.
First flown during the 1917–1921 Ukrainian War of Independence, the Ukrainian flag’s colors represent the blue sky and yellow wheat of a nation that is one of the world’s leading exporters of grain. The banner was adopted as a national flag in 1992.
In Santa Barbara, California, Russ Lazarenko has turned the intersection of San Roque and State Street into “Ukrainian Corner,” according to the Santa Barbara Independent. He maintains a row of mostly Ukrainian flags with help from Tom Moyer, of nearby Montecito. Originally from Ukraine, Lazarenko often waves Ukrainian and U.S. flags to passersby.
Tatyana Taruta, also born in Ukraine, volunteers with the Ukrainian Women of Santa Barbara, which raises money through bake sales and rallies to provide humanitarian aid for Ukraine.
Viktor Talabishka, a partner in Your Moving Men, in Rockville, Maryland, said the moving company displays decals in support of Ukraine on their trucks to serve as a reminder that the war is ongoing. When not moving customers, the company occasionally uses their trucks to drive humanitarian supplies donated to nonprofits in Maryland and Virginia to New Jersey or Pennsylvania for shipping to Ukraine.
Talabishka says the truck decals prompt customers to ask the movers, most of whom are Ukrainian, about their relatives in Ukraine. “It shows a lot of interest and consideration from people, and we do appreciate those questions,” he said.
U.S. museums are bringing renewed attention to innovative Ukrainian artists of lasting artistic and cultural influence.
One of Europe’s oldest cities, Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv has been a center of arts and culture for centuries. While Ukrainian folk art such as painted Easter eggs and embroidered textiles is well known, Ukrainian artists also contributed to 19th-century Romanticism, early 20th-century Modernism and other artistic movements.
Ukrainian immigrants to the United States have brought with them books, letters and other materials that help scholars better understand the influence of Ukrainian artists and make their work visible to more people.
“We’re trying to establish Ukraine’s part in Modernism in the early 20th century because that’s really seen as the crux of how art moves on beyond that,” said Adrienne Kochman, curator of the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago.
Kochman says Americans’ interest in Ukrainian art has never been greater, noting that visitors to the UIMA in Chicago have increased fourfold in recent years. Ukrainian pioneers of early 20th-century abstract art include Kazymyr Malevych and Alexandra Exter, who were raised and studied in Kyiv. Experts say their influence and that of other Ukrainian artists can be seen on art that draws top prices at auctions today.
Renewed focus on Ukrainian art comes as the Kremlin falsely denies Ukraine’s distinct culture just as Russia denies Ukrainian sovereignty when trying to justify its illegal war. Art historian Ewa Sulek, a 2022 Fulbright scholar at Harvard’s Ukrainian Research Institute, said Ukrainian art has been distinct “in contemporary art, in 20th-century art, and earlier.”
In recent months, U.S. and European museums have reclassified artists, previously labeled as Russian, as Ukrainian. Among them are 19th-century painters Ilya Repin, Ivan Aivazovsky and Arkhyp Kuindzhi as well as the 20th-century artist Malevych.
The UIMA in Chicago and the Ukrainian Museum in New York are translating materials on Ukrainian art to facilitate further research. Roughly 160,000 Ukrainian Americans reside in these two cities.
This September, New York’s Ukrainian Museum will launch an exhibition of Exter’s 1913–1934 works. Running through January 19, 2025, it will highlight work ranging from painting and graphic arts to book design, fashion and theater. “Her rightful place in the history of abstract painting remains to be fully recognized, as does her Ukrainian identity,” the museum says.
By any standard, Glacier National Park in northwest Montana contains some of the United States’ most breathtaking landscapes. Ragged mountains chew at the sky. Lakes twinkle cold and clear in valleys perfumed by thick stands of spruce and fir.
The wild animals that live here count among the country’s most charismatic: grizzly bears, mountain goats, bighorn sheep.
To visit here is to be nature’s guest.
On almost any given day during the warmer months, visitors flock to Logan Pass, where Glacier’s main thoroughfare tops out at 2,012 meters (6,600 feet) above sea level just where a foot trail begins that punches up even higher.
Take a hike here, and you’re almost guaranteed to encounter wildlife that comes to graze on grasses and berries. That’s when things can go wrong.
