ELYSIAN Summer GREEN Issue 2022

ELYSIAN Women Inspiring Women

DISPLAY UNTIL SEPT. 1, 2022

New Rome 5 Original Digital C Print, under Acrylic Glass 39.3 inches x 39.3 inches

By Isabelle Menin

764 MIAMI CIRCLE, SUITE 132 ATLANTA, GEORGIA 30324 (404) 352-8775

www.pryorfineart.com

Sinking Not Sinking #3 Original Digital C Print, under Acrylic Glass 41 inches x 33.6 inches

By Isabelle Menin

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Rhapsody in Green

Daalarna Couture is known for modern and unique designs made to haute couture quality standards.

BY SAMANTHA PAIGE

ELYSIAN Volume 8 • Issue 2 • The GREEN Issue / été 2022 • l’édition verte

Rita Hayworth

BY LAURIE BOGART WILES

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La Verde Vita Though the emotion green is meant to convey varies from artist to artist, the color was in time freed from its conventional purpose of replicating nature.

BY HANNAH SHEPARD SIMPSON

FEATURES

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Part-Irish and Half-Spanish, Rita Hayworth’s sultry sexuality took Hollywood by storm as the love goddess.

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Charm of the Emerald Isle

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Ireland, land of legend and lore. BY DAINA SAVAGE

Inspiring Women Kristi Noem page 140 Laura Turner Seydel page 154 INTERVIEWED BY KAREN FLOYD

DEPARTMENTS

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food&dining A path to a more flavorful life. BY MARCY DUBROFF

4656

home&garden

Succulents, no green thumb necessary. BY VERITY GALSWORTHY

health&beauty

60shopping

Masques faciaux verts. BY PEARL LUSTRE

Green with envy. BY SINDIE FITZGERALD-RANKIN

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mind&body philanthropy

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Photosyntheisis: The green machine. BY CORA WALDEN

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The Rainforest Foundation. BY WINIFRED TOWNSEND

back story

ELYSIAN launches its 2022 Spring issue in Palm Beach, Florida.

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architecture&interiors Green is the new grey. BY CHRISTY NIELSON

E publisher

Karen Floyd c r e at o r - i n - c h i e f

Ryan Stalvey

executive editor

Laurie Bogart Wiles &

media

production director

Rob Springer

director of web design

&

development

Elliot Derhay

editorial director

comptroller

Anna Christian post-production editor

Elise Rimmer

post-production graphics

Ty Yachaina

d i g i ta l p r o j e c t s d i r e c t o r

Cory Loken

sales

&

m a r k e t i n g c o o r d i n at o r

Charlotte Jones

s o c i a l m e d i a d i g i ta l d i r e c t o r

Kristin Streetman

a n a ly t i c s

&

d i g i ta l c o n t e n t s p e c i a l i s t

Jackson Ellett

women inspiring women

Karen Floyd

contributing writers

Marcy Dubroff, Sindie Fitzgerald-Rankin, Verity Galsworthy, Pearl Lustre, Christy Nielson, Samantha Paige, Daina Savage, Hannah Shepard Simpson. Winifred Townsend, Cora Walden copy editors

Nancy Brady, Monya Havekost, Diane High, Hadley Inabinet inspiring women editor

Hannah Shepard Simpson managing

Editor

Cathy Ellett

contributing editors

Kimberli Scott website editor

Celia Cooksey

social media specialists

Ashlin Cash, Haley Hudson c o n s u lt i n g e d i t o r

Jason Spencer

d i g i ta l s a l e s d i r e c t o r

Michael Uhrinek

d i g i ta l s t r at e g y

&

development director

Daniel Patton, Kevin Pham

advertising director

Nancy Cooper

event director

Bea Smith

c i r c u l at i o n s p e c i a l i s t

Greg Wolfe

contributing photographers

Ryan Garvin, Chris Joriann, Michael Paniccia, Tanya Ptitsyn, Nathan Roe, Cassi Sherbert

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ELYSIAN Magazine is published four times per year by Palladian Publications LLC, 113 W. Main St., Spartanburg, SC 29306.

For subscription information, call 888-329-9534; visit subscriptions@elysianservice.com; mailing address: Subscription Service, Elysian Magazine PO Box 2172, Williamsport, PA 17703 All rights reserved. Printed in the USA.

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Behind the scenes with the men and women of ELYSIAN. From top to bottom, left to right: Sales and Marketing Coordinator Charlotte Jones; Post-Production Editor Elise Rimmer, Media and Production Director Rob Springer, and Post-Production Graphics Ty Yachaina; Website Editor Celia Cooksey; Creator-in-Chief Ryan Stalvey; Digital Director Kevin Pham; and Executive Editor Laurie Bogart Wiles.

Rita Allison

NO WATER, NO LIFE. NO BLUE, NO GREEN.” — SYLVIA EARLE

I chose

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reen environmentally friendly architecture, the mystery and magic of green tea, and works of art centered on a green palette are among our feature articles. We examine how photosynthesis works for you; the health benefits of succulent plants and how green facial masks can revitalize your skin. The OMD Movement, an advocacy group created by noted environmental leader and philanthropist Suzy Amis Cameron, is explored. Last but finally our ICON features the life of Rita Hayworth, the late American actress known around the world as “the love goddess,” whose end-of-life suffering brought an awareness to Alzheimer’s as never before.

ELYSIAN was created and is committed to inspire, elevate, and connect women over forty, who embrace the next chapter of their lives with enthusiasm, curiosity, and passion. This summer’s Green issue allows us a moment to redefine our inflection points and create the most unique hues of green imaginable.

Thank you for taking the journey with us.

Much love,

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Karen Floyd Publisher

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PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRIS JORIANN

this quote from “Her Deepness”—a pseudo name the New Yorker gave to Sylvia Earle—the renowned oceanographer and living legend as a National Geographic Society Explorer.

Why, you might ask? Though water is the source of everything, the result of this life creator, is growth and renewal . . . which is represented in the color green.

Because this issue is dedicated to everything green . . . from start to finish—cover to cover—it seemed only natural to explore the psychology of the color. On the surface, green represents nature, most certainly because we connect green with shrubs, grass and evergreens. But there is an endurance to the color, like a beautiful old white pine, aging without notice as it stands so grand in the forest, weathering years of drought and storms. Green is visually soothing, reflecting harmony and stability, but it is not a primary color. In its most basic form green is the combination of two colors, blue and yellow . . . and the inflection point becomes an array of unending sequences and variations of the color.

The purpose of this Publishers Letter is most decidedly to use the color green as a metaphor for that invisible line or inflection point in decisions both personal and environmental, that if done through self-awareness and stewardship can result in infinite possibilities. At the crux is a single question, “How much is enough . . . and what is the tipping point when the seemingly impossible state of balance and harmony feels out of reach?” . . . with unending personal, universal, economic and environmental demands.

In this issue we explore the lives of two Inspiring Women, our cover Governor Kristi Noem and activist and author Laura Turner Seydel (daughter of CNN founder Ted Turner). The influence their fathers (two men who shared a passion for ranching) had on them is undeniable. Though approaches differ, both women share a common passion for protecting our natural resources, a legacy they see for their children and beyond. This coupled with their personal love of nature and intentional environmental pursuits, binds them and serves as examples for others. ELYSIAN hopes that for just a moment in time, you can be inspired by two interviews, albeit serving different viewpoints, with equal respect and admiration.

DEDICADO A TI, 2021 acrylic on canvas 110 x 72 in

by JORGE LUIS SANTOS

EVEY FINE ART / PALM BEACH artevey.com

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architecture&interiors

Green is the new grey

BY CHRISTY NIELSON

Green works particularly well for soft furnishings, according to our experts.

Nothing is more elegant than a dark green velvet couch, especially set against this deep teal wall.

NELIA L / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

Opposite: Anna Hayman worked with Fenwick and Tilbrook to create the neo mint shade that envelops this room.

The carefully balanced hue changes dramatically with the light.

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF GREG PENN

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h This home by Megan Dufresne, principal designer at MC Design, embraces green in all its glory from rich jewel-toned lounge seating to pale green cabinets in the kitchen and bar areas.

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MC DESIGN

ow do you feel about the color green? It turns out green is a color that can conjure powerful emotions for people. On one hand, it symbolizes the fresh, earthy elements of grass, plants and trees that evoke feelings of renewal, rebirth, peace, comfort, and relaxation.

It is the signature color of the environmental movement with calls to “go green,” and is associated with wealth and good fortune (“the luck of the Irish,” for example). However, the darker side of the color, psychologically speaking, is one of greed, materialism, and jealousy (as in the idiom “green with envy”).

Whatever your personal feelings are about the verdant color, there is no doubt that it is one of the hottest hues in interior design right now. Many factors have converged to move green to the top of the color wheel, including the pandemic turning our attention

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PHOTOCREO MICHAL BEDNAREK / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

Opposite: The only thing more fabulous than all of the shoe storage is the multiple uses of green in this luxurious closet designed by Philip Nimmo.

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This light-filled room by Shazalynn Cavin Winfrey overlooks a garden, making the use of green a natural fit to connect to the outdoors.

PHOTOGRAPH BY LESLEY UNRUH

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Architect Andrew Mikhael designed this shower area to have a luxe look, outfitted in chevron cut marble in multiple shades of earthy green. A band of handmade ceramic tile wraps the walls and shower ceiling.

PHOTOGRAPH BY OLEG MARCH

toward more natural elements, indoor/outdoor living trends, an emphasis on sustainability, and growing enthusiasm for biophilic design. Green also was a key color in the popular Art Deco movement, which incorporated teal, emerald, neo-mint, and jade, as well as the resurgence of retro’s playful, eclectic stylings (think avocado and olive green).

“It’s kind of neat that as time goes on colors come back into fashion due to the association people have with them,” says Jennifer Guerin, Principal of JG Color Studios in California and an IACCNA certified color consultant who is a self-described “color nerd.”

“Right now, greens are having a resurgence because they are seen as futuristic colors.”

Manufacturers are riding the green wave, producing appliances, vanities, furniture, accessories, textiles, wallpaper prints and paint colors that span the spectrum from bright kelly and rich emerald to soft sage and mellow mint. Green has clearly hit the scene as an on-trend color, and the design experts we surveyed are here for it.

“Green is incredibly versatile, much more so than blue—green can be wider in its nuance,” notes Anna Hayman of Anna Hayman Designs

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in the United Kingdom. “Green can be fresh, dark, and exotic, or it can be very stately, somber, and traditional,” Hayman argues. “If you are using a slicker, more glamorous scheme, green works fantastically in soft furnishings. You can’t beat green velvet for elegance.”

Guerin agrees. “You can use green in so many ways. If you use the muted tones—sages, olives, celadons, and moss greens—you can really play with those and have a very tranquil environment. But you also have that other side where you can go very bold in the jewel tones and the yellow-greens and really pump up a space with a lot of color.”

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lisberg Parker Architects, an integrated firm in Connecticut, loves to use vibrant colors like green in its designs. “Pops of strong color are more popular today, especially in contemporary design, which tends to embrace color and texture rather than layers of patterns,”

explains Principal and Founding Partner Susan Alisberg. “A rich deep green seems to be favored now, and it is a great accent with neutral tones.” She says the firm’s clients have become more adventurous in their color preferences of late. “Green walls or green cabinets are popular. People are not afraid of color, and many clients have mentioned that they do not want neutral spaces.” She adds, “Green can be bold, but it is easy to live with.”

Iconic Canadian designer and artist Ferris Rafauli has been a fan of green for many years and says he’s happy to see the design world embracing it. “Everything is more beautiful with a splash of green,” Rafauli states. “It brings any space to life yet, at the same time, has a calming and organic quality to it. Whether it is the interior of a vintage Porsche or a luxurious room, there is just something about the color green that is fabulous and timeless.”

There are numerous ways to incorporate green into your home in a sophisticated way. Here are some recommendations from our experts.

The white marble string softens the repetition of the green tiles and accentuates the symmetry of this room designed by Robert Couturier.

PHOTOGRAPH BY TIM STREET PORTER

Above: The green art deco style tile on the walls helps to create a soothing spa-like atmosphere in this beautiful bathroom.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW ATKINSON / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

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The use of green tiles, such as these rustic-looking, pressed-tin antique ceiling tiles with oriental pattern, is one of the best ways to incorporate the popular color into your home.

PHOTOGRAPH RENATA ZELIC / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

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Green goes glam in this creation by Philip Nimmo that uses layers of celadon to achieve an opulent, regal feel.

PHOTOGRAPH BY TIM STREET PORTER

Opposite: The textural quality of jade-veined, white Italian marble of the custom countertops and backsplash sets off this modern interpretation of the 20th century Craftsman period in this ivy-green and white kitchen.

INTERIORS DESIGNED BY FERRIS RAFAULI

TEST BEFORE YOU COMMIT. If going green—especially

into the bold or bright shades—makes you nervous, Guerin suggests playing with the color in a small way before going all in.

“Try it on a handle, cabinet, towel or in portions of a rug first,” Guerin proposes. “Then, if you really love it, go for it!”

Hayman has this take: “I think the best application of green is with tiles. Glossy green tiles have such an impact, especially in a bathroom.” When it comes to textiles Hayman says, “Green patterned curtains bring a luxurious feel, and often work well with nature outside the window. Throws and cushions in knits and velvet textures are a great way to update a plainer couch.”

TAKE LIGHTING INTO CONSIDERATION. The amount of

illumination in a room—including natural light—is an important consideration when selecting a shade of green, says Shazalynn Cavin-Winfrey, lead designer at SCW Interiors, LLC, in Virginia. “It is important that the color does not shrink the

room by absorbing all the natural light,” she asserts. “Greens differ in different landscapes, so choose one that works with the environment.” You can use paint and fabric swatches and tile samples to look at the colors in various parts of the room during different times of day so there will not be any surprises.

PICK THE RIGHT HUE (OR TWO). Nikki Klugh, principal designer of California’s Nikki Klugh Design Group, Inc., says green can be tricky so you need to pick your shade carefully. “If you go too dark your space will feel small, and if you go too light it can appear more white than green.” According to Klugh, the key is to layer your room with tones of green that are similar but not exactly the same. “You can do this through pillows, décor pieces, curtains, furniture, and an accent wall,” she says.

PLAY WITH GREEN PAINT’S PLACEMENT AND SHEEN. When painting with green, where you use the color and the amount

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Alisberg Parker Architects carefully balanced the strong grass green hemp wallcovering with the more neutral hues in this luxurious living room.

