A Sense of Place Magazine. As Editor. 15 July, 2020.

http://asenseofplacemagazine.com/africa-world-press-photo-foundation/

Africa: World Press Photo Foundation

The 6×6 Global Talent Program from the World Press Photo Foundation recognises six visual storytellers from six global regions, to highlight talent from around the world and present stories with diverse perspectives.

Launched in 2018, the initiative completed its first cycle last year, spotlighting 36 talents from six global regions.

The Foundation has now presented six new talents from Africa: Amilton Neves Cuna, Mozambique; Esther Ruth Mbabazi, Uganda; Etinosa Yvonne, Nigeria; M’hammed Kilito, Morocco; Seif Kousmate, Morocco; and Zinyange Auntony, Zimbabwe.

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Etinosa Yvonne

“I went fishing and when I returned I saw thick smoke; I saw that my house had been burnt. Four of my kids suffered burns. I took them to the hospital and they stayed there for a month. My wife’s shop was also not spared; all her goods were burnt. I was a successful fisherman and all that changed in one day. I’m not happy at all, sometimes I pray for death. I can barely take care of myself nor my children. I lost everything I had, I’m not happy”. – Jimoh Boton (35), Lagos, Nigeria, 5 September 2018. 

Full Story: 

http://asenseofplacemagazine.com/africa-world-press-photo-foundation/

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http://asenseofplacemagazine.com/grass-trees-arent-grass-and-theyre-not-trees/

Grass Trees Aren't Grass and They're not Trees

By John Patykowski, Deakin University

Grass trees (genus Xanthorrhoea) look like they were imagined by Dr Seuss. An unmistakable tuft of wiry, grass-like leaves atop a blackened, fire-charred trunk. Of all the wonderfully unique plants in Australia, surely grass trees rank among the most iconic.

The common name grass tree is a misnomer: Xanthorrhoea are not grasses, nor are they trees. Actually, they are distantly related to lilies.

Xanthorrhoea translates to “yellow flow”, the genus named in reference to the ample resin produced at the bases of their leaves.

All 28 species of grass tree are native only to Australia. Xanthorrhoea started diversifying around 24-35 million years ago – shortly after the Eocene/Oligocene mass extinctions – so they have had quite some time to adapt to Australian conditions.

Wander through remnant heathland or dry sclerophyll forest, particularly throughout the eastern and south-western regions of Australia, and you’ll likely find a grass tree.

Full Story: 

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http://asenseofplacemagazine.com/the-revolt-of-the-elites-how-a-1990s-book-predicted-2020/

The Revolt of the Elites

By Ed West, Deputy Editor of UnHerd

Late last year I began working on a piece marking 25 years since the publication of what I believed to be the most prescient work of the age.

The book had been published in Britain in the spring of 1995 but as February and then March 2020 came and went, we were all rather distracted. For a few months the pandemic was so overwhelming that even normal politics died down — only for it to inflame again, more incendiary and toxic than ever, at the beginning of June.

Across the US — and around the world — graduates and young professionals took to the streets, leading a bizarre anti-revolution in which immigrant shops were ransacked and working-class neighbourhoods forced to defend themselves from violent college-educated protesters and their allies.

Here was a revolution backed by almost all billion-dollar businesses and public institutions bar the US presidency, and whose leaders had almost nothing to say about poverty or unemployment. 

Their demands were for more diversity and racial equality, already sacred ideas among the cognitive elite, all of it accompanied by bizarre, quasi-religious public declarations of faith.

It was the Revolt of the Elites.

Full Story: 

http://asenseofplacemagazine.com/the-revolt-of-the-elites-how-a-1990s-book-predicted-2020/