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Here's a Map of Suffragist Grave Sites to (Maybe) Visit After You Vote

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Who paved the way for Hillary Clinton to (possibly) be our next president? A lot of people of course, though perhaps none more important than American suffragists, who were fighting for the right to vote in a time when it was just becoming conceivable that women could win elected office. 

Embedded in the map above, you'll find the grave sites of dozens of them, sites perhaps deserving of a pilgrimage—as hundreds have done for Susan B. Anthony today.

Grave locations sourced in part from Find-A-Grave.


Protect Your Library the Medieval Way, With Horrifying Book Curses

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In the Middle Ages, creating a book could take years. A scribe would bend over his copy table, illuminated only by natural light—candles were too big a risk to the books—and spend hours each day forming letters, by hand, careful never to make an error. To be a copyist, wrote one scribe, was painful: “It extinguishes the light from the eyes, it bends the back, it crushes the viscera and the ribs, it brings forth pain to the kidneys, and weariness to the whole body.”

Given the extreme effort that went into creating books, scribes and book owners had a real incentive to protect their work. They used the only power they had: words. At the beginning or the end of books, scribes and book owners would write dramatic curses threatening thieves with pain and suffering if they were to steal or damage these treasures.

They did not hesitate to use the worst punishments they knew—excommunication from the church and horrible, painful death. Steal a book, and you might be cleft by a demon sword, forced to sacrifice your hands, have your eyes gouged out, or end in the “fires of hell and brimstone.”

“These curses were the only things that protected the books,” says Marc Drogin, author of Anathema! Medieval Scribes and the History of Book Curses. “Luckily, it was in a time where people believed in them. If you ripped out a page, you were going to die in agony. You didn’t want to take the chance.”

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Drogin's book, published in 1983, is the most through compendium of book curses ever compiled. A cartoonist and business card designer, Drogin had taken an adult-education class in Gothic letters and became entranced with medieval calligraphy. While researching his first book, he came across a short book curse; as he found more and more, hidden in footnotes of history books written in the 19th century, his collection grew to include curses from ancient Greece and the library of Babylon, up to the Renaissance.

To those historians, the curses were curiosities, but to Drogin they were evidence of just how valuable books were to medieval scribes and scholars, at a time when even the most elite institutions might have libraries of only a few dozen books.

The curse of excommunication—anathema—could be simple. Drogin found many examples of short curses that made quick work of this ultimate threat. For example:

May the sword of anathema slay
If anyone steals this book away. 

Si quis furetur,
Anathematis ense necetur.

If a scribe really wanted to get serious, he might threaten "anathema-maranatha"—maranatha indicating "Our Lord has Come" and serving as an intensifier to the basic threat of excommunication. But the curses could also be much, much more elaborate. “The best threat is one that really lets you know, in specific detail, what physical anguish is all about. The more creative the scribe, the more delicate the detail,” Drogin wrote. A scribe might imagine a terrible death for the thief:

“If anyone take away this book, let him die the death; let him be fried in a pan; let the falling sickness and fever size him; let him be broken on the wheel, and hanged. Amen."

Or even more detailed: 

“For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand & rend him. Let him be struck with palsy & all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying aloud for mercy,  & let there be no surcease to his agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not, & when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him for ever."

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Drogin’s book had dozens of such curses in it, and he had collected at least a dozen more to include in the second edition, which was never published. Inside his copy of the book, he still has a baggie of antique file cards, full of book curses.

As Drogin collected curses, he started to find repeats. Not all scribes were creative enough to write their own curses. If you're looking for a good, solid book curse, one that will serve in all sorts of situations, try this popular one out. It covers lots of bases, and while it's not quite as threatening as bookworms gnawing at entrails, it'll get the job done:

"May whoever steals or alienates this book, or mutilates it, be cut off from the body of the church and held as a thing accursed."

The Subversive, Non-Creepy Charm of Mexican Street Clowns

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On a recent day in front of the Conchero, a statue of a dancing Chichimeca in downtown Querétaro, about 130 miles northwest of Mexico City, two clowns were moving through the opener of their show. At one point, a boy in a blue vest tells them he’s from Mexico City; in response, the clowns shriek and hide their money, before invoking Mexican slang for a Mexico City resident to explain their fear. “Last time a chilango came to the show, he robbed the Indian!” The shorter one, Piskachin, said. “It used to have clothes. A blue vest, if I remember…”

Cue laughter, as the boy goes wide-eyed looking down at what he’s wearing.

Piskachin’s joke—a charming throwaway in a routine that he has been refining with his partner Trompo for years—goes a small way toward explaining the appeal of clowning in Mexico, which is ubiquitous on the streets and, for hundreds if not thousands of performers, represents a full-time job. Their presence connotes little of the creepiness that clowns invoke across the U.S. (and also none of the widespread panic) but instead are happy fixtures in a wide array of social activities, from kids’ birthdays to bachelorette parties to government functions. Mexico’s version of The Daily Show, called El Mañanero, is anchored by a clown. And many in the country, like that boy and his parents in the streets of Querétaro, appreciate them for what they are: avatars of the absurd, an ever-present reminder that life is worth it, if just for the laughter. But many clowns also serve a broader, even subversive purpose, a strand of gay expression that’s acceptable in a country that is still largely sexually conservative. They can also bridge class divides. At one recent show in Querétaro, two women whose shoes cost more than my camera watched alongside some indigenous migrants who might later have to walk a dozen miles just to get back on a train heading home. For a brief moment, though, both groups laughed together in the one place in the city where all social groups mix—between the plazas and in the middle of a clown show.

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Recently, I spent some time with three of Mexico’s street clowns: Piskachin, who briefly terrified the boy, his partner Trompo Trompito, and Marcelo Miserias Pelos Tristes. At 42, Marcelo’s the veteran and the current president of the clown association of Querétaro. He’d always wanted to act, and after high school he fell in with a mime and ended up performing for the first time in the Zócalo in Mexico City. He started out copying Charlie Chaplin’s tramp and called himself Plincha in honor of the character. He’s been through a lot of states, characters, and a marriage since then. His full name, Marcelo Miserias Pelos Tristes, and the way he wears his kinky hair when he’s performing, are each inspired by Marcel Marceau, the French mime.

Piskachin, 27 and a father of two, and Trompo, 18, are both sons of clowns, and they started out performing in their fathers’ shows as kids. “I’ve always been short,” says Piskachin, and where he’s from, piska, “a pinch,” refers to anything diminutive. He tacked the chin on, he says, because kids at parties took the feminine ending to mean he was a girl. Trompo means “top,” like the toy, and he got the name because of the way he used to bop around to the music at the bars where his father performed.

And while Marcelo’s career in clowning is well-established, and Trompo’s is just starting, Piskachin said that he had other options before going into clowning full-time, going to college for business and working for a Mexican railway before quitting to be a clown.

“They paid me very well, but it didn’t fulfill me,” Piskachin said, “and there came a time when I said, ‘Being a payaso is what I want to do with my life.’”

Now, Piskachin and Trompo play three shows in the street on Saturdays and Sundays and work the city buses Monday through Friday. In a good week they’ll play five or six private events, usually birthdays or bachelorette parties, for about $150 a pop.

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The money at most of the normal shows is acquired through an ask, which Piskachin and Trompo also take the opportunity to turn into a bit. At one show they asked 10 people for bills, eventually getting seven after a woman exchanged a hundred for four of the clowns’ twenties, increasing their take but not, alas, the number of bills they’d originally asked for.

“Let’s count,” Piskachin says. “One, two, three, four, five, six…seven? We need three more!”

The crowd erupts.

The stakes for the clowns—literally, their livelihoods—are high, but their earnings are also hugely influenced by their position in the streets. Trompo and Piskachin’s spot, for example, is in one of the best plazas in town, a right that they earned through the local clown association, known as, the Collective of Artist Clowns and Urban Culture in the State of Querétaro, or CPACUEQ. There’s a list of requirements negotiated for each plaza by CPACUEQ and the municipal government, with hours of operation, maturity of language, and the freedom of the public way all taken into consideration. It’s not always easy for CPACUEQ to interface with the government, meaning that they often keep their agreements with the city by handshakes and words of honor. Clowns breaking the rules get a talking to by the boss of the plaza—always an elder statesman of the collective—and repeated infractions land them before a jury of their peers. Which is to say, clowns.

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“We’re like a little republic,” says Marcelo. “Every plaza is its own state, and the boss of each plaza serves as representative to the collective.” Both Piskachin’s and Trompo’s fathers are representatives, and Marcelo became current head by dint of his work in clown labor organizing in Querétaro, Mexico City, and elsewhere over the last couple of decades. Each representative brings the concerns and needs of the clowns of his plaza to committee meetings, and if the CPACUEQ can’t resolve them internally, they go to the city. The organization also stepped in after, recently, some young Mexicans started organizing gangs to attack clowns following Mexico’s own brush with a clown scare—sometimes administering public beatings to working clowns in the process. Marcelo and the collective worked with the municipal government to get the groups shut down.