PHOTOGRAPH BY WES TARCA

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Carrera marble with jade veins provide accents on the center island and hood over the gas range to visually unify its utilitarian application as countertop and backsplash in this green-and-white kitchen. Custom partial overlay kitchen cabinetry compliments the complex architectural elements of the crown molding ceiling. Opposite: Designer and artist Rafauli says everything is more beautiful with a splash of green, and this ultra luxe room proves it INTERIORS DESIGNED BY FERRIS RAFAULI

of sheen it has can make a significant impact on its effect in your space.

“I don’t think that you can use too much green and very much favor taking the color over the ceiling as well as on the walls,” says Farrow & Ball Color Curator Joa Studholme. “This will make the perceived ceiling height in the room go up as you can’t tell where the walls end, and the ceiling begins.” She adds, “Using full gloss on the ceiling will bounce around any available light and also feel very glamorous!”

BRING THE OUTSIDE IN. Greenery, such as ferns, a living

wall, and succulents are an easy way to incorporate green into a space without too much of a commitment. This not only elevates

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the outdoor feel of your indoor spaces, but it also imbues the room with lush textures. Studholme has this pro tip for maximizing the nature effect in a space: “Paint the window frames the same color as the walls rather than reverting to a white on the trim which will form a visual barrier between the two,” she advocates. ■ Editor’s note: If you are intrigued to learn more about the history of the color green and how its popularity has evolved through the years, here are a few books that can help: Color: Messages and Meanings (Leatrice Eiseman); Green: The History of a Color (Michel Pastoureau); The Secret Lives of Colour (Kassia St. Clair); and Colour (Victoria Finlay).

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The emerald drapes in this sophisticated dining room by Alisberg Parker Architects create a dramatic pop of color.

PHOTOGRAPH BY WES TARCA

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food&dining

a Path to a More

Flavorful Life

BY MARCY DUBROFF

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Long Coc Tea Hill in Tan Son, Phu Tho, located near Hanoi, is considered one of the most beautiful tea hills in Vietnam.The majority of tea trees here have existed for more than 20 years and can be harvested after 45 days.

PHOTOGRAPH BY HIEN PHUNG THU / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

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j

udy is my guide through the tea section of her store, showing me more than 80 varieties, ranging from Pu-erh to herbals, whites to blacks and, most prominently, 13 green teas, ranging from Marrakesh Mint to Jasmine Pearls. These green teas occupy a central part of Judy’s display, and rightly so — they are some of her most popular products sold in her bustling store. In fact, Judy’s selection represents just a fraction of the thousands of green teas that are available in today’s marketplace. Green tea is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world and is so popular that the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations predicts that its production will reach 3.6 million tons by 2027.

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rown mainly in Asian countries, but also in places as diverse as India, Sri Lanka, South Carolina, and New Zealand, the source of green tea is the leaves of the Camellia sinensis var. sinensis (China bush) plant, which typically grows and thrives on cool mountainsides. All tea (white, black, yellow, and green) is derived from this same family of plant; however it is the preparation and manufacture of the leaves that determines the type of tea that is produced. In the case of green tea, the plant’s leaves are harvested after a short growing

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Tea consumption has its legendary origins in China during the reign of mythological Emperor Shennong. A book written by Lu Yu in 618–907 AD (Tang dynasty), The Classic of Tea, is considered important in green tea history.

The Kissa Yojoki (Book of Tea), written by Zen priest Eisai in 1211, describes how drinking green tea may affect five vital organs, the shapes of tea plants, flowers and leaves, and how to grow and process tea leaves.

PHOTOGRAPH BY K321 / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

season and then quickly heated and dried to prevent them from losing their color and flavor. In Japan, the leaves are steamed, while in China, the leaves are pan-fired. Each of these processes of applying heat prevents oxidation, which is what results in the tea being labeled as green. When brewed, these leaves usually have a green, yellow, or light brownish color, and their flavor ranges from earthy to sweet, depending on the preparation of the leaves, and the terroir, or type of environment in which the tea was grown.

Green tea is widely considered to have originated in China, with one popular legend suggesting that Emperor Shen Nung discovered the beverage in 2737 B.C., when fresh tea leaves wafted from a tea plant into his cup of freshly boiled water while he was sitting in his garden. “He was immediately interested in the pleasant scent of the resulting brew,” says Gitomer, “and drank some.” Shen Nung felt invigorated and named the brew “ch’a” which is the Chinese character meaning to check or investigate and symbolizes the way tea brings humankind into balance with nature. Others credit the use of tea to the Buddhists in the 500s B.C. who produced tea much like their Catholic counterparts in European monasteries produced wine. The Buddhist monks drank tea for refreshment and as an aid to meditation, and they helped spread this spiritual and social practice across China.

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he first recording of tea as a medicinal beverage dates back to China in the 3rd century A.D., and the popularity of the drink has only grown exponentially since then, as drinking tea became valued for everyday pleasure and refreshment. In European culture, tea drinking is best personified by the British who are known for their afternoon tea breaks, replete with scones and sandwiches.

Tea made its way to America in the 1650s when Dutch traders brought it to what is now New York. Today, tea drinks, both hot and iced, are on the menus at most coffeeshops, with Americans consuming more than 84 billion servings in 2019 alone. And the benefits of tea drinking, especially green tea, recently have received a great deal of attention, with research studies and articles in popular magazines touting its medicinal benefits. Gitomer believes that green tea, in particular, has become more in vogue as people “have learned about its healthful properties, including its effect on heart health, reduced risk of stroke, and lower levels of LDL, or bad cholesterol, among many others.”

Any benefits that arise from consuming green tea are thanks to its lack of processing, according to Dr. Gail Webster, who taught a class at North Carolina’s Guilford College that examined chemistry through the lens of food and food preparation. “Green tea is rich in polyphenols (plant chemicals

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A young Akha woman collects tea leaves from a tea plantation at Fu Shui Fong, Thailand.

PHOTOGRAPH BY SARAVUTPICS / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

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that give tea its distinctive flavor and aroma) that include catechins and epigallocatechin gallate,” explains Webster.

“These are powerful antioxidants and have been linked in some studies to a positive effect on overall health.”

A 2016 article in Asian Pacific Journal of Medicine elaborates on some of these benefits, citing reduced risks of severe illnesses such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and neurodegenerative ailments. And in a 2019 Nature article, green tea was linked to positive effects on mood and cognitive function, reporting that in a Korean study, those who “habitually drank green tea were 21 percent less likely to develop depression over their lifetimes than those who were non-drinkers.”

Gitomer believes that the caffeine in green tea is another reason that the beverage is so popular, saying that the caffeine boost from green tea is a gradual and sustained process, “a persistent lift” she says, while the same boost from coffee results in much more of a “crash and burn” effect. Webster is quick to point out that consumers should always do their homework when purchasing items such as green tea for nutritional or medicinal purposes. “Sometimes, if you are just buying things off the shelf at a supermarket, you don’t know if you are getting a high enough dosage of the chemical compounds for them to be beneficial,” she cautions.

Both Webster and Gitomer also extol the virtues of looseleaf tea as opposed to buying the tea in tea bags. “The bags are convenient, but what is in them is essentially dust,” says Gitomer. “In order for a tea to fully release its flavor, the leaves need a great deal of room to expand. Due to their restricted area, tea bags use what is, essentially, left at the bottom of the barrel, equating to a much less flavorful cup of tea.” Gitomer also says that loose leaf tea, if stored properly, will retain its flavor and aroma for about a year. After that time, the tea will still be drinkable, but those qualities will start to dissipate. “The key is to keep it stored in an airtight container, and away from light.”

Of

course, health benefits aside, drinking green tea is a sensory experience to be savored.

Gitomer says that to fully enjoy a cup of green tea, special attention must be paid to the temperature of the water and how long the leaves are steeped. She also suggests starting with a green tea that is cut with other spices, as it takes a while to develop a palate for the complexities of the beverage. “I would also suggest using a teapot with a filtration top,” she says. This allows the leaves to open and the water to flow around them. The water should be about 180 degrees and you should never steep your leaves for more than three minutes, as the tea will become too bitter.

Sencha is a type of Japanese ryokucha green tea, which is prepared by steaming the processed whole tea leaves in hot water. This is as opposed to matcha, powdered Japanese green tea, where the green tea powder is mixed with hot water and, therefore the leaf itself is included in the beverage. These Japanese teas tend to have a invigorating flavor that can be described as vegetal, seaweedy or grassy. The flavors will vary with different types of sencha and the brewing process.

Gitomer and Webster also both touted the use of green tea in cooking. “A lot of people use green tea instead of water in recipes,” said Webster. “In many cases, you can make delicious pastas and baked goods, and the green tea infuses the dish with its distinct flavor. “Green tea also adds taste and color to both sweet and savory dishes,” adds Gitomer.

But perhaps the joy of consuming green tea is best summed up

by William Ewart Gladstone, the former British Prime Minister, who touted the benefits of enjoying a simple, fragrant beverage when he wrote,

IF YOU ARE COLD, TEA WILL WARM YOU; IF YOU ARE TOO HEATED, IT WILL COOL YOU; IF YOU ARE DEPRESSED, IT WILL CHEER YOU; IF YOU ARE EXCITED, IT WILL CALM YOU.”

BARBARA GORECKA PHOTOGRAPHY / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

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Detail of the only tea growing fields in Europe, found on the northern part of São Miguel island, Azores. Strictly organic tea growing with local production. Tea workers visible on upper right.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MATTHEW_K / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

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SUCCUL PHOTOGRAPH BY KANEA / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

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home&garden

ULENTs, no green thumb necessary

BY VERITY GALSWORTHY

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a

bundant in nature and popular as houseplants because of their hardiness and the minimal care and soil quality they require, succulents thrive where most other plants cannot—in full sun and in dry conditions—planted in gardens, along walls, in hanging planters, and make especially attractive houseplants. In botany, the thickened, fleshy core of succulent plants retain water, become engorged, and siphon and store the water in their leaves and stems. The water content of some succulents is as high as 95 percent, which allows them to withstand long periods of drought, and survive even under the most difficult conditions. Because of their inherent hardiness, succulents symbolize “enduring and timeless love” in the language of flowers. Succulent plants also come in a multitude of shapes, textures, hues, and variegations of green, and their flowers range across the full spectrum of color.

“Succulent” comes from the Latin word sucus, which means “sap” or” juice.” In Feng shui, succulents represent gold and money, which brings luck, prosperity, abundance, and wealth. (However, beware! It is bad luck to have a thorny-leafed succulent as an indoor houseplant!) Kalanchoe symbolizes eternal love. The jade plant (Crassula ovata) is also known as the “money plant” because it brings good fortune and wealth when it blooms. Sedum invites tranquility and is believed to repel lightning. Euphorbia, also known as “crown of thorns,” is a symbol of protection and persistence.

Because of their unusual properties, succulent plants were variously used in pagan rituals to thwart off evil and, in some

The succulent plant Echeveria parva (Crassulaceae family) is an old hybrid of Echeveria purposorum and rumoured Echeveria secunda ‘Pumilla.’ It is one of the most popular and easily recognizable varieties of the succulents. The leaves consist of similar markings found on its mother, Echeveria purposorum. It also features a very structural rosette and can grow very tall to create columns of spiky, short leaves.

PHOTOGRAPH BY 9091086 / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

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cultures, are still believed to bring good luck in the home and prevent household accidents to this day. Let’s take a look at some of the genus and species of the succulent family.

AGAVE

Agave is sold in grocery and specialty food stores and through online suppliers as a syrup or granulated, like sugar. Agave is a sweetener—1.5 times sweeter than sugar, with about 60-calories per tablespoon compared to 40 calories per tablespoon for white granulated sugar. In addition to being a sugar substitute, agave can be used in place of honey or maple syrup. Agave is a delightful ingredient in baking and cooking—just use a little less than you would sugar, or search out recipes that specifically use agave, such as pumpkin agave muffins, agave-sweetened lemon meringue pie, and roasted turnips and winter squash with agave drizzle. If you have diabetes, limit agave as you would any sugar. Even if you are not diabetic, the American Heart Association recommends limiting sweeteners to no more than six-teaspoons a day for women.

Agave is a genus of monocots that are native to hot regions of Mexico, Central and South America, the Mediterranean, India, and certain areas of the continental United States. Their strong, spikey leaves form large rosettes and once the plant flowers, it will soon die. Some varieties can live for 60 years before flowering for the first time—and one species in particular, Agave havardiana, (also known as “Harvard agave” or the “century plant”) blooms just once in a hundred years.

Because it is strong and hardy with its sword-shaped leaves, agave represents security and is believed to protect you from harm.

The stem, or “mast,” of agave plants can grow 40-feet high.

We wrote of the capacity of succulents to retain water: an agave of average height will produce 200 milligrams of sugar in nectar a day—a staggering amount when you compare it to a garden flower like penstemon, which produces only two to three milligrams of sugar a day. The nectar from agave plants attracts wild birds, and game birds such as dove and pigeon attract hunters—but hunters beware! The razor-tipped frond of a tall agave can poke you in the eye if you make a sudden turn to level and if it does, your eye will swell up immediately to the size of a tennis ball and turn black.

Agave leaves and roots are also processed to be taken orally as medicine to treat certain symptoms, such as constipation. Applied topically as an ointment, it can reduce swelling and inflammation on the skin, and can be applied to skin cancers. But remember the old adage, “too much of a good thing can be too much,” and if you use too much agave, side-effects can result. In fact, agave can result in an adverse reaction for some people, causing swelling, redness, skin sores, and skin irritation. In some women, agave can even bring about uterine contractions. Importantly, agave has been deemed unsafe for pregnant women and lactating women.

Consult your pharmacist or doctor if you plan to use agave.

For home and garden, though, agave is a delightful plant that is as easy and carefree to grow both indoors and out. Outdoors, it thrives

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Mammillaria bocasana is a flowering species of cactus in the subfamily Cactoideae. Because of its clusters of silky white hairs, with each cluster surrounding a yellow-to-red hooked spine, it is often sold as a “powder puff” cactus, or as a “Powder Puff Pincushion.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY ABC_U / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

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in poor soil and heat that would otherwise wilt most garden plants.

Plant your agave plant in sandy or gritty soil—it is imperative the soil drains quickly because agave cannot tolerate fertilized or loamy soil. If your soil is moist, build a raised bed, about 12- to 18-inches high, and fill it with a sand and perlite mix (you can get this at your local nursery) with just a little organic matter sifted in. Plant your young agave plants to a depth of four-inches. If you are planting a spacious cactus and agave bed, buy a soil test kit (also available at your local garden supplier or online). The pH should be between 6.6 and 6.8. You can tell if the soil is off because the agave leaves will turn pale and translucent, in which case you will need to add lime or aluminum sulfate to the top few inches of soil, and then water. The rule of thumb is 12-ounces of lime will raise the pH of a 25-square-foot bed of soil by .5, and two-ounces of aluminum sulfate will lower the pH by .5 in the same area.