“A lot of people have never seen a mountain goat or a bighorn sheep and are tempted to get too close,” says Mark Biel, a natural resources program manager with Glacier National Park. “These animals may look cute, but they can kill you.”
The solution? Gracie the “bark ranger,” a family-friendly border collie trained to keep wildlife and humans apart.
Gracie’s presence makes the animals skedaddle. All Biel has to do is walk with Gracie on her leash into areas where humans and animals can clash — on a trail, in a parking lot, in a campground.
“A bighorn sheep will see this toothy thing looking at them very intently, creeping toward them in a low stance, and it triggers an instinct that says, ‘We’re about to be eaten,’” Biel says. “That’s very different from other [untrained] dogs that walk with their owners through a parking lot and don’t really pay attention.”
Beyond the work dogs like Gracie do to help police track down criminals or sniff out contraband, man’s “best friends” help in several other unusual tasks. At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Riley, a Weimaraner, can sniff out pests that could damage precious art objects. At more than 70 airports across the United States, including in Albuquerque, New Mexico, people nervous about flying can find a friendly dog to pet and play with, activities proven to lower blood pressure and stress.
Other dogs can sniff out diseases like diabetes and cancer. And some can even help biologists track down whales.
“Dogs are the only animal on the planet that evolved with humans, and so they have a unique desire to be helpful,” says Elena Wickman, a professional dog trainer at Wind River Canine Partners in Florence, Montana. “Cats, monkeys, they can all benefit from us, but dogs see us as a genuine part of their unit. The way they have eyebrows and use them to be so expressive is because they learned that behavior from humans.”
Since border collies have the instinct to herd animals, such as livestock, toward people and not move them away, bark rangers require training. Gracie entered a program that lasted 12 weeks, during which time Biel received some training himself. He can use commands like “gee” and “haw” to get Gracie to turn left or right. Other commands let Gracie know when it’s time to work and when it’s time to relax, a moment that always comes with a reward. “Cheese is her favorite,” Biel says.
Gracie is getting older these days and doesn’t go out as much. Still, it only takes a few seconds for an entire herd of bighorn sheep to clear a parking lot once they see her, focused and creeping toward them. Now, other parks, like Grand Canyon, have expressed interest in getting their own bark rangers. Meanwhile, Gracie has proved to be excellent at another skill: educating park visitors on how to behave around wildlife.
“People will come up to us all the time and ask about her,” Biel says. “It’s a great opportunity for me to talk about how we can all work to keep wildlife wild.”
Tim Neville is a freelance writer.
In the pursuit of gold, Paralympians strive for greatness and people around the world celebrate their athletic achievement. During the 2024 Paralympic Games, August 28 to September 8, 4,400 athletes will compete in 22 different sports.
See how several U.S. Paralympians, whose skill and determination will be on display in Paris, encourage others to dream big and develop their potential.
Chuck Aoki expresses his competitive nature through sports. Born with a rare genetic disorder that inhibits sensation in his hands and feet, he grew up playing wheelchair basketball and later switched to wheelchair rugby at the University of Arizona.
Now headed to his fourth Paralympic Games, Aoki also works in the University of Michigan’s adaptive sports and fitness department to increase participation in sports.
“Adaptive sports are really for everyone,” Aoki, 33, says in a video on social media. “We’re showing so many people that sports are for you. This is something you can be a part of.”
Already he has won two silver medals and a bronze, but the co-captain of the U.S. men’s wheelchair rugby team says he and his teammates are ready to win gold in Paris.
“I’m a competitor at heart and I want to be the best,” he said. “I want to keep striving to be the absolute best I can be.”
After losing her right leg in a car accident at age 11, Femita Ayanbeku wore long pants for years to conceal her prosthetic leg, according to Team USA. In college, she gained confidence and began encouraging other people with disabilities to take pride in their bodies and physical appearance.
For her advocacy, Ayanbeku, from Boston, was awarded a prosthetic “blade” used in adaptive track and field and later took up sprinting. She competed in the Rio Paralympics in 2016 and in Tokyo in 2021 but didn’t win a medal in either Games.
When visiting schools to encourage youth to participate in sports and follow their dreams, she doesn’t shy away from those setbacks. “I learned you have to shake things off and not dwell on them,” Ayanbeku said.