The organization also works with less urgent matters, like helping working clowns to manage their money, and what Marcelo says is the need for clowns to be socially responsible with their acts.

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“We’re fighting against poor pedagogies of clowning,” he says. “Clowns are a medium of expression, and we project towards society a model of what to think and to feel.”

Still, a lot of Mexican clowning is rooted in old-fashioned jokes, and here that often means la picardía Mexicana, a form of wordplay and double-entendre that is a national pastime and a respected art-form. One night, for example, in an elaborate skit, Piskachin strapped into a raggedy, undersized wedding dress, prompting the crowd to howl and shout insults. But then Piskachin revealed two of his fictional names, to huge laughs from the crowd: Rosa del Bahío and Rosa la Manguera. Both turn out to be subtle dick jokes. Manguera, is, literally, a hose in Spanish, while Bahío is a mix of bahía, or bay, and bahío, slang for one’s genitals, both names that could be taken as innocuous or filthy.

The double-entendre is important, too, because the rules for this particular plaza are strict. No cursing, no blocking the public way, and nothing obscene before 10:20pm. Still, Piskachin and Trompo’s act could be taken as thoroughly adult throughout, mostly thanks to Piskachin, who grew up mastering the art of doing mature shows that are also safe for kids. In this realm, it’s the adults who turn into children, laughing hard at the joke on the surface before discovering the second one just below.

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Clowns are also able to do and say things that would get other shows cancelled and, in certain barrios, might get a man killed, from lambasting the same city authorities that let them perform to insulting their audiences to kissing other men in the crowd.

Mexico’s come a long way in the last decade or so, and places like the Zona Rosa in Mexico City are as progressive as San Francisco, but the country as a whole is still machista, and, in a place like Querétaro, still very socially conservative. If you’re a clown, though, none of those rules seem to apply. Consider one recent scene where Piskachin gestured toward a man he’d picked out as a guapo, a desirable one.

“You’re perfect,” Piskachin said, touching him on the chest. The guy turned to give a thumbs-up to the audience, and Piskachin used the opening to leap up and kiss him on the face, much to the delight of his friends in the crowd.

Or take another sequence called the Waltz, normally done with men who fit a certain masculine ideal: muscly chests, thin shirts, and painted-on jeans. In the Waltz, though, the men are able to let their guard down a little, dancing in circles with a paunchy clown in a wig and appearing to love it.

But Piskachin and Trompo’s show doesn’t just subvert the macho, it’s built on it. The Waltz routine is one example, but it’s present throughout. Both clowns, for instance, constantly flirt with the men in the crowd, while during each opener, Trompo says that people tell him, “Don’t be a niña.”

“But I’m not a niña,” he says,  “I’m 18. I’m a woman,” rubbing his hands down his sides.

Or take this bit, called The Story of the Bible, in which Trompo quizzes Piskachin: “Who was the first man?”

“Oh no,” Piskachin responds.

“Who was the first man?” Trompo repeats.

“It’s personal,” he says.

“Who was the first man?”

Alright, it was him!” Piskachin yells, and grabs a man from the crowd.

This schtick is known as jotear, which might best translate to “queering around,” suggesting a more crass cultural appropriation, but Marcelo says that the point is to tear down the audience’s resistance to gay-coded behavior and normalize it.

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“Suddenly they think, ‘You’re not taking my machismo away, I’m just playing in your game,’” says Trompo, “And they let you play with them, they think, ‘I’m getting out or getting to do what I can’t with my friends or my family.’”

In the earlier bit, after Piskachin kissed the guapo, a lascivious dance ensued, and Piskachin moved the guy’s hands down to his waist, while the guapo went even further, grabbing Piskachin’s ass and lifting him into the air. Towards the end of the routine, Piskachin had the men take hold of his ankles and lift him up, flopping his dress over the guapo’s head and thrusting towards him once he was in the air. Piskachin wobbled around until they had to let him go and he fell into a somersault, his dress flying over his head. As embarrassed as they would be at dropping a real quinceañera, the men all offered him a hand. He had them take a bow and they did, red-faced, smiling and giddy.

“We’re public figures,” Piskachin says, “And what we do has repercussions in society. I say, ‘Come on, come and play with me, have fun. I’m the ridiculous one.’ And like that, they participate.” 

What's Going To Happen to the Presidential Pet Museum?

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Have you ever wondered which president had the most dogs? What George Washington named his hound? Which president brought a parrot to the White House? 

For years, you had somewhere to go to learn all this—the Presidential Pet Museum, an offbeat collection of paintings, photographs and fuzzy memorabilia. For 17 years, its proprietor, Claire McLean, schlepped the museum from storefront to storefront, bringing her trove of political animal history all around Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. But now she's retired, and much of the museum is boxed up in storage—waiting, like a patient pup, for someone to give it another chance.

McLean began her collection late in life, after a serendipitous encounter with the Reagans' dog, Lucky. McLean breeds Bouvier des Flandres, a species of Flemish herding dog with a rough outer coat that needs regular grooming. When Lucky needed a trim before his official portrait, the White House horticulturist called her in to do it. "I found out the next day I'd cut too much hair off," she says. "Mrs. Reagan was rather unhappy."

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But they still asked her back, and for eight months, McLean was Lucky's official groomer. She kept all of his spare trimmings, and one day, her mother decided to paint a portrait of the First Dog, generously textured with tufts of his own fur. The cornerstone of the collection thus set, McLean began casting far and wide for more pet tchotchkes.

"I just started collecting. Anything and everything I could find," she says. "There were all kinds of animals that came through the White House, and each one brought a story with it."

After a decade and a half of dedication, she's built up quite the arsenal. There's a larger-than-life bronze statue of Barney, George W. Bush's terrier. There's a gold-framed photo of sheep grazing on the White House lawn, from the Wilson administration; and goofy snapshots of the Coolidges playing with their pet raccoon and possum. There's a T-shirt emblazoned with Socks, the Clintons' cat, staring out under a cheeky slogan: "I Tried Catnip Once But I Didn't Inhale."

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There are also over 50 oil paintings, all McLean originals, showing presidential pets and owners in various tableaux: FDR and his Scotty, Fala, gazing out over the Washington Monument, and the Obamas playing with a whole menagerie of creatures. She made them to fill in the gaps in political pet legacies.

"When a president's pet goes to the great beyond or the rainbow bridge or just plain dies, they don't leave very much," she says. "Not lands, not stocks or bonds or jewelry or clothing or anything. You're lucky if you get a leash, a collar and a bowl."

McLean thinks for a moment: "Or just a rope, a tether and a cowbell," she revises. "Which we have. From William Howard Taft's cow, Pauline."

Eclectic as it is, the collection is something of a hard sell. People have always been happy to come visit, but thus far, no one has been prepared to fork over the $30,000 or so McLean is asking for it, which would give the buyer control of the museum's popular website along with all of the physical inventory. An online auction in July got plenty of press coverage, but no takers. "It seems like everyone wants it but they don't want to invest in it, because it takes a lot of money to run a museum," she says.

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But McLean plans to try again soon, and she is nothing if not persuasive. Just ask Dave Baker, a journalist who, after one brief phone call with her, ended up a part owner. Baker originally called to fact-check a piece he was writing for Petful, a site he runs. "She gave me some details about the museum, and then she said, 'Do you want to buy it?'" he remembers.

He thought on it, and agreed to take charge of the website, which he has run for four years now. At the moment, his favorite presidential pet is Pushinka—Russian for "Fluffy"—a white mongrel gifted to Caroline Kennedy by Nikita Khrushchev. Pushinka and the Kennedys' Welsh terrier, Charlie, took a liking to each other and eventually had four puppies. "There's an American dog and a Russian dog, and love trumped all there," he says.  "Just this wonderful bright light in the Cold War."

If the Pet Museum sells, Baker will miss it like, well, a beloved, departed pet. "I really believe in it," he says. "I would totally have it myself if I had space." McLean will miss her presidential animal trove too, so much that she's giving it a last hurrah—her current apartment, at a retirement community in D.C., hosts a rotating exhibit. "I've basically made one of the rooms into the Presidential Pet Museum," she says. Her neighbors come by to check out the stash, and to hear her stories.

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In this business, though, change is inevitable—there are both term limits and lifespans to contend with. Even as they're working to sell, McLean and Baker are taking a minute to mourn something they have less control over: the imminent departure of Sunny and Bo, the Obama family's Portuguese water dogs.

Reading about the dogs' exploits, the life of a modern-day presidential pet comes into focus: campaign duties, kidnapping attempts, rides on Air Force One. Clearly, life in the White House is unique for pets as well as owners. 

"It'll be sad to see them go," Baker says. "But it's interesting to think of what the next pets will be."

Naturecultures is a weekly column that explores the changing relationships between humanity and wilder things. Have something you want covered (or uncovered)? Send tips to cara@atlasobscura.com.