One final word on agave: remember when you raise a glass of Tequila on Cinco de Mayo, you’re drinking distilled agave nectar.

AIZOACEAE

Aizoaceae is from the fig-marigold family of flowering succulents, which is made up of 135 genera and 1,900 species—however, unless you have been to southern Africa, or encountered some of the few found in Australia, it’s unlikely you’ve encountered one. Commonly known as “stone plants” or “carpet weeds” due to their resemblance to stones and pebbles, they are low-growing, distinctively shaped plants with beautiful, vibrantly colored flowers that emerge from glistening, globular bladder-shaped bases that sit on the soil’s surface.

Among the most common are Conophytum ratum, a small succulent

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with a jelly-like body, fused leaves, and a pink and white flower; Lithops hermetica, or “living stones,” which is a dwarf succulent whose single flower springs from fleshy leaves and grows from a solitary clumped body; or Lithops hookeri var. susannae, which looks like a daisy sitting on a lily pod with the daisy-like flower atop its round, scored bulbous body. Certain ones, such as Carpobrotus edulis, commonly known as the “highway ice plant,” or Tetragonia tetragonoides, otherwise called “New Zealand spinach,” have edible leaves that you may find in gourmet salads as a spinach substitute. Interestingly, the fast-growing, solid, and sizeable edulis was introduced to California in the early 20th century to stabilize railroad tracks. Today they are planted and carefully maintained as firewalls in southern California.

ALOE

The genus Aloe consists of more than 560 species of flowering succulent plants and is native to southern Africa, Madagascar, Jordon, the Arabian Peninsula, some islands in the Indian Ocean, and were naturalized in the Mediterranean, the Pacific Rim Islands, and North and South America. Aloe plants are distinctive for their large, thick, fleshy leaves that range from grey-green to bright green and can be striped, mottled, or solid. Their flowers are tubular and bloom yellow, orange, pink or red. Aloe vera, the thick, sticky substance it exudes, was used by the Aztec and Mayan civilizations for medicinal purposes—then, as today, as an antiseptic and antiinflammatory to treat burns, cuts, wounds, sunburns, skin irritations, and pre-cancerous skin conditions. Aloe make wonderful houseplants providing they have constant exposure to ample sun, and spectacular ornamental plants in gardens or potted on patios.

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Haworthia attenuata, commonly known as “zebra haworthia,” is a small species of succulent plant from the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, that is popularly used as an ornamental plant.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MEGAN CHILTON / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM / BELOW: PHOTOGRAPH BY FOLLOWTHEFLOW / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

AEONIUM

Aeonium is a genus of 35 succulent species. They are distinctive, with glossy, waxy leaves that grow in perfect rosettes—so perfect, in fact, they are mistakenly thought to be artificial. Like most succulents, their flowers range from solid to variegated greens with white, yellow, blue, or red flowers, but because they blossom in clusters from the center of the rosettes, they are not as impressive as some of the more flamboyant flowering succulents, like Christmas cacti. And while Aeoniums grow all year-long, it may take as long as five years before they begin to flower. Likewise, they range dramatically in size, from the low-growing A. tabuliforme and A. smithii, which measure only a few inches across, to the A. arboretum, A. valverdense, and A. holochrysum, which are among the larger species that grow several feet across.

CACTUS

Cactus is a member of the plant family Cactaceae and are made up of about 127 genera, with some 1,750 known species of the order Caryophyllales. The word “cactus” derives, through Latin, from the Ancient Greek name originally used by Theophrastus for a spiny plant. All cacti are succulents; however, not all succulents are cacti.

Those succulents that belong to the family Crassulaceae, such as the plush plants and chalk dudleya are not cacti. The spikey cactus in the language of flowers symbolizes protection, bravery, and chastity.

Cactus can be eaten but be careful, because in some people, prickly pear cactus can cause some minor side effects including diarrhea, nausea, increased amount and frequency of stool, bloating, and headache. In rare cases, eating large amounts of prickly pear cactus fruits can cause a blockage in the lower intestines.

ECHEVERIA

Echeveria is a large genus comprised of approximately 150 species and more than 1,000 cultivars of rosette-shaped evergreen succulents with plump, spoon-like leaves. Native to the mountain ranges of Central and South America, this family of cacti are widely held to be among the most beautiful and prolific succulents on earth. Echeveria flowers come in a range of oranges, yellows, and reds, and under proper growing conditions, will rebloom several times a year. Exceedingly popular among florists, interior decorators, wedding planners, and gardeners, this is an excellent choice as a houseplant.

What’s more, echeveria are among the easiest decorative plants to care for, indoors and out, for like all succulents, they require infrequent watering and thrive terrifically in hot, bright sun.

Be careful, however, as with most succulents, echeveria are not frost-tolerant so if you live in northern climes, rather than plant them in your garden plant them in planters that you can bring indoors when the weather starts to turn cold.

Among the best-known varieties are Euphorbia tirucalli, commonly known as pencil plant or fire stick, and though beautiful to look at, the leaves can be toxic if eaten by your cat or dog. Then there’s Haworthia, best known as zebra plant, and Echeveria elegans and Sempervivum, which frequently are called hen and chicks. Kalanchoe, or flaming katy, and Lithops, are variously known as living stone or stoneface. Stone crop or bittercress are the common names for Sedum and another variety, Sedum morganianum, is known as donkey tail or burro’s tail. ■

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Agave is a genus of monocots native to the hot and arid regions of the Americas, although some Agave species are also native to tropical areas of South America. The genus Agave is primarily known for its succulent and xerophytic species that typically form large rosettes of strong, fleshy leaves.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MIN C. CHIU / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

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health&beauty

masques faciaux verts

BY PEARL LUSTRE

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f

acial masks have been used to hydrate, cleanse, and purify the skin down through the ages and though commercially made masks are readily available in drug stores, high-end department stores and boutiques, and online, making your own from ingredients you buy at the grocery store is a smart, efficient, and effective way to achieve glowing results. Although the results are the same, the ingredients vary from time to time and place to place.

Ancient Egyptians, among the hierarchy, were highly focused on beauty as an integral part of their lifestyle. Cleopatra, for example, used dead sea mud or Nile crocodile dung to draw impurities from the skin, then applied egg white to tighten the pores.

The great beauties of ancient Rome made a ritual of facial masks, first scrubbing the skin with a mixture of seeds, Orris root, and honey ground into a paste, then washed off and replaced with a mask made of starch and eggs to tighten the pores. Barley flour mixed with butter cured pimples, and the ashes of snails treated sunspots. A paste made with lentils, lupine, and fennel blended with oils, oregano seeds, sulfur, vinegar, goose grease, basil, and hawthorn made for a glowing complexion and a fine mask was made from the excrement of calves.

In Victorian England, women applied a mixture of lead and vinegar to whiten and brighten the complexion, unaware that lead was toxic. Madam Rowley commercially made a facial mask with Indian gum as the key ingredient, however there was a danger you could suffocate if you fell asleep while the mask hardened.

Subsequently, mashed strawberries were used and if you wanted to soften your skin, ground raw veal was applied to the face.

The ancient science of Ayurveda used various herbs, such as turmeric, roots from plants such as aloe, coconut milk, and flowers to create botanical Ubtan masks to improve the skin, inside and out. In Imperial China, among the earliest evidence of facial masks dates to the Tang dynasty when Yang Guifei, one

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of the Four Ancient Beauties of China, made facial masks from a blend of pearls, jadeite, lotus root, and ginger ground into a fine powder and applied them liberally to the skin. Masks were also created with crushed tea leaves, rice water, and mint leaves made into a paste to protect against dark spots, wrinkles, and age blemishes.

The recipes that follow are far less exotic but equally effective. That doesn’t mean you can’t try grinding up some pearls or slathering animal dung on your face. There are, after all, a myriad of choices.

GREEN HYDRATING FACIAL MASKS

These homemade masks are utterly delicious for your skin and hair. To prepare your home spa, set aside a block of peaceful, interruption-free time, choose some soft music, arrange some candles in your bathroom, and set out some bath beads for when you’re ready to draw your bath.

You will then go to the kitchen to make two masks—one for your hair and one for your face. Prepare your masks when you are ready for your spa. Masks should always be freshly made.

Once you have made the masks, return to the bathroom, undress, and slip on a comfortable robe. You can run the bath at this point—not too hot! Hot water dries out the skin. And drop in a bath oil bead. Light the candles, turn on the music, and shut the bathroom door.

Recipe for a Nourishing GREEN TEA Hair Mask Yogurt is very good for frizzy hair and dandruff, strengthens the hair shaft, and nourishes and helps hair grow. Apply twice a week for best results.

In a bowl, thoroughly and gently blend by hand with a spatula: 1 cup of yogurt 3 tablespoons green tea 2 tablespoons pure organic honey To apply: First, wash your hair, rinse, then thoroughly towel dry. You need not comb out your hair. Next, apply the mask a little at a time and work it into your scalp with your fingertips, from your hairline to the nape of your neck. When you’ve applied all of the mask, run your fingers through your hair to be sure you have covered the shafts right to the ends.

Wrap your hair around your head and put on a shower cap—the best are the shower caps provided in some hotel rooms. Leave for one hour then wash off with a mild shampoo. In the meantime, you’re ready to apply your facial mask.

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Hydrating AVOCADO Facial Masks Avocado is a heart-healthy superfood with over 20 different vitamins and minerals that are central to good health, inside and out. Packed with antioxidants, avocado oil not only nourishes your skin but calms redness and inflammation.

Remove the skin and pit from one avocado and mash well in a small bowl with the back of a fork. (You can blend the ingredients smoothly in a blender or with a hand-held electric mixer, if you desire.)

Add a teaspoon of fresh lemon juice. Not only is lemon juice a natural astringent, but it will keep the avocado from turning black.

Add two tablespoons of honey and continue to mix. Honey can heal acne, eczema, and psoriasis.

Fold in one cup of plain Greek or full-fat yogurt.

Wash your face thoroughly with soap, rinse, and pat dry. Smooth the mask on your face and neck, avoiding your eyes and mouth. You’re going to allow the mask to work its magic for about 20 minutes.

Now you’re ready to light the candles, turn on the music, take off your robe and step into the tub and bask in its warmth.

CUCUMBER Facial Mask Cucumbers, too, are packed with antioxidants, and are rich in vitamins A, B1, C, biotin, and potassium. They have anti-inflammatory qualities that tone and hydrate your skin, leaving it bright and lustrous. Slice cucumbers in a pitcher of water for a refreshing, cleansing drink, as well.

To make a cucumber mask, peel one cucumber and mash the pulp with the back of a fork or cut into chunks and blend in a blender till it’s a smooth paste.

If you have acne or your skin is irritated from sunburn, add a tablespoon of aloe vera gel to the cucumber. Or, if your skin is dry, mix the pulp with two tablespoons of plain yogurt to pump extra moisture into your skin.

Apply as above after you’ve thoroughly washed your face and patted dry. If your skin is particularly oily, take a cotton ball and lightly drench with witch hazel, which is a gentle, natural astringent, and daub your face and neck, being careful to avoid your eyes. Apply the mask with your fingertips or a facial brush and smooth it evenly on your face and neck. Let it dry for 15 minutes, then wash off with a soft washcloth and lukewarm water after you get out of the bath.

LIME Facial Mask Lime has a higher citric acid content than lemons. If you have blemishes or acne, limes are more effective, so do not substitute this mask with lemons. What’s more, limes are a whitening agent that can lighten dark spots and reduce the size of pores.

In a small bowl, pour two tablespoons of raw honey. To this, add a half-teaspoon of raw or Demerara sugar and a halfteaspoon of fine sea salt.

Wash a lime. Grate about a half-teaspoon of lime zest and add to the mixture, then add a teaspoon of lime juice and some of the pulp. Blend well. This is a runny mixture so do not apply in a sauna or direct sunlight. Massage the mixture in small, circular motions over your face and neck—being very careful to avoid your eyes. Leave the mask on for about 20 minutes, then wet your fingers with warm water and again gently massage your face with your fingertips in a circular motion, washing your hands as you remove the mask from your face. Press gently with a warm, damp facecloth then pat your skin dry with a soft, fresh towel.

HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU APPLY A MASK?

Treat yourself to a facial mask once a week as part of your routine. If you have large pores, inflammation or acne, or extremely dry skin, apply a mask twice a week. Facial masks can work wonders and give you a youthful glow that no makeup can mimic—but remember, it’s not the be all and end all to good skin.

Drink plenty of water every day—eight glasses, at least—and if you drink juice, make it freshly squeezed. Citrus fruits are acidic so add a little water or crushed ice to the juice.

Avoid sodas altogether.

Red meats, spicy foods, and all junk foods can make your skin breakout so eat sparingly.

Stress can wreak havoc on your skin so as much as possible, STAY CALM. Last but not least, get a good 8 to 12 hours of sleep every night.

Truly, the key to beautiful skin is a restful night’s sleep. ■

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shopping

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green with envy

M

BY SINDIE FITZGERALD-RANKIN

ore coveted than diamonds, rubies, or sapphires, emeralds are the rarest gemstone. Verdant, shimmering, and valued beyond measure, all emeralds have jardins (“garden”), inclusions that refract the light, drawing the eye deeper into its eternal garden.

Cherished by Cleopatra, Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal, and Elizabeth Taylor, emeralds have bewitched mankind for more than four millennium. “Nothing greens greener than emeralds,” declared the Ancient Roman naturalist Pliny. ■

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Love

the

GODDESS

The Dazzling, Remarkable, Jaded Life of Rita Hayworth.

by Laurie Bogart Wiles

Studio portrait of Rita Hayworth taken by legendary Hollywood photographer George Hurrell for Columbia Pictures in 1941.

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On

OCTOBER 17, 1918, LESS THAN A MONTH BEFORE THE END OF WORLD WAR I, Margarita Carmen Cansino was born in Brooklyn, New York. This is important if you are to understand her story because it was during the second World War that her future took flight. The firstborn and only daughter of three children born to Romani gypsies, she was born to dance. “As soon as I could stand on my own feet, I was given dance lessons.

Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, that was my girlhood,” the woman the world would know as Rita Hayworth said of her unconventional childhood. Rita’s paternal grandfather was Antonio Cansino, the renowned classical Spanish dancer who popularized the bolero and ran a dancing school in Madrid.

