The biggest eruption in recorded human history was Mount Tambora in 1815 in Indonesia. Its cooling effects led to 1816 being know as the year without a summer. According to Dr Handley, it affected different areas of the planet in different ways. "[Researchers] linked that to things like a more successful polar bear breeding season because of the cool air, but then it affected a lot of crops in the northern hemisphere and led to famine. So there were much wider reaching impacts of these larger scale volcanic eruptions that impact the climate."
Kate Doyle, ‘How do volcanoes affect the weather and what's going on with the Tongan eruption?’, ABC
So now, removed from there, I am here, in a bar in New York ten years later—unable to locate the lost plot, the source of my own slapdash language, the nesting bowl of intent stacked inside the other four of what I tried to say and do, did say, did do. Having outgrown the situation by years, in contact with none of them, yet here still with the unresolved story nested inside me, garbled, disorienting. And why do I care anymore? Because the closeness between us all was transforming, made the empty room of who I was then bright and shiny like a holiday, like everyone gathered around a table?
The last volcano to have a significant impact on the global climate was Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991. According to Dr Trewin it was one of three eruptions in the last century which had a major effect on global climate — the others being El Chichón in Mexico in 1982 and Mount Agung in Bali in 1963.
Kate Doyle, ‘How do volcanoes affect the weather and what's going on with the Tongan eruption?’, ABC
Olympics on alert as Tropical Storm Nepartak heads for Japan
Olympics on alert as Tropical Storm Nepartak heads for Japan
Tropical storm Nepartak is sitting off the east of Japan’s largest island and is forecast to skirt along its east coast tonight before making landfall well north of Tokyo some time tomorrow.
Key points:
Tropical Storm Nepartak is forecast to make landfall north of Tokyo on Wednesday
The storm is currently the equivalent of a category one cyclone, with gusts of more than 100km/hr
It has already…
The up-cycled sculptures of Kate Doyle are on view now in Garvey Simon’s Select3 show. Sourced from a single, Civil War-era oak tree in her native New Hampshire, Doyle's basins offer their viewers a space for reflection and meditation. Enjoy!
More information: http://www.garveysimon.com/exhibitions/select3
Kate Doyle, Peacock, 2017, oak, pigment and varnish, scrap metal.
Made from thin slices of a fallen tree trunk, the sinuous curves and varied colors (from natural to jewel-tone) belie the flat disks of their origin. Her small, playful bases are all made of re-claimed scrap metal.
Kate Doyle, Peacock, 2017, oak, pigment and varnish, scrap metal.
Made from thin slices of a fallen tree trunk, the sinuous curves and varied colors (from natural to jewel-tone) belie the flat disks of their origin. Her small, playful bases are all made of re-claimed scrap metal.
Kate Doyle, Alba, 2018, oak and steel.
The sinuous, highly polished surfaces of Doyle works become an abstracted microcosm of their surroundings, bringing their viewer and the natural environment into the same world. The rings of the oak tree are luminous time-markers under Doyle's varnishes and lacquer.
Text and images courtesy Garvey|Simon, both a gallery and art advisory service located in New York’s Chelsea district. More info on Jane and Garvey Simon: http://www.garveysimon.com/.
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Les Femmes Folles is a volunteer organization founded in 2011 with the mission to support and promote women in all forms, styles and levels of art from around the world with the online journal, print annuals, exhibitions and events; originally inspired by artist Wanda Ewing and her curated exhibit by the name Les Femmes Folles (Wild Women). LFF was created and is curated by Sally Deskins. LFF Booksis a micro-feminist press that publishes 1-2 books per year by the creators of Les Femmes Folles including the award-winning Intimates & Fools (Laura Madeline Wiseman, 2014) , The Hunger of the Cheeky Sisters: Ten Tales (Laura Madeline Wiseman/Lauren Rinaldi, 2015 and Mes Predices (catalog of art/writing by Marie Peter Toltz, 2017).Other titles include Les Femmes Folles: The Women 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 available on blurb.com, including art, poetry and interview excerpts from women artists. A portion of the proceeds from LFF books and products benefit the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s Wanda Ewing Scholarship Fund.https://www.facebook.com/femmesfolles/
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The woman who digs into secret archives in the name of human rights
Kate Doyle swearing-in during the trial against former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori.
