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In February artist Lars Kraemmer of Vancouver, British Columbia, ended a seven-week performance piece that consisted of him living in a box built using five of his paintings that enclosed a five-foot-by-five foot space. Kraemmer called the piece Retreat and said he saw dazzling colors in the total darkness, which inspired him to develop a new theory of color. Said Kraemmer, “One thing it has done is put me at ease.”
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Several newspapers reported in August on the growing obsession abroad, especially in Japan, with Levi’s blue jeans from the 1950s and 1960s. As in America, used jeans sell for more than new ones, but in Japan vintage jeans bring as much as $5,000 a pair. An Associated Press writer noted that trendy Japanese magazines fuel the demand for the jeans by providing readers with “detailed instructions on how to be hip.” (Used, sweaty Air Jordan shoes from the 1980s sell for as much as $800 a pair.)
Health authorities estimate that since September 20 several hundred people have died in India of pneumonic plague, which had been absent from the country since 1966. Yet many Hindus refuse to kill rats, the most probable carrier of the plague. In Hindu mythology the god Ganesh is accompanied by a rat wherever he travels, and worshipers still make offerings on behalf of Ganesh and his little friend. Hindus have been seen taking rats from traps and releasing them away from their homes, hoping they won’t return. In city parks in Calcutta rats are fed much as pigeons are fed in the U.S. Said a retired government official in New Delhi, “The time has come for people to realize it is either us or the rat.”