Her father, Eduardo Cansino, was 21-years-old when he immigrated from Castilleja de la Cuesta on the Andalusia peninsula to America. In 1917, he met his future wife, Volga Hayworth, who was his dance partner in the Ziegfeld Follies. Together they would form a vaudeville act called The Dancing Cansinos, which included young Rita. She was four-years-old when she made her Broadway debut in the 1922 production, The Greenwich Village Follies at the Winter Garden Theater.

In 1927, Eduardo moved his family to Hollywood to establish his own dance studio. The first talking picture, The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson, had just been released and Eduardo had a hunch that dancing was going to be the next big thing in the emergent motion picture industry. He was right. Soon MGM, Universal, Paramount Pictures, Warner Brothers, and Columbia began sending him students from their stable of contract stars who had been cast in their motion picture musicals, such as James Cagney and “blonde bombshell” Jean Harlow and the greatest dancer of them all, Fred Astaire, who was a great admirer of Eduardo’s technique.

When Rita was eight, she made her first film, La Fiesta, for Warner Bros.

It was the beginning of a career that would last almost a half-century, in which she appeared in 61 major motion pictures, most notably Only Angels Have Wings (1939), The Lady from Shanghai (1947), Pal Joey (1957), Separate Tables (1958) and two dance/musical films with Fred Astaire, You’ll Never Get Rich (1941) and You Were Never Lovelier (1942.)

Yet, fame did not come quickly or easily to the young woman who dreamt of becoming a movie star. In 1934, when she was 16, she was signed to a sixmonth contract at Fox Films, but her option was not renewed. Over the next two years, she was a free-lance, bit-part player in forgettable, small budget films until one day, her luck finally changed. She caught the eye of Harry Cohn, co-founder and president of Columbia Pictures, who saw something wonderful in the girl and signed her to a seven-year contract. But the name

Rita Hayworth in a 1935 publicity still from Columbia Studios when she was put under contract at Columbia, the only Hollywood studio for which she worked.

COURTESY HERITAGE AUCTIONS / HA.COM

Opposite: Hayworth, born Margarita Carmen Cansino, was one of Hollywood’s top stars, appearing in a total of 61 films over 37 years.

Known as “The Love Goddess,” she and Betty Grable were the two top pin-up girls in World War II. MEDIAPUNCH INC / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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‘Cansino’ was Spanish and Rita, with her dark sultry looks, was too exotic. So, he changed Rita’s surname to her mother’s British maiden name, sent her to Columbia’s hair and makeup department, and ordered a complete makeover. Her low hairline was raised with electrolysis, hair dyed chestnut red, her eyebrows plucked, and her curvaceous figure was squeezed into tight, low-cut gowns. In 1937, in the forgettable film, Criminals of the Air, she was credited as Rita Hayworth for the very first time.

In 1939, Cohen urged director Howard Hawks to cast Rita in the small but pivotal role as the man-trap in Only Angels Have Wings, starring two of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Cary Grant and Jean Arthur. The movie won the starlet critical acclaim, and the film was a box office success. From then on, Rita would never work in a “B” film again. The major motion picture that catapulted Rita to fame was the 1941 musical, You’ll Never Get Rich, one of the highest-budget films Columbia ever made, in which she starred opposite, and danced with, the great Fred Astaire. Despite the 30-year age difference, the magnetism between the pair was electric and the film was an instant smash hit. Seizing upon its success, Columbia made You Were Never Lovelier, which was released the following year and was an even greater box office success.

In spite of the ten films Astaire would make with Ginger Rodgers, critics unanimously agreed that Rita was the better partner. As Astaire’s biographer, Peter Levinson, wrote, “Hayworth’s sensuality surpassed Roger’s cool technical expertise and her youthful exuberance meshed perfectly with Fred’s maturity and elegance.” For years, Astaire would avoid the frequently asked question, “Who’s your favorite dance partner?”

“All right, I’ll give you a name,” he finally admitted, quite late in his career. “But if you ever let it out, I’ll swear I lied. It was Rita Hayworth. Rita danced with trained perfection and individuality.”

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1942 Hollywood musical comedy, You Were Never Lovelier, was Hayworth’s first starring role in a big budgeted film from her home studio Columbia Pictures.

Hayworth cooperated enthusiastically with Astaire’s intense rehearsal habits, and was later to remark: “I guess the only jewels in my life are the pictures I made with Fred Astaire.” The picture was very successful at the box office, turning Hayworth into a major star, and provided a welcome boost to Astaire, who felt his career had flagged since he had broken with Ginger Rogers.

TCD/PROD.DB / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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Down to Earth is a 1947 musical comedy film starring Rita Hayworth, Larry Parks, and Marc Platt, and directed by Alexander Hall. The film is a sequel to the 1941 film Here Comes Mr. Jordan, also directed

by Hall. While Edward Everett Horton and James Gleason reprised their roles from the earlier film, Roland Culver replaced Claude Rains as Mr. Jordan.

TCD/PROD.DB / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Opposite: Cover Girl is a 1944 American musical romantic comedy film directed by Charles Vidor and starring Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly. The film tells the story of a chorus girl given a chance at stardom when she is offered an opportunity to be a highly paid cover girl. It was one of the most popular musicals of the war years.

TCD/PROD.DB / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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“There was a kind of reserve about Fred,” biographer Charlie Reinhart wrote in Puttin’ on the Ritz: Fred Astaire and the Fine Art of Panache, A Biography, published in 2009 by St. Martin’s Press, of Astaire’s unparalleled style. “It was charming. It carried over to his dancing. With Hayworth there was no reserve.

She was very explosive. And that’s why I think they really complemented each other.”

That was 1942 and America was at war. If ever America needed someone beautiful and graceful and smiling and full of hope, it was now. Rita Hayworth was in the right place in her life, and the right time for our country, to be proclaimed America’s sweetheart.

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OUR MONTHS BEFORE THE BOMBING OF PEARL HARBOR by the Japanese, Rita was the cover girl of the August 1941 issue of the prestigious national magazine, Life. Dressed scantily in a sheer negligee with a black lace bodice, Bob Landry’s iconic photo established the sultry star and Hollywood actress as the most popular of the “pin-up poster girls” adored by American servicemen in World War II. She stood five-foot, six-inches tall and, according to Celebrity Sleuth magazine at the time, had a 24-inch waist, 36-inch hips, and spilled out of a 36 C bra.

In 1944, Rita starred with Gene Kelly in Cover Girl, a Technicolor™ musical that not only is one of her most popular films but earned her the distinction of being the first of only six women to ever dance on-screen with Fred Astaire and with Gene Kelly. “I guess the only jewels of my life,” she would say years later, “were the pictures I made with Fred Astaire . . . and Cover Girl, too.” For the next three years, Rita was consistently one of the biggest box office draws as she seamlessly moved between dance musicals, dramas, and comedy with equal assurance and skill.

After the war, in 1946, she starred in her most memorable motion picture, Gilda, a film noir directed by Charles Vidor, in which she starred opposite Glenn Ford in the third of six films they would make together. Rita—and Hollywood—were never the same again. Her sultry, femme fatale striptease song-and-dance to Put the Blame on Mame (for which she was dubbed) established her as a cultural icon and caused heart palpitations among the members of the National Board of Censorship of Motion Pictures. Gilda was a life-changer for Ford, as well—not only because Rita accidentally knocked out his two front teeth during an on-screen brawl, but he, like Rita, had experienced multiple marriages and numerous, ill-fated love affairs. The romance that ignited between Ford and Rita would be the most enduring for the lovers—and lasted 40 years, until the tragic decline in her health.

From there, Rita’s career began to wane. In 1947, she starred in the critically acclaimed film noir, The Lady from Shanghai, directed by the second of her five husbands, Orson Welles. But Welles made a lethal mistake: he had Rita’s glorious long hair cut short and her luxurious red locks dyed a startling, unnatural platinum blonde. Audiences were furious, confused, and put off. This was not the Rita Hayworth they had fallen head-over-heels in love with! Where was their Love Goddess? It was no surprise that the film utterly failed at the box office. It was also no surprise that Rita and Welles’ marriage was over.

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ITA WAS MARRIED TO WELLES WHEN SHE MET PRINCE ALY KHAN, one of the wealthiest men in the world, in 1948 in Cannes and began a torrid love affair. Rita divorced Welles on the grounds of mental cruelty, moved to Europe with their daughter, and a year later, married the prince. Now a princess in her own right and the first American actress to marry royalty, she broke her contract with Columbia, turned her back on Hollywood, and walked away from her adoring public. Alas, her happily ever after was not

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Rita Hayworth during special publicity photo sessions for Gilda and The Lady from Shanghai. COURTESY HERITAGE AUCTIONS / HA.COM Hayworth achieved fame during the 1940s as one of the era’s top stars, appearing in a total of 61 films over 37 years. The press coined the term “The Love Goddess” to describe Hayworth after she had become the most glamorous screen idol of the 1940s.

She was the top pin-up girl for GIs during World War II. MEDIAPUNCH INC / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

été 2022 • l’édition verte • readelysian.com • to be. Despite the birth of their first child together and Rita’s second daughter, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, Aly Kahn became more and more distant and reluctant to embrace family life. His duties and flamboyant lifestyle drew a wedge between the couple and in 1951, Rita sailed to New York with her young daughters. An unsuccessful effort to reconcile resulted in Rita’s third divorce, in 1953, after only four years of marriage to Prince Aly Khan.

In 1952, Rita’s comeback picture, Affair in Trinidad, reunited her with Glenn Ford. The highly publicized and much-awaited picture grossed $1 million more than Gilda and she quickly made two back-to-back films, Salome, opposite the great British actor, Charles Laughton, and Miss Sadie Thompson, with José Ferrer (who had recently married his third wife, singer and actress Rosemary Clooney, who was preparing to film White Christmas with Bing Crosby). Again, Rita put her career on the backburner when she married her fourth husband, singer Dick Haymes. This time, after her marriage ended, when she attempted to regain her Hollywood throne, she was deposed by an ingenue, American actress Kim Novak. Rita would make just one more film for Columbia.

Her life took a tailspin. Rita struggled financially. She made bad investments and even worse decisions. Harry Cohn, in a 1957 Time magazine interview, observed: “Hayworth might be worth ten million dollars today easily! She owned 25 percent of the profits with her own company, and had hit after hit, and she had to get married and had to get out of the business and took a suspension because she fell in love again! In five years, at two pictures a year, at 25 percent! Think of what she could have made! But she didn’t make pictures! She took two or three suspensions! She got mixed up with different characters! Unpredictable!”

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ITA HAD A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE. In 1972, she said, “Harry Cohn thought of me as one of the people he could exploit and make a lot of money. And I did make a lot of money for him, but not much for me.”

The films that Rita made in the late 1950s and ‘60s earned her good reviews but age waved its fickle finger and Rita no longer was the box office sensation she had been for two decades. Her final motion picture was 1972’s The Wrath of God, with Robert Mitchum and though she would appear on television from time-to-time, that was the end of her Hollywood career— and the beginning of a final chapter that would end in utter darkness.

Rita’s childhood haunted throughout her adult life. She would infrequently confess that she had low self-esteem but how could so beautiful a woman

feel that way? What she never disclosed was the fact that she grew up with an abusive, demanding father who broke all moral bounds by mentally and sexually abusing his daughter. To protect Rita, her mother, Volga, had Rita sleep in the same bed with her. But when Eduardo signed a contract to dance in clubs in Mexico, he made Rita, not Volga, his dance partner and claimed his 16-year-old daughter—who looked older than her years—was his wife. Driven to drink, Volga died at the age of 47. This sordid chapter in her young life played out repeatedly in Rita’s private life at the hands of cruel, ruthless, and demanding men—with the exception of just one, Glenn Ford.

Rita married unhappily five times. No marriage survived more than four years and her tumultuous fourth one to singer Dick Haymes lasted barely two years. “Basically, I am a good, gentle person, but I am attracted to mean personalities,” Rita surmised. She had married her first husband, oilman Edward Judson, who was 20 years her senior, when she was 18. She had her first child, Rebecca, by her second husband, actor Orson Welles, but the marriage was volatile and like a firecracker, burned brightly at the beginning then abruptly died out. Rita said, “During the entire period of our marriage, he showed no interest in establishing a home. When I suggested purchasing a home, he told me he didn’t want the responsibility. Mr. Welles told me he never should have married in the first place; that it interfered with his freedom in his way of life.” Their divorce became final on November 10, 1947. Her third marriage, to the handsome, insanely wealthy Prince Aly Khan, caused an international furor.

Not only was Rita the first American actress to become a princess, but her affair with Aly Khan began while she was still married to Welles. The son of Sultan Mahommed Shah, Aga Khan III, Aly Khan and his family were key players in

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73 Rita Hayworth being photographed for the 1948 motion picture, The Loves of Carmen, starring her longtime lover, Glenn Ford.

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Rita Hayworth with daughter Rebecca Welles, whose father was American actor, producer, and screenwriter Orson Welles.

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international horse racing, a sport in which Rita took little interest. Rita and he had a daughter, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, born December 1949, but she insisted that she raise the child as a Christian. Aly offered Rita $1 million if she would rear Yasmin as a Muslim, but Rita refused, and the marriage began to fracture. They separated and Aly asked Rita to allow their daughter to visit him two months a year but Rita refused.

“Nothing will make me give up Yasmin’s chance to live here in America among our precious freedoms and habits. While I respect the Muslim faith, and all other faiths, it is my earnest wish that my daughter be raised as a normal, healthy American girl in the Christian faith. There isn’t any amount of money in the entire world for which it is worth sacrificing this child’s privilege of living as a normal Christian girl here in the United States. There just isn’t anything else in the world that can compare with her sacred chance to do that. And I’m going to give it to Yasmin regardless of what it costs.”

Rita was granted a divorce in January 1953 on the grounds of extreme mental cruelty.

She excused her behavior by explaining she was unlike the characters she played—independent, vibrant, strong women. “I naturally am very shy,” she confessed, “and I suffer from an inferiority complex.” She was not Gilda, that “ravishing, complicated woman whose mysterious past entangles everyone who meets her,” as one film critic wrote. As Rita put it, “Men go to bed with Gilda, but wake up with me.”

Conceivably, her longest, most dependable relationship was with a man she never married, actor Glenn Ford. His son, Peter Ford, revealed in his 2011 biography about his father, Glenn Ford: A Life, that their on-off affair of 40 years began on the set of Gilda, in 1945, and that during the filming, of the second of their five films together, The Loves of Carmen, Rita got pregnant by Ford. The pregnancy was terminated in France, by abortion.