Watch a Live Video of the Earth from Hundreds of Miles Above

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We're all a little surprised here, and a tad punch drunk, and, perhaps losing our perspective a bit. So let's look at this: Earth from the International Space Station, slowly spinning and orbiting the Sun, a tiny blue orb in an infinitely large universe. 

The College Where Harambe-Mania Escalated From Strange Calls to Stick-Figure Sexcapades

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A version of this story originally appeared on Muckrock.com.

In September, Harambe-gate at UMass Amherst hit a fever pitch. The “Dicks out for Harambe” meme, which vulgarly paid homage to the gorilla killed at the Cincinnati Zoo, had been growing increasingly popular online and on college campuses across the country.

While many used Harambe tributes to poke well-meaning fun at the performative, almost daily cycles of public outrage and grieving, the meme was also often loaded with racist invective.

And then, UMass-Amherst found itself the butt of the joke: an email from RAs at UMass Amherst’s Sycamore Hall made its way to the internet, stating that the continued use of the meme was a “micro-aggression” against fellow students and that the proliferation of “Dicks out for Harambe” notes could constitute a Title IX violation.

Further heightening tensions: One of UMass’ living communities, focused on African heritage, is similarly named Harambee.

So what sparked the outrage? And did the RA email - and subsequent hasty clarification that the school was not banning Harambe jokes - quell the gorilla sightings? We filed a Massachusetts public records request to find out.

Before the initial warning from the RAs, which appears to have been sent on September 5th, there were two recorded Harambe-related complaints, on September 3rd and 4th.

Campus officers were called, did a sweep and took photographs of the offending messages, and noted that they “concluded that the message was an inappropriate way to show support for the gorilla, Harambe, that got shot at a zoo.”

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They also determined that the writing did not appear to be targeted, and it was not noted as a potential Title IX violation.

But the memo appears to have only led to more Harambe memorials: makeshift tributes to the gorilla appeared at least five more times after the memo was sent, and more might have appeared since - documents were only request through mid-September.

The first reappearance of the meme post-memo was actually on an unidentified RA’s white board, and was then followed by what was only described as a “strange phone call (harambe related)”:

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More appearances then followed: “Take a shot for harambe he took one of you” appeared on a whiteboard on September 9th, and “Dick’s out for Harambe. f*ck trigger warnings” appeared on a resident’s room on September 11th.

The final Harambe incident included in the documents was also the most elaborate display:

“three windows with images in them in [redacted] on the 2nd and 3rd floor. they shared that one window on the 3rd floor that had “RIP Harambe” written with post its and that there were two windows on the 2nd floor that had images of what looked like monkey, potentially engaging in sex. The Das indicated that they could not tell what the images actually were. RD Jess called REL Michael, who advised her to call UMPD to check in about next steps. RD Jess spoke with dispatch, and Sergeant Green. Sgt Green shared that this could be taken care of within Residence Life and have a conversation. RD Jess called RA [redacted] and asked if they felt comfortable knocking on the doors and having a conversation with the residents. They indicated that they did, and their RD, Kristen, was on rounds with them.”

While no pictures of the depiction are included, it’s later detailed they were stick figures made of tape.

In this case, the RAs intervened directly with the students of one of the rooms and successfully negotiated to have “RIP Harambe” changed to “RIP Gorilla.” While they were not able to enter the rooms of the students who had put together the copulating stick figures, they were voluntarily removed the next morning.

Read all the UMass Amherst Harambe complaints below.

How '1-Up' Went From Pinball to Gamer Speak

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Ever since the opening chiptunes of Super Mario Brothers started issuing from television sets across the globe, the term “1-Up” has been synonymous for an extra life. But as it turns out, the origin of the 1-Up goes back even further, stretching back into the world of pinball.

We asked pinball champion Bowen Kerins where the term began. “I really have no idea what was the first game to do this, but it clearly predates any electronic video games,” Kerins says. During the 1960s, terms like “1-Up,” and “2-Up,” and so on began appearing on the back glass of pinball machines. In this context the term would usually appear next to a score display, indicating both a player’s accumulated points and also which player’s turn it was, or rather which player was "up."

Some older games like 1966’s Stampede machine, made by pinball manufacturer Stern, had their score readouts labeled “1st Player” and “2nd Player,” with the “Up” off to the side near an arrow that would light up on a given player’s turn. A similar labeling can be found on 1963’s Race-Way by Midway. Eventually, this labeling system was shortened to the X-Up format which we’re more familiar with today, and which became the standard throughout the industry.   

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While the use of the terminology can be traced back to at least the 1960s, its exact first occurrence is not known, although Kerins suggested one back glass illustrator who may have had a hand in the term’s creation. “Note that both A Go Go and Capersville, even though built by different companies, were hand drawn by the same person (Jerry Kelley),” says Kerins. “Perhaps this person is the origin of the name ‘1 Up.’ Kelley's very first artwork, in 1963 for Midway, also had the ‘Up’ but in more detail.”

As the popular focus of gaming shifted from pinball to arcade video games through the end of the 1970s and into the 1980s, some of the lingo transferred over as well. Arcade games identified their players in all sorts of ways ranging from the simple “1p” to more game-specific designations like Gauntlet’s fantasy classes, in which you were labeled a Wizard or a Rogue. But still others, like Galaga, just brought over the old 1-Up/2-Up system from the pinball days, even though an increasing number of the games no longer required players to alternate rounds of play.

Having made the jump from mechanical pinball machines to digital video games, 1-Up’s next logical transference was to the world of home console games, where it made its biggest impact. Whereas before, the 1-Up label was simply there as functionary indicator, probably going complete unnoticed by most, that all changed with Super Mario Brothers for the Nintendo. During the very first level of this beloved game, players could jump up at one point and find a secret extra life in the form of a green mushroom. Then, when the player collected it, the term “1-Up” floated out towards the top of the screen.

It was likely meant to signify, well, an extra life, described as another call out to the player first player. But whatever the original intention, 1-Up nearly instantly became synonymous for “extra life” in any video game.

Far removed from its pinball hall origins, 1-Up is still widely used slang for video game extra lives. The term 1-Up now adorns everything from websites to energy drinks, and is an ingrained piece of gamer grammar. But never forget that it belonged to the pinballers first.  

The Tiny Kentucky Town That Eclipse Fans Are Obsessing Over

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Go ahead. Try to book a hotel room in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, for the third weekend in August next summer.

You can’t. They are completely booked from August 19th through August 22th. And the same goes for hotels and motels in nearby Cadiz, Hardin, Oak Grove, or any other interchange along Interstate 24. Across the state line, Clarksville, Tennessee, may have a few rooms up for grabs when you read this, but you’re going to pay hundreds of dollars for your stay.

You could say the stars have aligned for Hopkinsville. Or, more precisely, the Earth, sun and moon will be perfected aligned. Next summer will be the first time a total solar eclipse—when the moon completely blocks out the sun—can be witnessed in the continental United States since 1979. (Viewers could view a total solar eclipse in Hawaii in 1991.) And in a cosmic twist of fate, on August 21, 2017, Hopkinsville will be the star around which the astronomical world orbits. As the moon crosses the United States at about 2,000 miles per hour, casting its shadow from Portland, Oregon, to Charleston, South Carolina, Hopkinsville (population 33,000) has been identified as the “greatest eclipse” location.

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What does that mean? Well, it’s technical. It boils down to that as the moon makes its run across the country that night (the phenomenon has been dubbed The Great American Eclipse), when it passes Hopkinsville it will be the closest to the Earth. The area will be plunged into midday darkness for about two minutes and forty seconds. (Note: there is already a sort of heavenly body battle brewing with Carbondale, Illinois, which can claim the “longest duration” eclipse; it will be about two tenths of a second longer than in Hopkinsville.)

What greatest eclipse really means for Hopkinsville is that tens of thousands of astronomy buffs and other curious onlookers are expected to descend on this western Kentucky community, and the lucky ones already have dibs on rooms at the Holiday Inn.

Dr. Richard Gelderman, the director of the Hardin Planetarium at Western Kentucky University in nearby Bowling Green, understands the attraction of experiencing a total solar eclipse—earlier this year, on a NASA grant, he went to Indonesia to witness one first hand.

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“A total eclipse is a complete and total change. A total eclipse is something that should not happen, and your body knows it. And everything in your body totally sends off chemical alarms saying, ‘Beep, beep, beep. Something is wrong here, because in the middle of the day, the sun just disappeared,’ he said. “And the most common expression when you look at videos of people experiencing a total solar eclipse is ‘holy shit.’”

The Visit Hopkinsville office, the area’s convention and visitors bureau which oversees tourism in the region, has known about the celestial occurrence for almost a decade, and not because they had somebody checking moon charts on staff. Nine years ago Cheryl Cook, the Visit Hopkinsville executive director, received an email from a prudent vacation planner and avid eclipse chaser - somebody who has devoted their lives to experiencing astronomical events - inquiring about hotels and the best viewing spots.

“At first I thought it was a joke,” Cook said. “We don’t work 10 years out.”

