Senbatsuru

On February 21, 1955, Sadako Sasaki, a 12-year old girl from Hiroshima, Japan, was hospitalized with leukemia, brought on by the atom bomb dropped on that city in 1945, when she was 2. She was about one mile away from Ground Zero at the time. The bomb had taken a decade to do its damage to Sadako, but the damage was done. Doctors gave her a year to live, if that.

Sadako had other ideas. An old Japanese belief holds that a person can be granted a wish by making 1,000 origami cranes. (A group of 1,000, held together with string, is called a senbatsuru. Thus the post title.) Sadako had a wish. She wished to get better. On August 3, she was given a crane by her friend, Chizuko Hamamoto. At that, she resolved to fold the necessary cranes, and spent hours every day working towards the 1,000-crane mark. There was a lack of the amount of paper she would need at the hospital, but Sadako made do however she could, with whatever kind of paper was available. Medicine wrappings, the wrapping paper from other patients' get-well presents, Chizuko would bring paper from school, whatever worked.

Unfortunately, after 644 cranes, Sadako ran out of time. She died on October 25. Her classmates folded the other 356, and laid them as well as her own to rest along with her. (Although the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum maintains that she made it to 1,000.) A statue of her stands at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, where cranes continue to be placed to this day. There's a good chance that, if you think back, you'll recall reading the story in school once.

Given that Japan is, once again, dealing with nuclear radiation, it feels appropriate to bring up the story. While far and away the best thing you can do to help from home is always going to be to send money (hint hint), here's an instructional video on how to make an origami crane.

You know. Just in case.

The Back Page, Before They Cut It All To Fill The Back Page With The Royal Wedding

With it hailing out, and me working on something larger- might be tomorrow, might not, but still- today we'll do something of a back-page roundup. I'm going to fire four stories at you that I'm banking you haven't seen today, and we'll see if anything socks you in the eyeballs.

*Bolivia is on track to to pass a law, the Law of Mother Earth, giving nature the same rights as man. The Guardian shows them as "the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered," as well as the right of nature "to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities." They're also trying to get something similar through the United Nations, though that shows far poorer chances of success.

*The FDA has given approval to a hat, the NovoTTF-100A, that fights brain cancer by generating electric fields using the electrodes on your scalp to attack tumor cells. It comes with a gazillion caveats- the type of brain cancer, how much the cancer has progressed, what else has been tried- but it got a narrow approval after a clinical study showed it was as effective in the test group as chemotherapy, with less of some side effects (and more of others). That paves the way for further testing in other circumstances.

*Women in Tajikistan are increasingly taking note of a quirk in Tajik society that leaves them at major risk, according to Eurasianet. Divorce rates are on the rise, but the common way for Muslim spouses to get married is a religious ceremony called a nikkah. Couples that opt for a nikkah frequently do not obtain paperwork officially recognizing the marriage. No official marriage means no prenuptial agreement, and with women's rights lacking in that part of the world, the husband-that's-not-officially-a-husband can easily wind up with just about everything; according to the article, about 80% of female spouses wind up without property or child support, usually because they didn't register. Women can be hit from the other end as well, as even the ones that register and obtain a divorce (Tajik law enforces a 50-50 split) can end up shunned by their community because of the divorce.

*And finally, let's head over to Alicante, Spain, where authorities have recovered two priceless paintings stolen in the late 1990's: "La Anunciación" by El Greco and "La Aparición de la Virgen del Pilar" by Francisco de Goya. The paintings are reportedly undamaged; the thieves looked after them well. That's about all they could do; as they were both placed on the Art Loss Register and made known to the art community and to police, they couldn't easily be resold. When they reportedly started trying to do so in October, the cops got wind of it and began an investigation that led to the paintings' eventual recovery.

Hawaii's Art Scene and the Shocking Difficulties of the Rapid-Fire Book Club

I am a day back from vacation, and that means I'm back online. This is the first Internet access I've had; I came home to a busted modem. First off, the Rapid-Fire Book Club has two entries to be made:

Farquhar, Michael- A Treasury of Deception: Liars, Misleaders, Hoodwinkers, and the Extraordinary True Stories of History's greatest Hoaxes, Fakes, and Frauds
Keale Sr., Moses K.; Tava, Rerioterai- Niihau: The Traditions of an Hawaiian Island

That second one did not come easy. Hawaii has a vibrant creative culture. They have their own music style (Don Ho, anyone?), and practice it extensively. Pre-existing songs will commonly be covered in the Hawaiian style, and even if you didn't want to hear it, it's pretty tough to get away from. Artists are even easier to find. I stumbled upon one by accident at one point, named Midori, when a painting caught my eye at a gift shop at Byodo-in Temple. As it turned out, she was the gift shop's cashier. (If you happen to be in the area, stop on by; she's quite good. Wish I could link her, but she doesn't seem to have a link to go to.) Dance is particularly alive and well; not just hula can be found, but also urban-style dancing, clubbing, and if you head out to the Polynesian Cultural Center, the show 'Breath of Life' will take it away, especially when the fire comes out. Paintings, sculptures, murals, jewelry, physical movement, and much any other kind of creative expression is completely at home on Oahu.