When asked what film established him as star, actor Glen Ford replied: “I think probably Gilda, with Rita Hayworth, who used to live next door here. I think after the war, when I came back after three years in Europe and in southeast Asia, Sea of Japan, I came back and there weren’t many openings for people—Bill Holden, Tyrone Power, and I had gone off—our places were filled by the young people coming up. We were told, everyone’s forgotten about you, and so fortunately, the second film I made after coming back was Gilda, with Rita Hayworth, and somehow that took off. It was interesting, we became very close friends and I made five films with her—very nice friend. I think the relationship between Rita and I, plus the fact that we didn’t know how the film was going to end as we were shooting it—Rita and I became very good friends, very close friends; I adored Gilda, and I adored Rita, and so what you see on the screen is true, and we were very close, let me put it very sweetly. Everybody thinks of Rita as Gilda. There will never be another Gilda.”

Rita’s fifth and last marriage, to American film producer James Hill in 1958, ended in 1961. Actor Charlton Heston shed some light on the destructive relationship in his autobiography, in which he recounted the evening he and his wife, Lydia, joined the couple, director George Marshal, and actor Rex Harrison, Rita’s co-star in The Happy Thieves, for dinner at a restaurant in Spain. Hill “heaped obscene abuse” on Hayworth in the course of the evening, reducing her to a helpless flood of tears, her face buried in her hands” as the others looked on, stunned, at the “marital massacre.”

Heston’s wife stood up in tears to leave. He wrote, “I’m ashamed of walking away from Miss Hayworth’s humiliation. I never saw her again.”

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AYWORTH’S PROBLEMS WITH ALCOHOL first became evident during her marriage to Orson Welles.

Though he maintained she was not an alcoholic, “She’d fly into these rages, never at me, never once, always at the studio or her father or her mother.

She would break all the furniture and she’d get in a car, and I’d have to get in the car and try to control her.

She’d drive up in the hills suicidally. Terrible, terrible nights. And I just saw this lovely girl destroying herself.”

Rita’s daughter, Yasmin Aga Kahn, was interviewed by Ingrid Bergman’s daughter, Pia Lindstrom, in an article for The New York Times in which Yasmin spoke about her mother’s problem.

“I remember as a child that she had a drinking problem. She had difficulty coping with the ups and downs of the business. As a child, I thought, ‘She has a drinking problem, and she’s an alcoholic.’ That was very clear, and I thought, ‘Well, there’s not much I can do. I can just, sort of, stand by and watch.’

It’s very difficult, seeing your mother, going through her emotional problems, and drinking and then behaving in that manner. Her condition became quite bad. It worsened and she did have an alcoholic breakdown and landed in the hospital.”

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Hayworth at the beach with fourth of her five husbands, actor/singer Dick Haymes, and her children, Rebecca Wells and Yasmin Khan.

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AYWORTH WAS 54-YEARSOLD WHEN, IN 1972, SHE WAS DETERMINED TO QUIT ACTING but desperately needed the money. Her friend, actor Robert Mitchum, suggested she play opposite him in The Wrath of God. She agreed but filming proved disastrous.

Her health was clearly failing and her scenes had to be shot one line at a time. This was not to be her final movie—she had agreed to star in a British film, Tales That Witness Madness, but she left the set early in the filming because of her worsening health. She returned to the United States and never acted again.

Not only did Rita’s health worsen, so did her drinking. Shortly after returning home, both her brothers died, in March 1974, within a week of one another. The grief and the alcohol put her over the edge. In January 1976, Rita was physically removed from a TWA flight after an uncontrollably angry outburst. The international tabloids had a field day, plastering disturbing photographs of the incident all over the front pages. The film star worshipped

by American soldiers during the War and admired around the world became the object of pity.

But her tirades covered a much deeper problem than alcohol or her abusive childhood.

Rita’s rapidly deteriorating physical and mental decline was exacerbated by alcohol, true—but the underlying demon was a brain disease that was little-known since its discovery in 1906: Alzheimer’s. Had it not been for her celebrity and

being dogged by the press during her decline, identifying the disease and the fight to attempt to find a cure might not have come about for years to come. Rita was diagnosed in 1980 and her diagnosis was made public in 1981. The Los Angeles Superior Court placed her under the care and custody of her daughter, Princess Yasmin, and she was moved to an apartment adjoining her daughter’s at The San Remo on Central Park West in New York City.

Three years before her death, her second husband, Orson Welles, saw her at an event that Ronald and Nancy Reagan were hosting for their mutual friend, Frank Sinatra. “When it was over, I came over to her table and I saw that she was very beautiful, very reposed looking, and she didn’t know me at first. After about four minutes of speaking, I could see that she realized who I was, and she began to cry quietly.” On the eve of his death in 1985, Welles said Rita was “one of the dearest and sweetest women that ever lived.” And one of the most tragic.

It is that glimmering of light that somehow shines through—increasingly less as the disease progresses—that in that moment, the Alzheimer’s victim clearly knows and understands her condition and her destiny. Rita Hayworth became the first public face of Alzheimer’s. Her greatest role was not in films, or on a magazine cover, but as the first face of Alzheimer’s, leading the cause to ensure that future patients did not go undiagnosed. As medical historian Barron H. Lerner wrote in a 2006 article in the Los Angeles Times, “Unbeknownst to her, Hayworth helped to destigmatize a condition that can still embarrass victims and their families.”

“It was the outbursts. She’d fly into a rage. I can’t tell you. I thought it was alcoholism—alcoholic dementia. We all thought that. The papers picked that up, of course. You can’t imagine the relief just in getting a diagnosis.

We had a name at last, Alzheimer’s! Of course, that didn’t really come until the last seven or eight years. She wasn’t diagnosed as having Alzheimer’s until 1980. There were two decades of hell before that,” her daughter, Yasmin Aga Khan revealed in a 1989 interview with the Los Angeles Times, two years after her mother’s death on May 14, 1987.

President Ronald Reagan’s tribute to his Hollywood friend put it best: “Rita Hayworth was one of our country’s most beloved stars. Glamorous and talented, she gave us many wonderful moments on stage and screen and delighted audiences from the time she was a young girl. In her later years, Rita became known for her struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. Her courage and candor, and that of her family, were a great public service in bringing worldwide attention to a disease which we all hope will soon be cured. Nancy and I are saddened by Rita’s death. She was a friend who we will miss. We extend our deep sympathy to her family.”

Indeed, Rita Hayworth the actress gave pleasure to millions of moviegoers, but her illness has given meaning to countless millions. Stephen King wrote a 1982 novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, from which the motion picture, The Shawshank Redemption, starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, was adapted. The famous image of Rita as Gilda was a poster that hung in Andy’s cell. “The pinup posters of Rita Hayworth and the other women represent the outside world, hope, and every inmate’s desire to escape to a normal life.” [Sparknotes] Rita Hayworth represents hope. Her legacy as the poster girl for Alzheimer’s represents hope to the world. She died on May 14, 1987, at the age of 68 and was laid to rest in a simple grave at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. Her headstone reads: “To yesterday’s companionship and tomorrow’s reunion.” ■

Hayworth on the cover of the June 1954 issue of the British entertainment magazine Picture Show. Opposite: Rita Hayworth as Vera Simpson in the 1957 musical motion picture, Pal Joey, in which she starred opposite her friend, Frank Sinatra.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MOVIESTORE COLLECTION LTD / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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Rita Hayworth at home in Beverly Hills 1963.

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La Verde Vita

by Hannah Shepard Simpson

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83 Green Stockings by 20th century Expressionist artist Egon Schiele depicts a half-naked reclining nude whose raw sexuality branded his work.

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85 The Green Dress by John White Alexander. Opposite: One of the most recognized and controversial paintings in all of art, The Arnolfini Portrait, painted in oil on oak panel by Dutch Renaissance artist Jan van Eyck. Known for his religious paintings and secular portraits, his self-portrait can be seen in the convex mirror. The Arnolfini Portrait, considered one of the most complex and original works of Western art, was believed to depict the marriage of Giovanni di Arrigo Arnolfini and his bride, Jeanne Cenami, until it was discovered, in 1997, to have been painted six years after van Eyck’s death and 13 years after the couple’s own marriage, in 1447.

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hat would you say is the most universal color? Considering that we live on the blue planet, blue would be the reasonable response. However, when you really think about it, the color that fills our view of the world—and our lungs—is so obvious that we seem to miss it entirely. It is no coincidence that green has become synonymous with life, vitality, and renewal. It also makes sense why artists have been inspired for centuries to capture the beauty of nature. Due to its ubiquity, we tend to take the color green for granted despite artists struggling to create the pigment for centuries. The color we so innocently define as the simple combination of blue and yellow has a complicated and fascinating history throughout art and culture, both good, bad, and even dangerous.

From an etymological standpoint, the word green derives from the Middle English and Old English word grene, and like the German word grün, has the same root as the words “grass” and “grow.” The English word we use today remains remarkably close to its original spelling and meaning. The Latin word viridis, meaning both green and youthful, gave rise to the French vert and Italian verde. Interestingly, in the ancient languages of Japan, China, and Vietnam, blue and green were for a time indistinguishable linguistically. While the word for green was coined mostly independently in major languages, the root of the word across the board shares origins with the word for “new growth.”

Today, the color is most closely related to the “green movement”—that of being environmentally conscious—“being green,” as some say. It is also regarded as one of the most pleasing colors of the color wheel, invoking a sense of serenity and peace (the German poet and philosopher Goethe declared green as the best color to use in bedrooms for its restful quality). It is no wonder that when we are stressed, we are advised to “take a walk” and “get out in nature.” Physiologically, we have learned that by being in the presence of the color green, our pituitary gland is stimulated, causing our muscles to relax and it is even shown to improve our reading ability and creativity. Passed down from yellow’s cheerfulness and blue’s calmness, green has become an inherently optimistic color.

Nevertheless, green has not always been cast in a positive light. Most color meanings are deeply rooted in our brains from millions of years of biological conditioning, such as being naturally drawn to red fruit over green because we know it will be ripe and sweet. At the same time, how we perceive color is continually being altered through cultural developments. Medieval art, for example, often depicted the devil as green because it was considered an unthreatening color that attracted animals.

We still use the phrase “green with envy” today (it was actually Shakespeare who coined the phrase “green-eyed monster”).

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In England, the color has heroic connotations related to stories of Robin Hood; in the Muslim world it is the color of the Prophet Muhammed; and in China, the color represents disgrace, while in Japan it symbolizes eternal life.

efore we learned how to bottle the color of life and spread it with a brush, the earliest use of the color was found during the Neolithic era as green dye for clothing. Similarly, ceramics from ancient Mesopotamia show people wearing vivid green garments, but it is unknown how these colors were produced. It was not until the ancient Egyptians that the color became widely used in wall paintings, fabrics, and even makeup, using finely ground malachite—an opaque, green-banded gemstone—which was expensive and turned black over time. Egyptians revered the color as the symbol of good health and rebirth and used it widely on both the living and the dead, believing it would protect them from evil.

Although the ancient Greeks did not include green among their four classic colors—red, yellow, black, and white—the Romans, on the other hand, greatly admired the color as it was the color of Venus, the goddess of gardens and vineyards.

The Romans discovered that if they soaked warm copper plates in wine, it would create a green pigment called verdigris. We know of this process as patination, commonly seen as the blue-green hue on copper pennies and the Statue of Liberty. The Romans used it in the murals of Pompeii and in Celtic medieval manuscripts as early as the 5th century AD. Unfortunately, it had its shortcomings: it did not mix well with other colors, it was unstable, and it was toxic. Even so, it continued to be used throughout Europe and Persia into the 16th and 17th centuries.

Artists and scientists continued to search for a truly green pigment that was stable, readily accessible, and affordable. Over the following centuries, many new forms of green were developed, but not without error and, some with deadly consequences.

During the Renaissance, concoctions of natural elements, such as plants, were used to make the color, but they always faded

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In Water Lilies, Monet represents shadow with darker, blue-greens and forms the lighter areas with brighter, yellow-greens, giving a sense of the true warms and cools experienced in nature.

over time. If you look today at Duccio di Brunoising’s The Virgin and Child with Saint Dominic and Saint Aurea (1312-15), you might wonder why he gave the Madonna and Child alien-like green skin. In fact, he was using a technique of layering graduated tones for the skin, in which he would begin with an underpainting of green followed by thin layers of warm tones to depict realistic flesh. Over time the top layer of warm hues has faded, leaving only the terre verte, or earthly green color beneath.

Ever heard of someone looking “sickly green? “

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the context of complexion, having a green appearance usually indicates someone is unwell, whereas red (the color of blood) is associated with a healthy person who is “rosy” or “flushed.” Artists like Duccio used this knowledge to their advantage to depict the perfect, believable complexion. Fortunately, by the 15th century, the process of tempera painting had been improved upon to better last through the ages. The porcelain skin of Sandro Botticelli’s Idealized Portrait of a Lady (1480) remains today and is admired for its translucent quality, created by an undercoat of terre verte followed by delicate stippling of white, yellow, pink, and brown over the surface.

During the Medieval and Renaissance periods, green became associated with a person’s social status signifying wealth. It was the color worn by merchants, bankers, and often the color of choice in paintings to represent the gentry class. The bride in Jan van

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Young woman in a Black and Green Bonnet, Looking Down is a pastel by American Impressionist and expatriate artist Mary Cassatt.

Opposite: Spanish Woman in Green, was painted by Russian artist and stage designer Alexander Yakovlevich Golovin.

THE HISTORY COLLECTION / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Eyck’s The Arnolfini Portrait (1434) dons a dress dyed in rich green, cascading on the floor in an ostentatious display of affluence.

Some also say that the green garment suggests hope—possibly the longing of becoming a mother. Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (1503) similarly is dressed in an ensemble featuring a green bodice connoting her status as the wife of a wealthy silk merchant. We see this trend continue into the French Rococo period as well, as seen in François Boucher’s Portrait of Madame de Pompadour (1756), and again into the 19th century in pieces like John White Alexander’s The Green Dress (c. 1896).

The 18th and 19th centuries brought new discoveries of synthetic greens that began to replace the earlier plant and mineral pigments and dyes. These new pigments were more stable and brilliant in color but were soon found to be toxic and eventually banned. One of the most widely used was invented in 1775 by Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele using the toxic chemical arsenite. Called Scheele’s Green, the hue became so popular in the late 19th century that it was used in wallpaper, fabric and even children’s toys. It is believed that the color caused the death of French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte due to his bedroom wallpaper containing the deadly pigment. Scheele’s Green is considered the most poisonous pigment in the history of art, but it was also the most vivid green that had ever been made.