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Since that time, Cook and other city officials and business leaders have become ad hoc astronomers to promote Hopkinsville as the optimal place to experience the Great American Eclipse and to prepare for the throng of visitors. Along with securing lots of public viewing areas, they’ve been stockpiling eclipse essentials, such as folding lawn chairs and official total solar eclipse viewing glasses. 

“Right now I already have, in my office, 50,000 glasses,” Cook said. “I sold 50,000 to different businesses. And I'm getting ready to do another order. I may order another 50,000.”

In a strange coincidence, August 21,the day of the 2017 eclipse, carries a lot of significance for Hopkinsville. That’s the day, in 1955, that a local farmhouse in nearby Kelly received an alleged visit from a band of extraterrestrials and a fierce gunfight ensued. Local police and military police from nearby Fort Campbell investigated, and the incident received considerable coverage from the national press.

The community now celebrates the event annually with the “Little Green Men Days” festival. Next year’s four-day spectacular will be capped off with a total solar eclipse, and probably considerable UFO conspiracy theories.

“I like to say the aliens were here to pick out their viewing site early,” Cook joked.

Given the volume of expected travellers, Cook hopes some visitors plan to come early to ease traffic congestion and to enjoy all the area has to offer, such as the official Hopkinsville Summer Salute Festival or an area distillery—one has already planned a special eclipse edition of their moonshine, which will certainly come in handy if the weather turns cloudy on August 21. 

“If you can’t see the eclipse, you can have some eclipse moonshine and it’ll make your sky go dark too,” Cook said.


Watch Carl Sagan's Reflections on Our Place in the Universe

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For today's Video Wonder, we present Carl Sagan's poignant "Pale Blue Dot."

The text, originally given at a lecture at Cornell University, was inspired by a photograph taken of Earth on Valentine's Day, 1990 from the Voyager 1 probe. In the picture, the earth and everything on it is a mere pixel, a faint blurry pinprick. This is the last photo the probe would take of our planet before drifting off into deep space.

Sagan's speech and the video accompanying it serve as a reminder that everything good and everything terrible we know are but a minuscule portion of existence, and that there is simply much more out there.

Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.

Breathtaking Photos of Ancient Trees Against Starry Skies

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A sequoia can live for over 3,000 years. There's one baobab tree specimen that has been dated at over 6,000 years old. These are some of the world’s most ancient trees—trees that have lived through countless generations of humans, under an infinite number of night skies. The timelessness of these trees and their starry backdrops inspired Beth Moon’s new photography book, Ancient Trees Ancient Skies

There were, of course, some logistics to consider for this project. In order to capture the most vibrant night stars, Moon sought out ancient trees in the most remote locations. As she writes in her introduction, “to find those skies, and the trees beneath them, I traveled for many hours without road signs, or even roads, to areas so remote and wild the darkness was almost palpable.”

Timing was also key. She needed to shoot under a new moon, and when the trees were bare, with clear weather. The results, in which each image is named after a star or constellation, is a vivid expression of the natural world's enduring beauty. 

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Watch Adorable Tiger Cubs Playing Together

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Living in the modern world is often stressful, and it’s easy to forget to give yourself some time to decompress.

To help you out, we’ve found this heart-melting video of tiger cubs posted by the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. The 1,800-acre facility is home to several species, but few are as popular as the beautiful felines, who can boast being the largest in the entire cat species.

Tiger cubs are very dependent on their mother, as they are blind when they are born. Once they are adults, however, they separate and lead largely solitary lives. Females stay close to their mothers, separating more and more as the years pass, while males go far away as soon as they are able to take care of themselves. But before this happens, they enjoy a few years of cuddles and playfulness together. 

It's these years that the video captures. The tigers tumble around, yawn, and drink water, all while filling your heart with warm and fuzzy feelings. Don’t resist—you can get back to worrying in two minutes.

Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.

You Probably Shouldn't Be Worried About This Colony of Herpes-Infected Monkeys in Florida

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Imagine picnicking in central Florida when, suddenly, you hear some leaves rattle, and, from the shade of the trees, the curious face of a rhesus macaque emerges. The macaques, which were introduced to Florida decades ago by a boat operator, have taken up residence in the state with determination, expanding rapidly because they lack natural predators.

But they are mostly benign, and this one seems pretty benign too. So, what should you do? Offer it food? Try to pet it? Or just ignore it?

You can probably guess the right answer, even if, for decades now, other humans have been guessing wrong, leading to 31 attacks from 1977-1984, according to an official report.

And while most of those injuries turned out to be minor, nowadays you might not be so lucky, as officials warn the public about a more dangerous threat: a strand of herpes carried by the rhesus macaques that is mostly harmless to them but can be deadly to humans. 

No such fatal case has yet occurred, but the panic has encouraged the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) to declare the monkeys a public health threat, and recommend that humans avoid contact with them.

Which means that if you do see a monkey come upon your picnic, you'd be best served observing it from afar. Do you really want to die by way of monkey herpes? No. No, you do not. 


What kind of herpes are we talking about? The particular strand of herpes carried by the rhesus macaque is called Macacine herpesvirus 1, and is comparable to the human strain of herpes that causes cold sores, according to Dr. Jim Wellehan, an assistant professor at the Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences at the University of Florida.

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And while most primates carry some kind of herpes, a strand of herpes that's benign in one species can prove deadly in another. That's because over millions of years of evolution, herpesviruses have diverged with their hosts, but not other species, meaning that while Macacine herpesvirus 1 might only give rhesus macaques a cold sore, a human is much, much more vulnerable, as over half of documented cases of human infection have ended in death. 

Still, don't blame the rhesus macaques. The only reason they are in Florida, in fact, turns out to be perfectly Floridian. Native to south and central Asia, six of the macaques were transported to the state in 1938 by an entrepreneur named Colonel Tooey (real first name) who put them on an island in Silver Springs State Park.

Tooey's plan, such as it was, was for a type of amusement park, selling tourists tickets to his Jungle Cruise Ride, which promised to pass by the incredible “monkey island," where he'd introduced the macaques. The plan, for a time, worked, but while an influx of tourists rushed in to see the monkeys in action, the animals themselves began their escape. 

They first swam across the river, and rumors soon began to circulate about a wild pack of rhesus macaques roaming free. Meanwhile, some people claimed that they had been stars in a Tarzan movie (a rumor that continues to be spread). Others, that they were reproducing at a fast rate, and that there were now thousands and thousands of them in the area.

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The truth was far less dramatic, but the reality is that, without natural predators, the rhesus macaques were here to stay, expanding in Central Florida, even reaching cities as far as the Gulf of Mexico. And for years, the FWC has considered many solutions, including extermination, relocation, and population control, but nothing, so far, has proven effective.

Plans of complete extermination, for example, were thwarted in the '90s by animal rights protesters, and attempts at sterilization have proved impractical. More desperately, the state has even issued permits for catching and selling the monkeys, though this approach has also been criticized since most captured individuals end up in research facilities for life. (The FWC did not respond to a request for comment.)

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While the thought of dying because a monkey gave you herpes is terrifying, the rhesus macaques might feel the same way about you. In fact, there are more recorded cases of humans infecting their pet monkeys with human herpesviruses than vice versa.

But as of now, the humans and monkeys remain in an uncomfortable stalemate. And while most human interactions with the monkeys continue to be benign, do yourself a favor and leave them alone if you see them out in the wild. Macaques' first instinct is not to attack a primate several times its size, but they will if they feel cornered or threatened. And, as Wellehan explains, herpes can only be transmitted by close contact where fluids are exchanged. 

Mostly, though, Wellehan says, the herpes-carrying monkeys are "a hell of a lot less scary than climate change.”

A Famous Drag Queen, a Mummy in the Closet, and a Baffling Mystery

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In October of 1993, Lois Taylor entered the Harlem apartment of Dorian Corey, a drag performer and dressmaker who’d died of AIDS two months earlier at the age of 56. Accompanied by two men searching for Halloween costumes, Taylor, a fellow New York drag queen and caretaker of Corey in her final days, was hoping to sell them a small fraction of Corey’s wardrobe. They rifled through fabric, feathers, and sequins before they encountered a large closet, where, Taylor said, the sight of a musty green-plaid garment bag folded over on the floor piqued their collective interest.

“I only weigh 135 pounds. I couldn’t lift that thing,” Taylor told New York magazine in 1993. Resigning to her powerlessness to find the zipper, Taylor handed a pair of scissors to one of the men, only to learn that what the curious mass lacked in portability, it made up for in distinct malodor. Without inspecting further, Taylor called the police.

Peeling through multiple layers—first the bag’s fabric, then taped wrappings of what was likely Naugahyde, a type of faux leather, and plastic—detectives revealed a grisly sight: a partially mummified body in the fetal position, its formerly brown complexion now purple and yellow, its ears mere cartilaginous vestiges, its blue-and-white boxer shorts tattered, with a bullet hole in its head. Encased within the layers, detective Raul Figueroa observed, were detachable pull-tabs from flip-top beer cans, whose prime in the United States ranged from the 1960s to the 1970s.