Except books, apparently.

Sure, there are your Hawaiian books, there are places to buy them. But there aren't many. It's Borders, Barnes and Noble, and then a smattering of utterly forgettable places that you forget even as you drive past them. And it's understandable. In a city that is such a global cultural nexus as Honolulu, visual and aural art can speak to everyone present, but the written word can only speak to those who speak that language. And when English, Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tagalog, and your more popular European languages all try to fight for airtime in one place, any one book will only have a limited audience.

Which makes it tough to find something good that you aren't just as, or more, likely to find back home.

Eventually, though, I settled on the book on Niihau. The reason for that is, as tough as it was to find a good Hawaiian book, it would be even tougher to set foot on Niihau.

Why? I'm not a native of Niihau. There are only just a few hundred natives of that island, and while they are able to freely travel to and from Niihau, you and I are not. It's known as the Forbidden Island for this reason. Niihau is a place that hangs on, as best it can, to old Hawaiian tradition. Niihauans keep their history primarily through storytelling which sometimes mixes with Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill-style tall tales. The book I purchased was originally published in 1989, and was the first real written history of the island. There are still very few titles out there about the place.

Which, being a guardian of old Hawaiian tradition, likely serves to further explain the dearth of literature on the islands. But seeing as the Hawaiian creative soul has been channeled into so many other outlets, it's rather hard to complain much about it.

What Art's Been Going For Lately

To be honest, this post began life as a Random News Generator, with Liechtenstein the lucky winner. However, it just so happens there's a pop artist with that exact last name, Roy Liechtenstein, and he made more news lately than the country did, which, by the way, today entered into an agreement with the United Kingdom to shed part of its reputation as a tax dodge haven by declaring the names of people who bank there without paying taxes in the UK. London has recently struck a similar deal with Switzerland, and is looking to add three more countries to the pile that it will not name so that the tax dodgers don't run off before they can catch them.

Great news, to be sure. But back to the artist. On Wednesday, Roy's 'Ohhh...Alright' set a personal best for Liechtenstein at auction, going for $42.6 million. His previous record was $16.2. This was part of a flurry of bidding on post-war and contemporary art in New York as of late, the week past running up a total bill north of $750 million. Two other record-setters:

*Alexander Calder, who had a standing mobile go for $6,354,000.

*Feliz Gonzalez-Torres of Cuba, who with a 90-kilogram untitled pile of wrapped candy upped his mark from $1.65 million to $4.4 million.

*Cindy Sherman, whose untitled work went for $2.8 million. No word on the previous record.

Records were also set by Mark Tansey and Rudolf Stingel, though no word on for what.

Andy Warhol failed to beat his record, but his 'Men In Her Life', a painting of a between-husbands Elizabeth Taylor, fetched $63.3 million, the highlight of a whole bunch of Warhol sales. His record stands at $71.7 million for 'Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car 1)'.

The big art bidding war, though, was in London by a small family-run auction house, Bainbridge's, for a Chinese vase from the Qianlong Dynasty, discovered sitting humbly on the bookshelf of a London family that wishes to remain nameless. They thought it was just a normal vase, but had it insured for 800 pounds because it looked pretty nice. As it turned out, 'pretty nice' was an epic understatement. They were housecleaning, brought in someone to figure out what some stuff in their house might be worth if they got rid of it, and he found the vase. Once he authenticated it, the media alarm was sounded.

Then several Chinese consortiums got involved. China is very keen lately on reclaiming cultural properties of theirs, similar to what Egypt's been doing for years (and Iran and India as well), and money is no object. And with deep-pocketed China bidding against deep-pocketed China, things got very expensive very quickly.

One more record, for Chinese porcelain, Asian art, and in fact anything that's not a painting or bronze sculpture, a ridiculous $85.6 million.

So if you're the offspring of any of these artists, is it something you'd want to get into as well?

For them, it's not really about the potential payday, but rather the artistic integrity. It thus depends on if you're comfortable living under the name and living with the fact that your work may be influenced by theirs. It's really pretty complicated.

But if you're not one of those offspring... seriously, go get yourself some art supplies.