The French Impressionists were victims to the next attempt of a green pigment which they used to paint their lush green landscapes.

Paris Green, also known as Emerald Green, had replaced Scheele’s Green by the end of the 19th century; however, it was, again, highly toxic. Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir were three of the more notable painters to use Paris Green, and some believe it may have been responsible for Cézanne’s diabetes and Monet’s blindness. The pigment was eventually banned in the 1960s.

Finally, in 1836 French colourmaker Pannetier created Viridian, which not only was vibrant, but also stable and non-toxic.

Viridian was patented in 1859 by Guignet of Paris and the exceedingly clear blue-green color soon became the popular choice for painters, including Vincent van Gogh, Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. Thankfully, Monet began using this new and safer green, though analysis of his paintings show he still used both Emerald and Viridian green. Asked in 1905 what colors he used, Monet said: “The point is to know how to use the colors, the choice of which is, when all’s said and done, a matter of habit. Anyway, I use flake white, cadmium yellow, vermilion, deep madder, cobalt blue, Emerald green, and that’s all.”

You may notice that Monet does not list black or brown among his colors and instead uses a limited palette of only the warm and cool of each primary color, along with white. Rather than use black to depict shadow, artists learned that they could describe dark tones through color choice, saturation, and value. In Water Lilies (1917-1919), Monet represents shadow with darker, blue-greens and forms the lighter areas with brighter, yellow-greens, giving a sense of the true warms and cools experienced in nature. Mary Cassatt used a similar method of allowing color to express light and shadow, excluding black from her palette. She also was known for pushing her colors in unnatural ways, while still perceivable to the viewer as believable. In The Boating Party (1893-94), she uses a variety of soft mint and emerald greens contrasted with bright citron of changing values conjuring feelings of both shade and bright summer sunlight on the Mediterranean coast.

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the cusp of the expressionist movement, this second half of the 19th century saw the use of color to create emotions, as well as the systematic study of color theory. Green was no longer seen as just a way to imitate nature. Van Gogh’s adventurous use of color and understanding of color theory (thanks to Delacroix) was revolutionary during his time. “Instead of trying to render exactly what I have before my eyes, I use colour more arbitrarily in order to express myself forcefully,” van Gogh explained. Known as the law of simultaneous

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91 Short in stature and immense in talent, Toulouse-Lautrec was a French artist who captured the colorful side of life in Paris in the late 19th century. A contemporary of Mary Cassatt, he went where no woman was allowed in those days—in the brothels and music halls, painting prostitutes, drunkards, and revelers. He was among the group known as the Post-Impressionists, which included Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Georges Seurat. At the Moulin Rouge is one of Toulouse-Lautrec’s most popular paintings of the night-spot. Lautrec was known to indulge in the aniseflavoured spirit Absinthe, commonly referred to in historical literature as la fée verte “the green fairy.” The drink often showed up in Lautrec’s paintings and the personalities of many of his night-life scenes would be cast in an Absinthe hue.

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contrasts, van Gogh mastered the technique of juxtaposing complementary colors, such as red and green, to reinforce each other. Still Life: Vase with Pink Roses (1890) is a luscious painting that looks to be almost entirely green, save for the opposing pops of pink; however, the original color of the roses has since faded, lessening the brilliant contrast it once had of red against the resplendent green.

The ability of color to express emotion offered a new glimpse into the artists’ psyche. Picasso’s “blue period,” during which he painted essentially monochromatic paintings in shades of blue and blue-green, can be linked in time to his experience of poverty, loss, and depression. We can only surmise what emotion Picasso was conveying in his Green Still Life (1914), but one could assume that he was experiencing better days by his bold use of green combined with a cubist style - a style that was typically devoid of color.

Likewise, in Matisse’s 1905 portrait of his wife, The Green Stripe (La Raie Verte), he surprises the viewer with an unexpected slash of green that divides her face in half yet can be visually read as the shadow’s edge. The shocking painting was not well received: it was quoted as “a demented caricature of a portrait” and the art historian John Klein suggested that difficulties in the Matisses’ marriage may have contributed to the portrait’s impersonal and mask-like character. We see again here the use of complementary colors; her red dress against the emerald green background and the violet corner bringing attention to the yellow-green stripe down her face.

93 Young Girl in a Green Dress was painted in 1921 by French Post-Impressionist painter Henri Matisse (18691954) who, along with Pablo Picasso, is regarded as one of the revolutionaries in the development of modern art.

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Opposite: La Berceuse, or Woman Rocking a Cradle: Augustine-Alix Pellicot Roulin was painted in 1889 by Vincent van Gogh shortly before he took his life. The subject was the wife of his friend, the postmaster of Arles. In French, La Berceuse means “lullaby, or woman who rocks the cradle.”

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Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), the most famous artist of the 20th century, painted Green Still Life in the summer of 1914 in Avignon during his Synthetic Cubism Period (1912-1919), in which he focused on robust, colorful, textural threedimensional compositions.

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Other artists started to look for ways to mingle the senses through color and began to turn green on its head from its historical representation of nature. In Blue and Green Music (1919-21), Georgia O’Keeffe aimed to translate the experience of sound into a visual language of color and form, as she put it, “the idea that music could be translated into something for the eye.” O’Keeffe was an expert colorist who knew how to make her colors sing (she created a library of hundreds of color cards). Her niece, Georgia Engelhard, remarked that she “knew how to make white and green in such a way to make the white whiter and the green greener.”

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period in art history celebrated color in its purest form better than the color field painters of the 1940s and ‘50s. Closely related to the abstract expressionist movement, the period is characterized by large fields of flat, solid color and aimed to free color of objective content so that it becomes the subject in itself. Mark Rothko, a leading pioneer of color field painting, provided us with an opportunity to be immersed in a color, of feeling enveloped inside life-size works that fill your periphery. Like the artists before him, color evoked emotion for Rothko and it seems green was not a particularly happy color for the artist. About Green and Tangerine on Red (1956), he stated, “the striking tangerine tone of the lower section could symbolize the normal, happier side of living; and in proportion the dark, blue-green, rectangular measure above it could stand for the black clouds or worries that always hang over us.” His later works began to turn darker, including Green and Maroon (1953), perhaps representing the turmoil in his personal life as he ultimately committed suicide in 1970.

Though the emotion green is meant to convey varies from artist to artist, the color was in time freed from its conventional purpose of replicating nature. Green entered a new era of symbolic potential. Whether the intention is to boast elegance and riches through glamorous emeralds (Tamara in a Green Bugatti, Tamara de Lempicka, 1925) or shock the world by placing garish greens on America’s sweetheart (Green Marilyn, Andy Warhol, 1962), to warn of nuclear wars with neon green felines (Radioactive Cats, Sandy Skoglund, 1980) or to transport us into mythical green forests (Green Goddess II, Inka Essenhigh, 2010)—how we perceive the color is sure to be ever-evolving. ■

97 Blue and Green Music was painted by American Abstract artist Georgia O’Keefe when she was in her early thirties, a time where she embraced “the idea that music could be translated into something for the eye.”

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Opposite: The Allegory of Spring by Giuseppe Arcimboldo.

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Hope, by one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement, Gustav Klimt, was painted by the Austrian symbolist painter in 1903. NOTE: This vertical painting has been rotated horizontally for scale to fit this magazine.

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Emerald Isle Charm of the

by Daina Savage

The legendary Cliffs of Moher look out over Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way, Ireland’s spectacular 1,600-mile-long coastal route, the longest in the world.

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Opposite: Grattan Bridge in Dublin, Ireland, in the evening. This historic bridge spans the River Liffey.

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Ireland’s

Opposite: Anne Street in Dublin, Ireland. Dublin is the capital and largest city of Ireland. Situated on a bay on the east coast, at the mouth of the River Liffey, it lies within the province of Leinster.

charms are legendary, memorialized in poetry and stories, celebrated in film and song.

The magic and mysticism of the landscape and its people are a persistent longing to return for those who have visited, as well as a deep and abiding wish for those who have not yet been.

At every turn, there’s something to amaze and inspire, from the ancient Hill of Tara to the dramatic Cliffs of Moher, the multitude of stately castles, to the otherworldly Giant’s Causeway.

This island evokes mystery and mirth, ancient wisdom and fresh innovation, all layered like its everpresent limestone cliffs and gleefully intertwining like its exuberant blooming country hedgerows.

Recognized as some of the world’s friendliest people, the Irish welcome visitors like family, creating a spirit of goodwill that lingers long after a visit—which is why a trip to Ireland is best savored with an invitation to serendipity and less an attempt to check off a bucket list. Visitors should leave space for the ways a conversation with a stranger in a pub can lead to an impromptu road trip to visit long-lost fourth cousins. The “everyone is Irish” saying goes beyond the familiar Saint Patrick’s Day pronouncements and is more a recognition that nearly everyone has an immigrant or outsider story in their background that creates a commonality with the Irish people.

The embrace of the immigrant has created a food culture sure to please every palate. From an Ethiopian supper club in Dublin, to an Indian feast in Donegal, to Spanish tapas in Cork, to poke bowls at Blackrock Market, choices go well beyond traditional blood pudding and Shepherd’s pie. And although a Guinness brewery tour is a desire for fans of the dark stout, Ireland’s hundreds of craft brews can be sampled throughout the countryside. The same goes for whiskey lovers. The Jameson Distillery in Cork can be a gateway to a plethora of artisan delights from Dingle to Tullamore, including creating your own blend at the Irish Whiskey Museum in Dublin.

The making of great food and beverages begins with outstanding ingredients, which is why some of the best meals can be found near seaports or along country lanes. Ireland is known for its seafood as most places are less than an hour’s drive from the ocean. Hearty meals mean fish pies, chowders, and

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fish and chips, but prawns, cockles, mussels, and oysters should also be sampled. In places like Howth, you can chat with the fishermen as they pull in their haul and see the resident colony of seals. In Doolin in County Clare, the Burren Smokehouse is famous for producing the finest smoked salmon in Ireland and features tastings of locally produced cheese, craft beer, and award-winning fish and chips.

Farmers markets are aplenty, and often you can find Michelin-starred restaurants nearby (or even in the marketplace itself like those in Blackrock and Belfast).

Ireland’s unique climate of gentle rains and year-round mild weather creates the lush green Emerald Isle which grows bountiful produce and allows for extended grazing of sheep, goats, and cattle. In turn, the cheeses, yogurts, creams, and butters from Ireland are globally renowned. The “yellow-gold” even has its own tourist attraction, the Cork Butter Museum, where visitors learn that the grass-fed harvest expresses its own terroir in the same ways that wines do. Cork calls itself the culinary capital of Ireland.

The milks take starring roles at Irish tea-times when they often comprise a third of the cup. Per capita, the Irish are the heaviest tea drinkers in the world, ostensibly to ward off the chill of perpetually rainy days and to serve as another opportunity to extend hospitality.

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xploring the countryside conflates the past with the present as traditional farming and peat harvesting methods exist alongside some of the world’s leading technology industries; castle ruins juxtapose with modernist architecture; the remains of megalithic passage tombs pair with soaring cathedrals; historic pub fiddlers and street buskers entertain just as some of the world’s most famous musicians and bands. It’s a country pulsing with fresh energy while

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07 The pub is the traditional gathering place of every town, village, and city neighborhood in Ireland. There you will always find a casual and friendly atmosphere, hearty food and drink, and, of course Irish music.

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Opposite: While one may think of traditional Irish cuisine like Irish stew, bacon and cabbage, boxty, soda bread, coddle and colcannon, there are a number of exceptional dishes and desserts to be tasted and enjoyed, like this purple carrot cake.

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hewing to ancient sensibilities. It’s in this frisson that creates the “craic” that makes Ireland irresistible.

The capital city of Ireland, memorialized in James Joyce’s Dubliners and Ulysses (which marks its centennial this year) is an ideal starting point for exploring the island’s cultural delights and architectural marvels. Joyce fans may wish to visit the Museum of Literature Ireland for a complete guide to the Joycean centenary and the annual Bloomsday Festival (June 16), which is run by the James Joyce Centre. The UNESCO City of Literature is also celebrating the 125th anniversary of Bram Stoker’s Dracula with a festival and celebration of the gothic masterpiece.

A wonderfully walkable city, Dublin is easy to navigate and delightful to wander, filled with shops and pubs, cafes, and cultural institutions. The stately Georgian Squares, the famed Temple Bar, the massive St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the renowned Trinity College (home to the Book of Kells), the historic Christ Church Cathedral, and the National Museum of Ireland should all be savored, as well as the greenspaces like St. Stephen’s Green and Phoenix Park, the latter which is one of the largest enclosed public parks in any capital city in Europe. (History-lovers should visit the Dublinia museum to learn more about Dublin’s beginnings as a Viking settlement).

If cycling is your preference, Dublin’s popular and convenient bike share program is a great way to explore along the banks of the River Liffey, which bisects the city. On the north side of the river, visit the towering silver Spire of Dublin, which was built to commemorate the millennium, and learn the historic stories of each of the famed bridges. Or head further out to the Grand Canal and along the picturesque coastline of Dublin Bay. While Dublin is a delight, it’s Ireland’s countryside and cliffs that are the biggest draw. Great swaths of green fields, dotted with fluffy white sheep, comprise the Ireland that most visitors come to see.

There’s nothing quite like navigating narrow country lanes, driving on the left side, taking turns to

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Afternoon tea is customary in Ireland and throughout the British Isles.

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pass sporadic oncoming vehicles, all while watching out for sleeping sheep soaking on the sun-warmed asphalt in the middle of the road. Castle and castle ruins can be found throughout the country. Favorites straight out of fairytales include Dunluce Castle and Glenarm Castle, both in County Antrim; Tullynally Castle, County Westmeath; Birr Castle, County Offally; Blackrock Castle, County Cork; and Ballynahinch Castle, Menlo Castle, and Lynch Castle, all in County Galway. Of course, those wishing to pucker up to the Blarney Stone should visit Blarney Castle, just outside of Cork.

Want to feel like royalty? A number of palaces and estates have been reappointed as luxury accommodations: the newly renovated 18th-century Cashel Palace Hotel in County Tipperary, the 250-year-old Georgian estate of Carton House in County Kildare, and the Regency-period Marlfield House in County Wicklow.