Despite the technical hurdles posed by decay, Figueroa managed to extract fingerprints from the corpse. The body was identified as Robert “Bobby” Worley, born December 18, 1938. The only extant records from Worley’s life were criminal; he’d been arrested for raping and assaulting a woman in 1963 and served three years in prison. By most accounts, he was estranged from his family and hadn’t been seen since the mid- to late '60s. Coupled with Figueroa’s pull-tab dating method, detectives concluded the shooting must have happened at least 20 years prior.

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Superficial cues might dictate that Dorian Corey had little reason to engage in violent crime. A graduate from the Parsons School of Design, she had a knack for graphic design, which she parlayed into repute as a costumer. In the Harlem drag ball scene—where veteran drag queens and their young breakdancing and voguing counterparts participated in tongue-in-cheek pageants to showcase humor, irony, and ambition through performance—Corey was a stalwart diva. Her experience led her to mentor and support young queens as the mother of her drag family, the House of Corey. “You lend money to your friends—not very much money—and [give] advice...sometimes, if someone got evicted or whatever, you might take them in,” she explained on a 1991 episode of the Joan Rivers Show.

What stands in starkest contrast to the gruesome implications in her closet, perhaps, is Corey’s demeanor. The most extensive video footage of Corey is from the 1990 Jennie Livingston documentary Paris Is Burning, an examination of the aforementioned ball culture; in interviews, she was witty, realistic, and unflappable. In contrast to the grandiosity of aspiring models and housewives, she had a self-possessed cadence and world-weary observations, which endeared her to a comparatively mainstream audience.

“Everybody wants to make an impression, some mark upon the world,” she says in the film. “Then you think, you’ve made a mark on the world if you just get through it, and a few people remember your name...If you shoot an arrow and it goes real high, hooray for you.”

Yet it’s apparent, from her interviews and an alleged silence about her life with Worley, that Corey was also guarded. Considered in tandem with the circumstances of the discovery, plenty of questions remain. Why might she have committed murder? What was her relationship to Robert Worley? How and why was the body preserved and not disposed of? Despite a lack of evidence or sources who are still living (many queens who knew Corey have succumbed to either disease or violence), these questions have provoked a number of theories.

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Though the idea has now fallen out of favor, some posited that Corey was “protecting” the real murderer. In 1988—between the probable time of Worley’s and Corey’s deaths—Corey moved from her apartment at 150th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue to one located 10 blocks over on West 140th Street. The notion that the body was in the closet before she moved, the hypothesis goes, is more plausible than that of Dorian’s lugging a corpse from one home to another.

Others maintain, more credibly, that Worley was a burglar who broke into Corey’s home, prompting Corey to act in self-defense. Corey lived in later-20th-century Harlem, where violent crime ran rampant. (Livingston recalled numerous gunfights outside Corey’s apartment during interviews for the film.) For her own protection, she presumably owned a gun; her friend Jessie Torres affirmed she had “a little .22” in an interview shortly after news of the murder surfaced. More telling, Corey had allegedly attached a note to the body reading “This poor man broke into my home and was trying to rob me.” Furthermore, the theory suggests a possible reason she kept the body: a black drag queen who lived in a poor, dangerous area in the ‘60s or ‘70s had little chance of garnering sympathy from the police.

Prevailing sentiment, however, contends that Corey and Worley had a turbulent romantic relationship that reached a tragic conclusion in a crime of passion. According to Taylor, Corey wrote a short, third-person story about a transgender woman who killed her lover after he browbeat her into having sex reassignment surgery. Handwritten on a piece of paper yellowed with age, the story seemed at least loosely autobiographical—Corey had had breast implants and possibly taken female hormones—and was peppered with references to her life, including the Pearl Box Revue, a touring drag show she’d performed with in the ‘60s.

Additional clues point to this supposition. Torres had relayed that Corey, hospitalized and in a haze of AZT and morphine, had confessed to her friend Sally in Corey’s final days. Richard Mailman, whose upcoming play Dorian’s Closet explores the story, says that, according to a police interview with Worley’s brother, Worley “showed up at his [brother’s] house one night drunk, and he was going on and on and on about Dorian. There was that sort of corroboration that he was in a relationship and did know Dorian.”

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Indeed, any relationship they had was fraught. Reg Flowers, whose one-man play Out of the Bag plumbs the psyche of Robert Worley, suggests that Worley may have struggled to reconcile the pressures of appearing masculine and straight with his attraction to Corey, lashing out at her in bouts of frustration. “Being in a relationship with someone who was abusive would make sense [as an explanation], especially when you’re talking about when men are attracted to trans people,” he says. “My sense is that we’re talking about someone who might be closeted about their homosexuality as well, and so there might have been all kinds of internalized hatred and internalized oppression. My sense of it is that it was a dangerous situation that Dorian needed to get out of.”   

As for the body, Mailman postulates that Corey, fearing disposing of it would be too conspicuous in congested Manhattan, covered it in baking soda and wrapped it tightly to neutralize the inevitable odor. Decades’ worth of chemical reactions likely rendered an amateur mummification job. “I don’t think she had a criminal mind. She didn’t plan the murder, and when it happened, she had to think fast,” he says. “In the mind of someone who commits a crime of passion, that kind of makes sense.”

Still, how did Corey get away with murder? At least three factors may explain this: Corey’s consistent cool and grace, and Worley’s estrangement from his family and the lack of documentation about his life, and the suppression of the corpse’s stench. But perhaps the murder’s obscurity is primarily owed to a fourth, socioeconomic factor: the othering and invisibility of two poor, sexually complex black people navigating internal and external turmoil in 1960s and ‘70s America.

A definitive answer remains elusive and probably always will. It’s unsurprising: Corey was part of a highly marginalized world, and her life—even the part ripe for a campy tabloid headline—attracted little attention. Still, whatever brought these two together—and whatever happened the day of Worley’s death—Dorian Corey has made an indelible mark.

Why Justin Timberlake Sings 'May' Instead of 'Me'

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The meme hit in 2012. A noble Tumblr artist first created it. It was picked up by BuzzFeed, followed by a flood of YouTube uploads. In 2016, you’ll see tweets about it. Justin Timberlake has acknowledged it with typical good humor, deigning to sing the meme when asked—even now, more than a decade and a half later.

It’s not super fun to explain a meme, but we kind of have to, so: The “it’s gonna be may” meme is a reference to NSYNC's 2000 hit “It’s Gonna Be Me,” in which lead singer Timberlake memorably sings the title of the song as “it’s gonna be may.” But I think what makes the meme resonate is that “it’s gonna be may” is just one example of a linguistic tendency that was weirdly popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Think of Mandy Moore’s “Can-day,” Britney Spears growling “oh bay-bay bay-bay,” Gwen Stefani chanting “hey bay-bay hey bay-bay HEY.” The trend to turn the “ee” sound into “ay” continued for years, maybe most memorably in Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.” (Cray-zay, really.) This isn’t one guy’s vocal quirk: this is a trend, maybe a virus. Why did all these singers change their vowels in that particular way?


Accents in singers are an exercise in frustration; it’s often impossible to connect the accent in a singer’s speaking voice with the accent in his or her singing voice. Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day—born and bred in Northern California—sings in a British accent. Adele, a Londoner, has an indistinct North American accent in her songs.

But I thought this one might be different. I asked some linguists if there are any accent groups in North America who turn their “ee” into “ay,” and sure enough, there are: the South. “The Southern Shift lowers and diphthongizes the vowel /i/, which is the pattern you're observing here,” says Kara Becker, a linguist at Reed College. That’s a bit to unpack, but she’s referring to the Southern Vowel Shift, which is responsible for the changing of various vowel sounds in Southern speech. A “shift,” in linguistics, is a kind of broad-scale changing of vowel sounds: if one vowel sound changes, then something else will probably change to take the place of the first vowel. The Southern Vowel Shift is why, in Southern speech, “ride” sounds somewhere between “rod” and “rad,” “rat” sounds like “ray-at,” that kind of thing.

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Southern speech also has a tendency to “diphthongize” sounds. In linguistics, a monophthong is a simple, single-part vowel, like, well, “ee.” A diphthong is a two-part, more complex vowel. The “ay” sound, like in “may,” is a diphthong: it’s constructed by starting at the monophthong “eh” and sliding to the monophthong “ee.” Southern speech has tons of diphthongs, even some triphthongs (that’s a three-part vowel), way more than other dialects in North America, which is part of the reason why Southerners have a reputation for “drawling” or speaking slowly. It’s not actually slower, Southern vowels just have more stuff crammed into them.

So, okay, turning “me” to “may” is kind of Southern. This makes sense! Justin Timberlake is from Tennessee, Britney Spears is from Louisiana, Mandy Moore is from Florida, and Cee-Lo Green, the singer of Gnarls Barkley, is from Georgia. Southern singers using Southern vowels! Problem solved, right?