By ARTURO CONDE
In 2008, the 51-year-old presented key testimony about forensic evidence that was obtained from 21 declassified U.S. documents, which ultimately led to the conviction of former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori for crimes against humanity during a long armed conflict against leftist guerrillas.
Doyle has contributed to many of the National Security Archive’s greatest achievements by using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to declassify important U.S. government archives that would later support the investigations of human rights organizations and truth commissions in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Mexico. And now after two decades of forensic archival work, she will be honored with the prestigious Puffin-ALBA Award for Human Rights on May 13.
Like many other American activists of her generation, Doyle first became interested in Latin America during the 1980s. “It wasn’t one culminating event but many,” she said in an interview with Univision News. “You remember the mining of the Nicaraguan harbors, you remember the secret funding of the Contras to overthrow the Sandinistas, you remember the billions of dollars being poured into El Salvador to back what was already clearly a murderous military.”
This fueled both outrage and an intense interest in the region for Doyle, and compelled her to become an activist against U.S.-supported Central American wars, first as an undergraduate at Brown University, and then as a tourist in 1987 when she visited Nicaragua for the first time to observe the destructive consequences of war. Doyle would eventually make the transition from activist to forensic analyst at the National Security Archive, where she edited collections of declassified records about death squads, guerrilla war, and U.S. covert operations in Central America.
One of Doyle’s biggest accomplishments includes the discovery of a Guatemalan military logbook that was leaked to her in 1999. The death squad dossier documents the capture of 183 people who disappeared after the scorched earth highland massacres. The photographs that appear next to each name were taken directly from the victim’s documentation, including passports, driver’s licenses, or official identification cards, and glued onto the pages of the logbook.
Doyle described the document as an important breakthrough that reveals, in corroboration with other records, details from inside the Guatemalan “killing machine,” which enabled investigators to reconstruct the composition of the military -- the commanders, campaigns, plans, and general operations. The logbook has now become the focus of collective legal action that was brought by more than a dozen of the victim’s families before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and Doyle was called as an expert witness in the case on April 25 to present a thorough analysis.
Three months ago, forensic anthropologists in Guatemala identified the bodies of five people who are listed in the logbook through DNA testing. The truth commission estimated that approximately 45,000 civilians disappeared during the three-decade conflict. The logbook reflects the capture of senior noncombatant members from August 1983 to March 1985. These civilians had organized and recruited for one of the major insurgent groups in Guatemala City.
Looking back at her career, Doyle explained that uncovering the shared history between the United States and Latin America will help people in the region find the mechanisms to protect society from government repression. “Historic memory in Latin America specifically means to recognize and preserve the social trauma of violent state repression,” she said, “it is the only way to come to terms with periods when the social contract between the government and its citizens breaks down.”
When asked about the legacy of the current human rights cases and the truth commission in Guatemala, Doyle pointed out that while there are still very regressive forces in the Central American country that resist change, even the Guatemalan President, who once served in the army at the time of the scorched earth massacres “sees and understands that this is a critical moment for his country.” Doyle credits the long truth-seeking process with the awakening of thousands of Guatemalans, and some Americans, who are implementing and defending elements of Guatemala’s historical memory in all aspects of their communities.
The Puffin-ALBA award gala will be held at the Museum of the City of New York. Special guests will also include the documentarian Pamela Yates who directed Granito: How to Nail a Dictator (watch our interview with Yates here,) in which Doyle also appears.
(Photo: courtesy National Security Archive, Kate Doyle)