Cemeteries are a fascinating way to soak up the country’s history. The literary-inclined may wish to make a pilgrimage to County Sligo to the grave of Nobel laureate William Butler Yeats, who was buried at the foot of Benbulbin, a wondrous and unique Ice-Age limestone rock formation shaped like a table. In County Sligo is also Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery, the largest cemetery of megalithic tombs in Ireland that pre-dates the Egyptian pyramids. Here too is the mountain Knocknarea, which boasts one of Ireland’s largest cairns at the summit and is believed to contain a Neolithic passage tomb. Nearby is Knocknashee (‘Hill of the Fairies’) which is revered as the home to the Fairies of the region.

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hile the interior boasts stunning mountains, lakes, and pastures, it’s the coastline of the west that is absolutely breathtaking. Ireland capitalizes on this by branding the 1,500-mile route along the west coast as the Wild Atlantic Way. Billed as the longest defined coastal touring route in the world, the route from the Inishowen Peninsula in County Donegal to Kinsale in County Cork can be savored in full or in bits, depending on the mode of transportation (on foot, bicycle, boat, or car). For a bespoke day trip, hire a private tour from Gallagher’s Chauffeurs to visit Slieve League, one of the highest marine sea cliffs in Europe and climb the path nearly 2,000 feet above sea level. Afterwards, the charming pubs, restaurants, and shops of Donegal Town offer a welcoming respite and an opportunity to pick up intricate handwoven tweed, and the

Sheep is a staple of Ireland’s agricultural economy. In fact, there are as many sheep as people in Ireland.

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The nineteenth century oratory in Gougane Barra National Park in Ireland.

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Opposite: Spectacular colored houses in Doolin, County Clare, Ireland.

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111 wooded riverwalk on the edge of town is filled with charming fairy houses.

The most famous natural attraction along the Wild Atlantic Way is the majestic five-mile stretch of the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare, awarded UNESCO Global Geopark status for their unrivaled views of the Atlantic Ocean and the Aran Islands. Paved pathways on top of the cliffs, with viewing platforms, make this site visitor-friendly, as does a new app for guided touring. Harry Potter fans may know this as the site of the Horcrux Cave.

Ireland’s castles, burial sites, beaches, and cliffs are all favorites of filmmakers. Steven Spielberg reimagined Normandy’s Omaha Beach using the stretch of Curracloe Beach in County Wexford for Saving Private Ryan. The steep cliffside steps of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Skellig Michael island in County Kerry played a starring role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Trim Castle in County Meath and the Wicklow Mountains in County Wicklow are featured in Mel Gibson’s Braveheart, and Northern Ireland’s The Dark Hedges, an avenue of beech trees along Bregagh Road in County Antrim was made famous in the HBO series Game of Thrones for the atmospheric tunnel the intertwining branches created. The series also was shot at Castle Ward in County Down, Ballintoy in County Antrim, and Downhill Strand in County Londonderry. The newly launched official Game of Thrones Studio Tour is an interactive experience at the original filming location of Linen Mill Studios in Banbridge, County Down, and will allow fans to explore a vast array of original sets, costumes, props, and set pieces from the Seven Kingdoms.

Home to numerous television series and movies, the capital of Northern Ireland is the star in Sir Kenneth Branagh’s new movie Belfast, which celebrates the city of his birth and the city that built the Titanic.

While driving the 111-mile pastoral Ring of Kerry route around the Iveragh Peninsula, with its lakes, rivers, and waterfalls, is a sight to behold, Ireland also asks for a slower pace, to savor the experience of the place and

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This water wheel and old stone bridge span a river in County Donegal.

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its people. The Irish proverb “Your feet will bring you to where your heart is” is best experienced by doing just that, walking the greenways and hiking trails of the country. A number of new pathways allow for discovering your heart, including the leisurely 16-arch Borris Viaduct Walk in County Carlow with views of the Blackstairs Mountains and Mount Leinster, the South East Greenway which connects the Norman town of New Ross in County Wexford to the Viking city of Waterford, the scenic countryside of south Kilkenny, and Ireland’s longest seafront boardwalk stretching more than four miles from the Youghal town center to Redbarn Beach in County Cork. For a week-long pilgrim path, the ancient route of St. Declan’s Way follows the fifth-century 60-mile path that the Irish saint Declan took on his way to meet St. Patrick, from Ireland’s oldest Christian settlement of Ardmore in County Waterford to Cashel in County Tipperary. Passing through picturesque landscapes, crossing mountains and rivers, weaving through pastures, the trail is rich with Irish history with numerous heritage sites along the way, including the 13th-century Cahir Castle, Ireland’s oldest monastery, Mount Melleray, the medieval cathedral of Lismore, the 1830 Hindu Gothic gate, and the imposing Rock of Cashel.

Ireland’s history is carried in these structures, found along these footpaths, told in these cinematic stories, discovered in the food culture, heard in the pub sing-a-longs and buskers’ tunes, but it’s in the one-on-one encounters that the country best comes alive. In Ireland, a seanchai is a traditional Gaelic storyteller who preserves the past as custodians of the country’s oral history. Tasked with teaching others not only traditions and heritage, their stories and songs offer a deep understanding of the human condition. A visit to Ireland reveals a sense of a seanchai in all of its people, from restaurant servers to tour guides, to chance encounters with temporary strangers in cafes and pubs. It’s no wonder the island boasts so many celebrated musicians and prize-winning authors, including four Nobel laureates. More than magic, greater than luck, they offer genuine connection that resonates long after a visit is done. ■

Opposite: The Dark Hedges in County Antrim, Northern Ireland are located between the villages of Armoy and Stranocum.

Fans of the award-winning television series The Game of Thrones will recognize this as The Kingsroad in season two.

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Ivy-cloaked Rathmullan Priory in County Donegal dates from 1508. Plundered in 1595 and subsequently used as a barracks; in the early 17th century it was partially converted into a castle.

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The Cliffs of Moher on Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way at sunset.

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Rhapsody in Green

by Samantha Paige

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ith an emphasis on femininity and timeless elegance, Daalarna Couture is known for modern and unique designs made to haute couture quality standards. The Daalarna brand was envisioned by fashion designer Anita Benes twenty years ago. With an unparalleled eye for detail, she combines timelessly elegant gowns using the finest fabrics sourced from France, Italy and England.

Daalarna gowns are made by highly qualified seamstresses, paying careful attention to every little detail. Gripping figures, alluring fabrics and passionate tones of colour characterize the collections.

Designed, developed and created in Budapest, Daalarna Couture offers simple lines, sophisticated and graceful dresses.

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Daalarna’s WHISPER Collection was inspired by the beautiful nature of Iceland where the calming whispers of the wind, unusual colors, lights and flowers influenced the unique fabrics and designs for this magical collection.

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The WHISPER Collection is filled with light and soft silhouettes accented by exciting patterns and 3-dimensional embroidered lace floral motifs.

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The fabrics and silhouettes in this collection are light and soft, giving a feeling of freedom to brides. Long and loose sleeves, light skirts, and abundance of tulle and silk fabrics are predominantly seen in the beautiful designs.

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Laser cut shapes of moss and leaves, 3-dimensional embroidered lace flowers and butterfly designs make each bridal gown stand out. The fabrics and silhouettes in this collection are light and soft, giving a feeling of freedom

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In the MIRROR collection, a classic princess style is combined with the contemporary, sophisticated, delicately feminine design typical of Daalarna.

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In addition to the princess style solutions and classic A-line dresses, the MIRROR collection also includes mermaid styles and more restrained, minimalistic designs so that everyone can find the style closest to their personality.

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The source materials are dominated by noble draperies and characteristic, aristocratic colours (such as gold or shades of pink, green and purple), while the use of materials is inspired by the splendour and over-decoration of the Baroque-Rococo palace.

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THE WOMEN WHO INSPIRE US INTERVIEWS

BY KAREN FLOYD

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Women Inspiring Women . . .

* Copy edited for length and clarity. * Interview videos are available to watch at elysianwomen.com

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LYSIAN was the result of Karen Floyd’s personal quest to tell and listen to stories about exceptional women.

On the surface, Floyd’s interviews are about women achieving, overcoming, persevering and enduring. Their authentic journeys are captured through her anecdotal interviews.

Floyd asks, “Timing, virtue, luck, funding, perseverance, faith, endurance or passion?” The answer, she concludes, “is as unique as the stories themselves.”

“There is no “secret sauce” to success nor one roadmap to achievement.” In many cases, she emphasizes, “their journey was lonely . . . yet hardship created inner strength, clarity and enlightenment.”

Floyd maintains, “With age and time, the Inspiring Women collectively recognize and identify a universal goal: making the next chapter of their lives more meaningful.”

It is that purposeful determination to give back, that Floyd mirrors the women she interviews, and shares their inspiring stories with the ELYSIAN reader.

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Governor Noem delivers her 2019 State of the State address.

KRISTI Interview Date: November 2nd, 2021

KRISTI NOEM is the daughter of a cowboy and a cowboy’s wife who raised their four children with strong family values. Growing up, she was a cowboy, and she did all the things that ranch life in the American West demands— herding cows, driving tractors, spending more time outdoors than in—and as a result, “I never knew I was missing parties when I was young because we were always together as a family.” Today, the 33rd (and first female) governor of her home state of South Dakota and married mother of three children draws from her upbringing to build the singular foundation of her Republican governorship since she was elected 2019. As the fourth woman to represent South Dakota in Congress, she is vocal in ending America’s dependency on foreign oil. And she gained national notoriety when she explicitly refused to impose national COVID-19 mandates. It all boils down to one thing: “A lot of people have tried to put labels on me, but right now I’m focused on being Kristi Noem and getting my message out to South Dakotans.

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Tell me about your father?

My dad was a cowboy. Everything he did was an adventure.

I was the third of four children and a tomboy. My favorite thing to do every day was to spend time with him. He was always outside working or hunting. We enjoyed chasing cows, driving tractors, and working together. What was remarkable about my mom and dad is that they recognized the value of having a strong family and spending time together. I always tell people that I never knew I was missing parties or other events with my friends when I was young, because we were always together as a family, doing activities.

Did your siblings remain on the ranch?

Yes, they stayed on the ranch for many years. When I was elected to Congress, it was the first time in 20 years that any of us had left the ranch, to do something different. I was bought out of the family business but kept land and some equity. My sister also decided to exit and was bought out at that time too. So even though we all live very near each other in South Dakota, you never quite leave home. My dad said, all the time, “God isn’t making any more land, so don’t ever sell it.” We have always stayed very tied to the land.

My sister lives a couple of miles from me, and my brothers live on the original farm, which is about 15 miles west of us. That is considered “in the neighborhood” here in South Dakota.

How far is your family ranch from the Capitol?

It is about a three-hour drive straight east. We go back and forth quite a bit and move around the state wherever we need to be for different meetings. South Dakota is a big state and yet we travel to other communities and cities on different days.

The whole place feels like home.

What differentiates your responsibilities as governor from Congress?

It was a huge life change for me when I was elected to

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Congress. Before that, I spent every day outside working with and surrounded by my family. To suddenly get on an airplane and head to Washington, DC and sit in meetings all day was probably the biggest adjustment for me.

Why did you leave Congress?

Governors are the CEOs, and they make decisions every day that impact people’s lives “right now.” I wanted to come home and spend more of my time in this state. Even though I still am in meetings a good bit of the day, I do get the chance to travel the state and spend more time outdoors.

As a junior member of Congress, in a completely different environment, how did you adapt? What were the things that you did to make that experience sustainable?

It felt as though I was attending college again, which was very strange for me. You pack up a suitcase, leave your family and stay somewhere that is temporary during the week and then return home on the weekends. The first month or two was incredibly lonely, something you could not have prepared for. You spend the majority of your time alone traveling back and forth. Walking from meeting to meeting, staff is there, but typically one at a time and not all day long. Very few people spend quality time with you. You leave your community at home and miss milestones like birthday parties and baby showers. Over time you lose contact with people close to you, which for me was challenging. I realized that if I was going to be gone from my family, kids, and my husband, that I was going to make as big a difference as I possibly could, so I was going to forge relationships that were necessary. I realized quickly that DC didn’t have any rules. It was broken and to get something done is tough because of the bureaucracy.

I also realized that everything was controlled by leadership. If I was going to get a bill through committee, I needed that chairman

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Governor Noem and her husband, Bryon, at her inauguration as Governor in 2019.

to want to help me. If I wanted to get a bill off the house floor, I needed the majority leader and the speaker to help. I tried to figure out ways that I could talk to them about how important South Dakota was. I didn’t have a delegation because South Dakota gets one member in the US House of Representatives.

I learned how to build a coalition on every single bill. Each topic required completely different members. While I worked on agriculture bills with one group, I worked on tax reform with other members, and national security issues with others.

I knew everybody because my delegation consisted of just me and I needed those relationships to get things done.

In Congress did you make lifelong friendships?

I did make lifelong friendships with a few people. I tended to seek out others that shared the same kind of lifestyle. I brought my kids with me a lot and bonded with others that mostly were ranchers and farmers and their families. It was important to me for people to understand how tied I was to my family and to the land.

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Were there women you came to admire?

There are some wonderful women in Congress. I am a big fan of Jackie Walorski from Indiana. She is tough, but she is normal, which is great. I served on ways and means with Lynn Jenkins from Kansas, and we spent a lot of time together doing tax reform. We still text about being “grandmas” together.

There are good people there and they are just as frustrated with how that place operates. It is so broken that a lot of good people choose not to stay.

Now that you are stateside, is spending time outdoors important to you?

It’s very important to me. There is something about the outdoors that heals me. If I can spend a day outdoors working, chasing cows, riding horses, that restores me. Most people do not know that I am more of an introvert. I love people. But to really feel refreshed and relaxed, I need to have time with animals or be by myself. It is what I love to do, to get back to work with a fresh perspective. Being outside is a big part of what keeps me happy and enjoying life.

How do you manage the constant traveling?

If I am traveling, my staff knows spending time outdoors is important to me. I get up and exercise every day. If I am somewhere that is not 40 below zero, I will go for a run. But beyond that, they try to incorporate a visit to a farm or ranch. If I’m in the state, I take a little bit of downtime to go fishing in the morning before I start long meetings that day. Everybody in my life recognizes the outdoors as important.

Does your husband also require time outdoors to stay balanced?

He likes it a lot. He owns an insurance agency and is “out and about” visiting people throughout the day. He is also a big sports fan. While I like the hiking, hunting, and being outdoors, he prefers sports. South Dakota doesn’t have any professional

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I’M VERY INTERESTED IN THIS IDEA OF FEAR, PARTICULARLY WITH WOMEN THAT ASCEND. DO YOU HAVE ANY FEAR?

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sports teams, so he is a big Vikings fan, which leads to a lot of heartbreak for our family. He also is a LA Dodgers fan. He grew up with a father who was a big Brooklyn Dodgers fan.