Except, no, not really. Those singers don’t use any other Southern vowel sounds in their songs, and we still have the vexing problem of Mandy Moore, who, though she was technically raised in the South, is from Orlando, which does not have a traditional Southern accent, and Moore doesn’t demonstrate any Southern elements in her normal speaking voice.

Audible Southern accents are exceedingly rare in this kind of pop music. They’re common in pop-country, of course, and there are some R&B singers who will slot in Southern elements to pay homage to the fact that R&B was created in the South (using the word “ain’t,” for example). But certainly nobody would say that Britney Spears or NSYNC were Southern-sounding pop acts.

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Shockingly, linguists have not really studied the linguistics of early 2000s pop singers. But others have thought intensely about the way these stars sing. I called Lis Lewis, a professional voice teacher based in Los Angeles, who over the past 40 years has trained a dizzying array of pop stars: Rihanna, Gwen Stefani, Britney Spears, Miguel, Courtney Love, the Pussycat Dolls, many more. Her job as a voice teacher isn’t just to get a singer’s voice sounding good. She also functions sort of like a physical trainer, getting these singers prepared for the hardships of belting out songs for hours every day while on tour or in the studio. Without proper preparation, it’s easy for a singer to, essentially, pull a muscle, and lose or weaken his or her voice for a period of time—very dangerous, given the amount of money on the line.

“We have two voices, one is the high voice and one is the low voice,” says Lewis. “The high voice is called 'head voice' and the low voice is called 'chest voice.' When a song gets really big and exciting, usually toward the bridge and the last chorus, the chest voice gets higher and kind of angst-ridden, it makes it sound really urgent.”

This is very complicated and not very well understood; physiologically, there isn’t wide agreement on what makes up chest voice as opposed to head voice, or where the divide is. There doesn’t seem to be any difference in how the vocal cords vibrate, so some voice teachers avoid it, but it’s been ingrained for singers for so long that it’s still the norm to talk of the two. Generally, amongst vocal teachers, it’s taught that chest voice is a range of notes wherein the breastbone is felt to vibrate, and head voice is the range higher than that, where the bones of the jaw and skull are felt to vibrate. (Falsetto, for the record, is something different.) More power is thought to come from chest voice.

What Lewis is talking about is the very upper end of the chest voice, which comes with a set of characteristics: emotion-filled, maybe a little scratchy, certainly loud. This is what we’re talking about when we say someone is “belting” out a note. This is right at the top of the range for the singer’s chest voice, meaning that the emotion-filled tone is the result of, basically, the singer having to strain to hit that note.

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Certain vowel sounds are easier or harder to sing when you’re straining so hard to hit a high chest voice note. “When the vowels stay small, like in ‘ee’ or ‘ooh,’ you can’t get up as high,” says Lewis. “Ee” and “ooh” are very, in linguistic terms, “tense” vowel sounds, which means that the opening of the mouth is very small. Belting out an intense, top-of-your-range note using a tense vowel is really difficult, and, says Lewis, can even lead to straining the singer’s vocal cords.

“When you’ve got those little vowels, you tend to want to slide over into your head voice,” says Lewis. But sliding into head voice would lose the power and tone you want. “So when you need a high note, you’d generally open a word like ‘me’ to ‘may,’ or ‘candy’ to ‘canday,’ or ‘you’ to ‘yuh,’” she says. Ah ha! We’ve solved it!

Listen to Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.” The line “thirteen-month-old baby,” in most of the verses, is pronounced with a clean “ee” sound. Until, just like Lewis predicted, the build-up to the last chorus, when Wonder takes the melody higher and more intense. Listen at around 3:00 into this for his sudden change to “thirteen-month-old baybay.”

Except, most of those examples, especially “it’s gonna be may” and “canday,” aren’t especially high notes for Justin Timberlake or Mandy Moore. They aren’t actually straining to hit them. So why are they acting like they are?

Lewis’s theory, which makes sense to me, is that this is an attempt to co-opt the signifiers of intensity without actually needing to use them. Wonder sings “baybay” late in “Superstition” because he’s worked his energy level up, he’s hitting a high, hard note, it bursts out naturally because that’s the way it’s comfortable for him to sing it. “It’s gonna be may” is not like that; Timberlake could sing a clean “me” there perfectly comfortably. But listeners like the intensity of lines like Wonder’s; it’s big and bold and passionate. And Wonder’s vowel sound there has come to indicate to listeners that he’s being big and bold and passionate. Timberlake, Moore, and Spears all just...use that signifier, without any of the physiological need for it. It’s fake energy. Fake passion.

Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” is different; when Cee-Lo Green sings the word “cray-zay,” he’s belting out a difficult high note, hence the mutation. But the very next line ends with a much lower note in “possibly,” which he sings with a clean “ee” sound—he doesn’t need to sing “possiblay,” so he doesn’t.
Turning “ee” to “ay” when it’s not strictly necessary is a savvy kind of trick. In a recent interview, Justin Timberlake even said that Max Martin, the songwriter and producer of the song (along with “I Kissed A Girl,” “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “I Want It That Way,” and about a billion other songs), told Timberlake to sing it that way. Timberlake said he thought Martin wanted him to “sound like I’m from Tennessee.” 

Why Americans Consider Celebrities for Political Office

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It seems like a millennium has passed since Donald Trump announced he was running for President in June 2015. Now the businessman is president-elect, with the U.S. split between celebrating, protesting, and drifting into a black hole of nihilistic depression. Clearly, the reasons why Trump resonated with so many American voters are complex. But one of the Republican candidate’s main draws, throughout the campaign, has been his celebrity and outsider status.

Before 2015, most people recognized Trump best from the reality show The Apprentice or his antics on the WWE; sixteen years ago, his candidacy was a fly-by joke on The Simpsons. When former first lady Barbara Bush labeled Trump more of a “comedian or a showman” than a politician, it was not seen as a compliment. Yet Trump’s lack of political experience is something he and his supporters frequently cite as an asset, so it’s worth examining the celebrity-politician phenomenon.

Trump joins stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ronald Reagan, Clint Eastwood, Sonny Bono, and Shirley Temple Black in making a successful turn to politics. But while a dearth of previous political involvement would normally hurt a candidate’s chances, in the case of celebrities it seems not to matter much. So why do people embrace celebrities running for political office? And what are the pros and cons of starting out in Hollywood, and going on to influence legislation?

Well, at a time when only 16 percent of Americans think the government does the right thing “most of the time,” celebrities might be viewed less negatively than politicians are, says Robert Erikson, Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. Some stars may feel like a known quantity to voters already—even if their stances on various positions are unknown.

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Many campaigns begin by telling the public their story of who the candidate is, something celebrities don’t really need to do. And most of the time, people vote along party lines, rather than for a specific politician, according to Joshua Tucker, Professor of Political Science at NYU. “Most of the votes for offices on the ballot besides president, and maybe governor, senator, and representative—most people have never heard of any of those people, so they just default to party,” Tucker says. Perhaps unsurprisingly, voters the world over tend to be more responsive to candidates they are familiar with.

But it’s not just that. “Actors can be good at acting and that is a requirement of politics. Reagan was successful playing the role of president,” says Erikson.“Celebrities can have more experience and talent in front of audiences than politicians,” he adds. “See Trump as an example.” These on-camera talents can help them navigate scandals more deftly than normal politicians might, since the public may view drama as part of a celebrity's personal brand.

Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980, became president after acting in Hollywood for nearly 30 years. As president, Reagan combined a masterful use of television and radio with a great sense of pseudo–event theatrics,” West and Orman write. “Indeed, he threw himself into the role of president as much as he worked himself up for the role of George Gipp in the Knute Rockne movie. Reagan became an outstanding performer in the drama of national political life.”

In the book Celebrity Politics, Darryl M. West and John M. Orman point out that celebrities aren't far from politics to begin with; politicians are often endorsed by celebrities. When voters don’t know what a politician stands for, they look to trusted guides—which include celebrities. Indeed, there isn’t much difference between the way the public sees politicians and entertainers, says professor Benjamin Bishin of the University of California, however different they may be. We often view our political leaders through the same mediums where we get our entertainment, which mixes our perceptions of them. 

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When a candidate is shifting their arena from entertainment to politics, advertising their lack of political credentials is often “a choice the candidate is making in trying to frame his or her appeal,” says Tucker. “A candidate like [former Minnesota Governor Jesse] Ventura or Trump, however, can also try to appeal to people who want someone "outside the system" to "shake things up.”

In 1998, when Jesse Ventura left his tie-dyed spandex pants behind him at World Wrestling Entertainment and ran for the Mayor of Minnesota, his campaign ads featured him as an action figure, wearing a suit. As two kids played with the toy, a voice announced: "You can make Jesse battle special interest groups!" and “Don't waste your money on politics as usual!” Far from ignoring his wrestling past, Ventura wanted Minnesotans to take the metaphor of fighting in the ring to fighting for policy.