Now 32 and one of the top para sprinters in the world, Ayanbeku hopes to set a world record in Paris. But she says she will be happy to run the best race she can. The Paralympics is “a place where we’re all different, and nobody cares,” she said. “And when we go out in the world, we have to project that.”
Born without arms, Matt Stutzman taught himself archery so he could hunt. The 41-year-old father of three uses his legs and feet not only to shoot arrows but also for everyday activities such as driving.
At the 2012 Paralympics in London, Stutzman was the only archer to compete without arms. He won a silver medal and later set a world record for the longest accurate shot.
Now headed to his fourth and final Paralympics, Stutzman says he is eager to mentor other athletes with similar disabilities, including India’s Sheetal Devi. At 17, Devi is an accomplished para-archer who is making her Paralympic debut in Paris.
“The coolest thing about my sport is that anybody can do it,” Stutzman said. “Anyone who puts in the time can be the best in the world.”
The Paralympics, the second largest sporting event in the world, began in 1960 and has empowered athletes with disabilities to compete at an elite level ever since. The Games showcase extraordinary athletic feats, challenge stereotypes and foster inclusivity. This year, 4,400 athletes from 160 countries will compete in the Paralympic Games from August 28 to September 8.
Aimee Chang is an intern with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Global Public Affairs.
Beauty and wildlife abound in U.S. national parks. This summer, poetry does too, thanks to a new program that inscribes verse on picnic tables. Thus, lunchtime visitors to Everglades National Park will enjoy poet June Jordan’s description of a marsh hawk as it
“explodes with a powerful shuffling of feathers
aimed in a 45-degree angle that leads
to the sky above the sea”
At Mount Rainier National Park, A.R. Ammons’ lines describe grain on top of a mountain, which
“endures
the rigors of having
no further
figure to complete
and a
blank sky”
Seven poems grace seven of the 431 U.S. national parks, thanks to a Poetry in Parks program, the brainchild of U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, who through her office at the Library of Congress teamed up with the National Park Service and the Poetry Society of America to make it happen. (The National Park Service celebrates its 108th anniversary August 25.)
The poetry project is part of Limon’s larger You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World program, which also published an anthology of poetry about nature. The first poems were installed in June at Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts. The ongoing effort will end with the last two unveilings October 8 in the Everglades National Park in Florida and December 3 in Saguaro National Park in Arizona.
“People are so moved by the opportunity to slow down and take a moment to focus … and connect to the world around them in a deeper way,” says Shauna Potocky, an education specialist with the National Park Service.
The poems were chosen to resonate with their surroundings. The poem “Cloud Song” in Saguaro National Park has an extra connection because its writer, poet Ofelia Zepeda, is from the area.
“Never has it been more urgent to feel a sense of reciprocity with our environment, and poetry’s alchemical mix of attention, silence and rhythm gives us a reciprocal way of experiencing nature — of communing with the natural world through breath and presence,” Limón said.
Matt Brogan, executive director of the Poetry Society of America, says many people are intimidated by poetry, and his group wants to help. It supports programs to bring poems to transit systems and other public spaces so people can discover poetry in the context of their daily lives.
“It’s harder to be intimidated by something you find on a picnic table in a park,” he says. Poetry “doesn’t belong locked up somewhere.”
Park visitors are invited to respond to the poetry and their surroundings. Beside each poem on the parks’ tabletops is the prompt “What would you write in response to the landscape around you?”
“It provides an opportunity for people to experience the place … and engage with the poem,” Potocky said. On social media, visitors have responded with poems of their own and photographs (#youareherepoetry).
It’s not the first time the parks have connected with arts, Potocky points out. Photographer Ansel Adams was famous for gorgeous landscapes captured in U.S. national parks, and painters have long drawn inspiration from their natural beauty.
By U.S. Mission Uzbekistan | Tuesday, 5 October, 2021 | Topics: Press Releases, South & Central Asia, U.S. & Uzbekistan, U.S. Agencies, USAID | Tags: Central Asia Trade Forum, USAID
By U.S. Mission Uzbekistan | Wednesday, 17 October, 2018 | Topics: Business, Press Releases, Trade, U.S. & Uzbekistan, U.S. Agencies, USAID | Tags: Central Asia Trade Forum
By U.S. Mission Uzbekistan | Monday, 17 September, 2018 | Topics: News, Press Releases, U.S. Agencies, USAID | Tags: Central Asia Trade Forum