“Voters often prefer an outsider who can either promise to fight corruption, or who will promise to overcome partisan division and fix things,” Bishin says.”This is an always unmet promise of being post-partisan.” Arnold Schwarzenegger, while distancing himself from his roles in action movies like Terminator, asserted in campaign ads for Governor of California (which he won in 2003) that “politicians are not doing their job.” He promised to “bring California back again.” 

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While scandals are often the ruin of politicians’ careers, we expect celebrities to have faults and marry multiple times; when they smash through glass doors with their bare hands in a drunken stupor, we shake our heads. But politicians are held to a different standard. “The "dirt" on Trump has not harmed him as much as one might think,” Erikson says. “I cannot imagine a politician bragging like he did with Billy Bush and the women coming forward.” While he adds that Bill Clinton was a popular president when his own scandals were revealed, “an ordinary politician—say a middle aged senator with a family—could not have gotten away with it.”

Celebrities are drawn to both of America's major political parties, but sometimes circumstances drive a party to look for candidates in unlikely places, particularly if they’re lacking a ready pool of politicians looking to advance their careers. “I have noticed for instance that Republicans often tap local TV newscasters or even weathermen as candidates for office. They are celebrities at the local level,” Erikson says.

There are definite benefits to being a celebrity when going into politics, but it doesn’t guarantee success. “The bigger disadvantage would be in not knowing how to be effective as a politician,” says Tucker. He explains that in a presidential election, politicians know it will become a two-candidate race, and it’s the norm for most politicians to reframe their campaign toward the center of the political spectrum to appeal to more voters; celebrities don’t necessarily capitalize on this strategy, and sometimes suffer for it. 

Jello Biafra, who runs record label Alternative Tentacles and is famous as the lead singer for The Dead Kennedys, ran for mayor of San Francisco in 1979 with the slogan “There’s always room for Jello”, and ran for president under the Green Party in 2000. But his serious policies, which included elections for police officers (by the people they patrol) and legalized squatting in tax-lapsed buildings, were overshadowed by his punk history and the part of his platform that required businessmen to wear clown suits. Biafra later became involved in campaigns for Ralph Nader and Gore, and still engages in political discussion on Youtube.

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Debates, Tucker says, can also be a problem for people who weren’t trained to handle them. While Trump’s celebrity background might have helped him during the primaries when he was interacting with others onstage, “he certainly looked inexperienced when compared to Clinton in the one-on-one general election debates,” Tucker says. “I doubt a polished politician would have walked around on stage, for example, the way Trump did in the second debate.”

When celebrities do manage to learn the ins and outs of politics, though, their fans show their support. Shirley Temple Black, who became a foreign ambassador, told the New York Times in 1989 that “Shirley Temple opens doors for Shirley Temple Black.” Ben Jones, who was famous for his role on The Dukes of Hazard and later served two terms as a Democratic congressman of Georgia, said in an interview that, “It’s a funny thing, I was sort of the last guy you would think to run for Congress and it turned out I had a knack for it.”

The 2016 election has arguably been the most anxiety-infused political event in recent history. Noting how we vote and why is as important as ever, as it’s likely that we’ll see more celebrities running for political office. We won't know for a while which scripts they'll be following, though. With his divisive rhetoric, Trump seems to have tossed the blueprints for both normal politicians and celebrity candidates out the window.

Actor and writer Orson Welles once pointed out that the two professions are two sides to the same bizarre coin. “I don’t think [politicians] are crooks; I think they are actors,” said Welles. “But that kind of acting is not lying, as long as it refers to and reflects and exhausts the essential commonly held ideals of a culture. Those performances are part of our culture even though they are performances.”


Trump and Obama's Post-Election Meeting Might Not Have Been History's Weirdest

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Two days ago, President Barack Obama told voters in Michigan that Donald Trump was "temperamentally unfit to be Commander in Chief." In August, Trump called Obama the "worst President in history," just the latest in a series of attacks that included impugning his legacy, questioning his sanity, and, of course, leading a years-long guerrilla inquest into his citizenship status.

It's not the kind of stuff that tends to lead to friendly playdates. But yesterday, Obama and Trump met privately in the Oval Office, to discuss a future that may require them to look past a few of these accusations. Like dozens of presidents before them, the outgoing and incoming presidents held their noses, stuck their hands out, and partook in a Democratic tradition—the post-election White House meeting.

As the Associated Presspointed out in 2008, the Constitution does not mention, let alone require, such a meeting. Federal law is also silent on the issue. Like the concession phone call, it has somehow slipped into the series of actions between an election and an inauguration—a way to keep things running smoothly. And the parties involved tend to bring their all to these meetings, whether that's an impromptu lecture, a surprise helicopter show, or just a hearty dose of goodwill.

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Sometimes, the meeting provides an opportunity for true healing, as officials set aside polarizing campaign rhetoric in favor of common goals. Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, for example, ended up having a great chat in 1960. As LIFE later reported, Eisenhower, who had previously dismissed Kennedy as a "young whippersnapper," was very impressed by his successor, who had prepared extensively for the meeting.

"[Eisenhower] was overwhelmed by Senator Kennedy, the depth of his questions, his grasp of the issues, and the keenness of his mind," a White House aide told LIFE. And Kennedy, prepared as he was, was newly shocked by the difficulties that would soon face him. As Eisenhower briefed him on the economy and foreign policy, reality hit him hard—"I was finding out that things were really just as bad as I had said they were during the campaign," he later told his aides.

Part of the meeting involved blowing off some steam, though. The outgoing president was eager to show his succesor one of his favorite new additions to the White House: the panic button on the Oval Office desk that summons an emergency helicopter. Eisenhower had installed this button a few years earlier, and was proud of it. "He pushed the button, and Kennedy watched the fluttering helicopter coming down outside the windows within a few minutes," Kennedy's aides reported. (It's unclear whether this button still exists.)

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Secret White House gizmos have proven to be a great bonding tactic. In 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson invited Richard Nixon to the White House, once again after a fraught campaign. As the once and future First Ladies toured the building room by room, Johnson took a moment to show Nixon a hidden surprise. "On our way to the West Wing, we stopped in his bedroom," Nixon later recalled in his memoirs. "'I wanted you to know about this,' Johnson said as he showed me how to open a small safe concealed in the wall."

Other meetings have fallen a bit flatter. Times of national crisis make for transitions that can get "really bitter," says Leo Rubiffo, a historian at George Washington Univeristy. In 1932, as the Great Depression raged, Herbert Hoover had taken to calling Franklin Roosevelt a "chameleon on plaid," while Roosevelt considered Hoover a "fat, timid capon."

When the two met up on November 22nd—the first of three meetings they would eventually hold between Election Day and Inauguration Day—Hoover had his Treasury Secretary lecture Roosevelt on the gold standard, and then called him "very badly informed and of very little vision." (Their other two meetings didn't go much better.) In 1952, as the Korean War dragged, Eisenhower had trouble forgiving Harry Truman for accusations made on the campaign trail. Their meeting went so badly that Eisenhower, pondering the limo ride on Inauguration Day, wondered "if I can stand sitting next to that guy."

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And no matter the overall climate, it's an emotional moment for the outgoing party. "It struck me how hard it is for a defeated president to suddenly see cameras facing in the other direction," former Vice President Walter Mondale told the AP in 1992, recalling his own experience watching Jimmy Carter cede to Ronald Reagan in 1980. Even for those who remain undefeated, but instead have maxed out their term limit, this is the moment they begin letting go: "Your formal transfer occurs on January 20th, but the psychological transfer occurs then," Mondale said.

As for this particular meeting, Rubiffo predicted "a mutual attempt at cordiality." "Obama is by temperament conciliatory," he says. "Trump is—at least in part—a dealmaker. He will likely recognize that he has nothing to gain now by continuing the abrasive tone of his campaign." Although their discussion was private, some details have emerged. The two met for 90 minutes—much longer than planned. Obama called the meeting "excellent," while Trump said he considered it "a great honor." Michelle Obama toured Melania Trump around the White House.

But one part of the tradition was conspicuously absent: the photograph, generally taken outside the south entrance of the White House, of both families greeting each other. When they notice this absence in the history books, people of the future will have to draw their own conclusions.

Peeling Back the History of Soviet Wallpaper

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In the summer of 2014, Elena Amabili and Alessandro Calvaresi were photographing the ghost town of Ibene in Latvia, home to a top-secret radio telescope. But while there, they found themselves intrigued by the town's more prosaic elements. The peeling paint and faded, torn wallpaper inside the abandoned Soviet-era apartment buildings seemed to offer a glimpse into the lives of the town's former inhabitants. 

Since then, Amabili and Calvaresi have traveled through other post-Soviet countries exploring deserted structures and, particularly, the interior walls of what were once peoples’ homes. Their project, Soviet Innerness, is a fascinating and unexpected look at Soviet-era interiors. Together, the images form an unsolvable visual puzzle about what life was like behind the Iron Curtain.

The photographs, all taken from the same angle, highlight small details of the homes. In one, peeling wallpaper reveals faded animal prints of a cat, a mouse and an alligator holding an umbrella. In another, a newspaper cartoon of a waving spaceman with a helmet initialed “1964” peeks out. Several images show wallpaper layered over newspaper, which was used to help weatherproof the walls.

Atlas Obscura has a selection of images from the project, below. 

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Mystery Space Junk Crashes Into Myanmar

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While the metaphorical skies might be falling down across America, in Myanmar, the skies are literally coming down, as according to the BBC, a large chunk of what was apparently space debris crashed down yesterday around a local jade mine.

Residents of the Kachin state in northern Myanmar began reporting hearing a loud boom that apparently shook nearby houses on Thursday. At first, the locals thought it might be an explosion or some kind of artillery, but the culprit turned out to be a large piece of metal junk returning to Earth.

No one is positive exactly where it came from. According to early guesses, the 15-foot-long tube may have been a rocket stage that was ejected from a Chinese rocket launched back in March. These propulsion segments are usually meant to land in water or uninhabited areas, but it’s possible that it veered off course. This theory was corroborated by another, smaller piece of falling metal that shot through a local home around the same time. This bit of debris was reported as having Chinese writing on it.

This is not the first time large pieces of space junk have plummeted to Earth. The most famous example of such a crash being NASA's Skylab, pieces of which crashed back to Earth in 1979. Some of the pieces landed around the Shire of Esperance in Australia, which fined NASA for littering. No one was injured by the falling debris in Myanmar, but it remains to be seen if they will pursue a similar ticket. 

It's 'Barter Week' At B&Bs Across Italy

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Feeling the sudden need to split for a bit? Does the idea of a relaxing in an Italian bed and breakfast, sipping on wine, gazing over insanely verdant and benevolent hillsides, and doing all of this absolutely as soon as possible appeal to you at all? And do you have in your possession, say, extra virgin olive oil, nuts, lentils, beans, and/or chickpeas?

Next week is your lucky week. From November 14th through the 20th, thousands of B&Bs across Italy are eschewing the monetary system and instead trading their hospitality for various concrete goods and services, like vegetables, photography, and vintage gramophones, the Local reports.

The initiative, called "Barter Week," was inspired by VillaVillaColle, a Sardinian B&B that began accepting swaps in lieu of payment eight years ago. Others cottoned onto the idea, and the idea slowly expanded into a bonafide movement. Now you can barter your way into a night or two's sleep anywhere from Messina to Milan.

That is, as long as you have the right stuff. Many proprietors seem to be interested in local produce, wine, and olive oil. A lot would also love professional-quality photos and videos, musical performances, and iPhone 6s. Others are looking for deep cuts: sushi-making lessons; "CLOCKS... NOT MODERN"; or a secondhand Mercedes (which gets you an entire 12-bed villa for at least a week). Scrolling through these eclectic listings makes Italy seem very zany and fun—it's almost like a vacation on its own.

If you're interested, head over to the Barter Week website, where you can read what different establishments are looking for, as well as list your own particular set of skills and expendable possessions. And even if you just can't quite skip town right now, over 800 Italian proprietors are open to barter all year round. Wouldn't it be great to take a trip soon—say, on January 20th?

Mexico City’s New Day of the Dead Parade is Based on a James Bond Film

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Mexico’s famous Day of the Dead traditions might change because of eight minutes of Hollywood film. In a pre-credit sequence in Spectre, Sam Mendes’ second Bond film as director, and Daniel Craig’s last as the title character, 007 thwarts a terrorist plot in during a Day of the Dead parade in downtown Mexico City, chasing the Italian bad guys around giant skeleton floats, and through a crowd of thousands of revelers wearing elaborate costumes. The spectacular sequence features stunning shots of Mexico City landmarks, including the Zócalo, the city’s main square, and the Torre Latinoamericana, a towering 1950s skyscraper.

Mexico City fought hard for its eight minutes in Spectre. Leaked documents show that Mexican officials offered Sony Pictures millions of dollars in tax incentives in exchange for featuring the capital city in the Bond film. Sony Pictures even let Mexican authorities make certain changes to the script, including featuring a major Mexican actress, Stephanie Sigman, as the “Bond girl” and making the villains another nationality than Mexican.

Bringing Bond to Mexico was part of a project to promote Mexico City as a major tourism destination. Tourism is one of Mexico’s main sources of income, bringing the country hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and even surpassing oil revenue in the first part of 2016. Mexican chambers of commerce speak of the “Season of the Dead,” running from October 29 to November 2 as an important tourism season, bringing much-needed income to Mexico, especially to certain rural areas.

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Large parts of Mexico City’s historic downtown had to be shut down to accommodate the filming, which took place over 10 days in March of 2015. The street closures cost 6,500 local businesses over 60 percent of their revenue, totalling at least 376 million pesos (about $20 million) in losses.

Mexico City Tourism Secretary Miguel Torruco Marqués, who was involved in securing the film deal, saw the movie as (expensive) advertising for tourism to Mexico. He assured angry business owners and motorists that the traffic problems and lost revenue would be more than made up for when Mexico City became a “Bond City.”

“Bond Cities start booming as soon as the movie comes out,” Torruco Marqués told reporters at a press conference on April 1, 2015. “Not only in tourism, but also in investment. There will be a huge economic boom, and it will make up for the inconveniences.”

There was only one problem: the tradition depicted in the movie was completely made up. There are many traditions across Mexico that are associated with Day of the Dead, but a parade through downtown Mexico City has never been one of them. Mexico's tourism authorities found themselves facing a problem: tourists who have seen Spectre might come to Mexico City expecting a parade like the one they saw in the movie, and be disappointed to find that it doesn't exist. In order to take advantage of all the exposure they had gained from Spectre, they would need to invent a new tradition.  

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So, on Oct. 29, 2016, Mexico City hosted its first-ever Day of the Dead parade. With over a thousand participants, including professional dancers, choreographers and visual artists, and dozens of floats and giant sculptures for the first edition, the parade aims to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors to Mexico City in the future. Torruco Marqués said that it could even compete with the Rio de Janeiro Carnival for the title of the world’s biggest parade.

The event was presented as a showcase of diverse Day of the Dead traditions and art from around Mexico. It also got some more use out of the costumes and props from Spectre.

Tourism authorities made no attempt to hide the fact that the parade was based on the James Bond movie—they referred to it as a “Spectre-style parade” in press communications (but they took out the parts with the collapsing buildings and helicopter tricks).  

The artists who worked with the parade created modern dialogues with Mexican rituals surrounding death. Part of the parade was devoted to the tradition of la Muerte Niña, the mostly-defunct practice of creating family portraits—first oil paintings, later photographs—with recently-deceased children dressed up in extravagant clothing, sometimes as angels with heavenly crowns. 

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At the 2016 parade, a retro-modern reimagining of la Muerte Niña appeared as adult women seated in meticulously preserved classic cars filling in for cradles, wearing festive colors and holding balloons.

From a tourism standpoint, the event was a success: attendance was higher than anyone expected, and attracted many foreign visitors. City government estimates say that 425,000 people lined the streets running from the Angel of Independence to the Zócalo. Few other events could have brought so many people out in Mexico City—not a protest march, not even a free Roger Waters concert.

It’s too soon to say how much tourism income the parade brought to Mexico City, but a forecast by a chamber of commerce estimated about a billion pesos (about $50 million) in income for Mexico City businesses related to the parade and the Formula 1 Grand Prix, which took place the same weekend. 

However, many Mexicans are offended by the government’s enthusiastic support for an invented ritual based on a Hollywood movie. Magaly Alcantara Franco, a student at the National School of History and Anthropology, believes the parade was influenced more by potential tourists’ perceptions of Mexico than by Mexican traditions themselves.

“For me, what I saw that Saturday didn’t represent, not even minimally, what the Day of the Dead celebrations are,” she says. “It was based on an idea that isn’t even Mexican, an idea that was imported from Hollywood.” 

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Claudio Lomnitz, a professor of Mexican studies at Columbia University, wrote an editorial for La Jornada criticizing the parade. “There’s an element of what we could call ‘national-narcissism,’ of a national imaginary in love with its own image, reflected in the mirror of Hollywood,” Lomnitz writes.

This isn’t the first time that rituals surrounding death have been manipulated by the Mexican state for political purposes. As Lomnitz shows in his book Death and the Idea of Mexico, the late-fall death festival was born out of an effort by the Catholic Church to accommodate indigenous death customs with All Souls’ Day and All Saints’ Day. Later, efforts by the revolutionary state to build national identity led to the holiday’s current form and level of popularity.

For Lomnitz, what’s different about the new parade is that it is only a representation or performance of the Day of the Dead—the parade represents an image of Mexican culture, composed with the views of foreigners in mind.

Due to the success of the first incarnation of Mexico City’s Day of the Dead parade, it will probably become a yearly tradition. The event is essentially a Day of the Dead digest, a show, rather than a participatory tradition. But for a short-term visitor who wants to see Mexican death culture, it might be exactly what you’re looking for. 

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