They watched the Dodgers together when he was a little boy and he has always been a Dodgers fan too.

Who is your favorite horse?

His name is Ashwood Iceman and is the horse that typically people see in pictures of me carrying the American flag at a rodeo, or even on the Buffalo Roundup. He is only eight years old and will be around for a number of years yet. He really has been a wonderful horse because I have put him in some incredibly impossible situations, not just doing ranch work and chasing buffalo, but riding into the professional bull riding event with fireworks going off and flames on the arena floor. He just handles it all like a pro.

What kind of breed?

He’s a quarter horse which we typically use on the ranch. They are a versatile horse, quick and they have a lot of cow sense too.

Are you ever frightened?

No. I made a decision years ago to not live “in” fear.

I’m very interested in this idea of fear, particularly with women that ascend.

Do you have any fear?

Not fear that sits with me and lasts any period of time. What people think of me can be difficult in politics because I want people to like me and to know my heart. Often in politics, the picture that people get is not who you really are or why you’re doing what you’re doing. The hardest part of this job is that while I don’t want to be a people pleaser, I do want people to really know the reasons why I’m doing what I’m doing. My decisions come from a place of truly loving people. Unfortunately, in the political arena today, that concept is not what the media wants to show or what your opponents want to talk about. That bothers me the most, but I wouldn’t put that in a category of fear.

How old were you when you decided to live without fear?

As a 13 or 14-year-old I was pretty insecure. I remember my mom sitting me down at the kitchen table. She read me a passage of scripture out of the Bible that talked about how God saw me instead of how I was viewing myself, which was as weak and vulnerable. I saw myself as someone who could not accomplish a lot. What was interesting about that moment was that I believed the words she read. I realized how powerful words are, they have power when you speak. When she sat me down and told me that I was somebody who did not have to be scared, that I could be confident and that I could do big things because that was what my life was called to do, I said, “Okay,” and it changed my whole perspective. Living without fear is a decision. I certainly am a normal person who at times becomes worried, but I choose not to be afraid. I make a conscious decision not to use certain kinds of language either because words have power.

What was that catalyst for your mother sitting you down?

She thought at the time that I could potentially be suicidal because I had such a poor self-image. She was troubled because she felt I lacked a purpose for my life. She knew I had struggled for a while, so she decided to spend a little time talking to me.

There probably are a lot of parents, especially in this day and age with social media, with kids facing different pressures than I ever had to face, who are having similar conversations . . .

What was the source of your questioning?

I was a perfectionist. In high school I wasn’t just on the basketball team and playing volleyball. I was also a boys’, basketball and football, cheerleader. I was the President of the National Honor Society, editor of the school newspaper and acted in the yearly plays. I attended a small school where everyone participated in all activities. I never missed an activity and always wanted to be better at everything that I did. I set a pretty high standard for myself.

Is there a skill set that you can describe as essential to your achievements?

One thing that my brain automatically does is that when I see a problem, I don’t spend any time thinking about the problem.

Instead, I think what are my solutions and what are we going to

OFTEN IN POLITICS, THE PICTURE THAT PEOPLE GET IS NOT WHO YOU REALLY ARE OR WHY YOU’RE DOING WHAT YOU’RE DOING . . .

MY DECISIONS COME FROM A PLACE OF TRULY LOVING PEOPLE.

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ELYSIAN Publisher, Karen Floyd, with South Dakota Governor, Kristi Noem, at the Governor’s Mansion in Pierre, South Dakota, during the Inspiring Woman interview.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL PANICCIA

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do next? I try to describe this to people that work with me, on a daily basis. My dad raised us that way. I tell a story consistently about how we were putting up a fence one day. He wanted to pound a post in the ground, but the post pounder was still in the pickup. He was frustrated that he had to wait for me to run to the pickup and get it and bring it back. When I brought it back to him, I was probably 10 or 11 years old, he said to me, “You should know what I need before I know what I need.” I just remember thinking as a little girl, “How am I ever going to know what you need before you know what you need?” But he was teaching us to be strategic thinkers, to think three or four steps ahead. What will he need next? I have to have it ready before he even has to ask for it. That is how I approach a lot of things. I don’t decide necessarily on, will this help today? I tend to look longer term for the ramifications of doing something for the next 10 years. Will our kids have to deal with this decision?

How old were you when your father had the accident?

I was 22 at the time. I was married, attending college and eight months pregnant with our first daughter. It was on March 10th, and it was devastating for our family.

If you could ask God one question, what would you ask?

How is my dad. You would think after 28 years that I wouldn’t miss him. but I believe that is the power that one life can have.

And it wasn’t that he gave us incredible wealth or material things, but he gave us a book of wisdom that we refer to often, so many life lessons by just how he lived. You would think you would get over losing somebody, but you never quite do.

You were married at age 20, did your husband know immediately that you were “the one?”

He didn’t, it took him a while. He was two years older than I and we went to high school together. He was a friend of my brothers. I liked him first and a friend of mine was dating his cousin. I did not let him know that I thought he was somebody

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I was interested in until he went to college. I was still in high school. Every once in a while, he would come home from college, but he was very shy. He wouldn’t even talk to me in public. He would follow me home at night and we would end up talking at my house or sitting in the driveway. We probably did that for six months before we ever even let anybody see us talking in public. It was probably a backwards “country” way to start dating.

He had only brothers. How many?

Two brothers and he is the middle son. He was always involved in sports, the quarterback of the football team, pitcher for the baseball team and played basketball. Sports were supposed to be more important than girls.

Do you make your career decisions jointly?

We do. We don’t do anything unless the family decides and we spend a lot of time in prayer. Decisions come very easy for me, and they come very hard for him.

Is faith the cornerstone to who and what you are?

I would say my faith is really the foundation of who I am. I was raised in a family that went to church every time the doors were open. I would get up at four or five in the morning and my dad would already be reading the Bible in the living room. I always felt that being a farmer and rancher, we were special because if you look, the Bible often talks about sowing and reaping and your barns overflowing. I thought we are truly chosen by God to do what we do. It was a funny way for a little girl to grow up.

There are so many challenges in the world today. I see people being so shaken. What helps to not be shaken is a big belief that God is in control.

As you know this is ELYSIAN’s “green” issue. In that context, what does the term “environmental sustainability” mean to you?

For me, sustainability means responsible stewardship. It is a word that has been used by people with completely different agendas. There are some people that have used sustainability

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President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, joined by South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Congressman Dusty Johnson (in the mask facing the camera) and Senator John Thune (far right), participate in a tour of the Sculptor’s Studio in 2020, at Mount Rushmore National Memorial in Keystone, S.D. 2020 IMAGES / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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for communicating control. Real sustainability recognizes that the resource is finite. I want to make sure the resource is still here 50, a hundred years from now. There is an undervalued merit to consistency and to keeping quality which is really what sustainability means to me.

You’ve been very purposeful with the ecosystem in South Dakota. What is the habitat program?

When I first was elected, I talked about starting a habitat program, which for a governor in South Dakota is very different.

This program was about educating the public about the importance of diversity on our landscape and that animals as well as people are dependent upon how we care for the landscape around us. As a little girl my dad taught us that you don’t sell land because God’s not making any more land and it is a resource and a treasure that you should cherish and take care of. For farmers and ranchers, land is your gift to your children. You may not have a big bank account or stocks and bonds, but you do have your land. It really is your legacy that you give to them. I wanted the public to recognize that what we have here in South Dakota is very special and there are not many places in the world like this.

When I was very young, an early teenager, my dad bought the ranch that I live on. He put me in the pickup, and he said, “I want to show you something.” We drove about 15 miles and got out of the truck in the middle of a pasture which was very different than our original farm, with rolling hills and open space. He said, “What do you think?” And I said, “I love it.” And he said, “Well, I just bought it.” He started to teach me about how this land had never been broken and that this one little flower in particular only grew on native land. Once you turn the land, plow it, the flowers will never grow again. He taught me how special that land was.

I said, “I want to live here someday.” And he said, “Well, I’ll let you buy it from me if you want to.” but there was no free lunch in his world. Taking the time to teach your kids that kind of lesson causes them to value things. I think that maybe my generation hasn’t done a good job of that.

Can you explain what you mean by “consistency” when it comes to sustainability?

Whenever you make a dramatic change to the environment, land or to waterways, it will have a ripple effect. There may be times there is something you should be doing, but you need to take into account that ripple effect and recognize there are consequences for every action that you take, good or bad. Often it is important to have balance and recognize that nature had a plan from the beginning, which is something that we should always take into consideration. Looking at how we are protecting our natural resources, for me, the consistency in policy and approach is critical.

If an entity is fundamentally changing different approaches every few years, it is damaging to the wildlife, the environment and water quality. Using the facts and the data to make decisions and then being consistent with policy and approach is what will really make the long-term difference.

Climate change and the pipeline are political dividers. Talk first about climate change.

We argue a lot over what needs to be done to address our climate. Unfortunately, “climate change” is a term that has been used to push agendas and implement programs that control people’s lives, take their money, their resources and remove “decision making” out of their hands. We also are held to a very different standard than other countries. The term “climate change” has a lot of baggage around it. By using different terms and speaking clearly about caring for our air, water, land and making sure we’re making wise and balanced decisions, we can move the ball forward. Recognizing the consequences certain decisions have on people’s daily lives should be a part of those policies. We have incredible people doing big things to impact our environment. But they are also

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doing it in ways that do not devastate the finances of middleincome families who get up every day and work 50 to 60 hours a week to put food on the table. We have to take it all into account as well.

With the pipeline, is there policy balance?

In deciding if a pipeline should be utilized or not, you have to take into effect what we are doing today and what creates a better situation tomorrow. We are moving oil over our roads and rail, which is far more dangerous than moving it through a pipeline. The technology and developments that have gone into these pipelines, are designed to prevent spills.

If they do spill, it is minimal compared to what would happen if you had train cars tip over and accidents that happen on the roads, especially going through different cities and populated areas. All of the data and the facts around this discussion, point toward moving resources through a pipeline as a safer alternative for people, the environment, and our water. The added benefit is that it is much more efficient and therefore will drive down the costs for families. I am just a big believer that if all of those facts line up to the “benefit,” why would you not support something that is going to make a big difference for not just the people that live here, but also for resources that are going to be around for hundreds of years?

Do you feel the division is over control?

I think it is control, a lack of education, and lack of accurate information. In today’s world people want to read a headline and they do not go any farther. We are a bit lazy in understanding

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the real information and looking at facts. There is so much information put out that is not true and because that is never refuted it is seen as accurate. Sometimes it is difficult to cut through the noise. When it comes to the pipelines, it has been used as a political tool. We lose sight of the fact that the pipeline’s purpose was to protect the environment. How we’re dealing with those resources today is completely ignored.

How do you find common ground on wedge issues like climate and the pipeline?

We must keep having conversations. I think most of the disagreement over the pipeline has been with my Native American tribes. Never shutting the door to conversation is so important. I recently had tribal members here and we talked.

I listened. While we may disagree on one or two issues, we agree on probably 80 to 90 percent of everything else. We will

Governor Noem gives a young boy a high-five during an October 2021 visit with firefighters battling a local wildfire in nearby Rapid City, SD. Noem was visiting with the boy’s family, whose farm was hit by the blaze but protected thanks to swift actions by firefighters and neighboring farmers. Below: On her off days, Kristi loves to spend time fishing with her family. Here, she is fishing with her husband Bryon, her daughter Kennedy, and her son Booker.

continue to work on those issues that are not aligned. Knowing that we are going to disagree on some issues should not stop us from doing big things together for the benefit of all people.

The truth is not what people hear on the news at night when they turn on the TV, or for that matter, what people hear in the political arena. It is easier to be offended by someone than to work together, to find solutions. Unfortunately, I think the American people recently have been taking the easier route.

Where do you get your answers when you are unclear or confused?

It is very rare that I am confused about which way to go. I tend to always know what I think. My struggle is if my family or my team are not on board, which causes me to question. Pretty soon after I see a dilemma, I think I know what needs to be done.

When I don’t have consensus with the people that I trust, I start to dig deeper into the issue and get more information.

Do you ever get too far ahead of the pack?

Yes. All the time.

How do you temper yourself when that happens?

That is what is funny about me. My entire family cannot believe I ended up in politics because I never have had a filter.

From the time I was a little girl, I said whatever I thought without even thinking. I am the only person in my family that is involved in politics. They find that humorous today because the person without the filter ended up here. I think I have learned to just pause sometimes, that waiting and slowing things down for me at times is beneficial.

On one occasion, I wasn’t getting very good debate around policies with my staff. I said, “Everybody is so quiet, and no one is debating.” I was frustrated and I wanted to hear other perspectives. My chief of staff said, “Maybe you should try being quiet for a while.” I said, “What do you mean?” And he said, “Well, you are the governor, and nobody wants to argue with the governor. As soon as you say something or voice an opinion, it’s harder for them to speak up after you. So why don’t you just sit and listen for five, 10 minutes? And you’ll probably find that they’ll share their opinions more before you weigh in.”

And it worked, he was right. It was a very good lesson because I forget the position I am in and sometimes people may not want to argue with me or say, “No, I think you’re wrong.” Just sitting, being quiet, and listening is extremely valuable because you get different perspectives and make better decisions.

How much of a sacrifice is it to serve in public office?

Being in politics is more of a burden for my family than it is for me, probably. I know that I signed up for this job, but they didn’t. People give their opinions on what kind of a job I’m doing to my mom, siblings, and my kids.

Every mother holding office has the most vulnerability when it comes to their children. Have yours “bought in” now?

They have been the entire time. It is interesting because I took them with me so much. They are very smart and know the policies better than almost anyone. They went to a school that allowed them to make up homework and travel to Washington with me for a whole week at a time. They sat in meetings with me and answered the phones in the office. Even today, if I can’t make it to a meeting, I’ll send one of them to speak on my behalf.

I think it is powerful when one of my family members shows up, because it shows that this is important to us. They are and always have been more than willing to spend a lot of time doing this, and they know that I’m better when they’re with me.

Do they recognize the impact that you are making?

I don’t know. We don’t really talk about that. My girls do, they are very strong. I tell people all the time, those two women are going to be 10 times the leader I will ever be. Booker is my youngest and probably the most tender-hearted out of all of them. If it was going to be hard on one of them, it would be on him.

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Kristi Noem checks fences and cattle on the family ranch in South Dakota. Noem won the state’s at-large congressional seat.

THE WASHINGTON POST / CONTRIBUTOR / GETTY IMAGES

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Because you’re his mother.

I’m his mom and he doesn’t like people going after me.

There is also a part of him that would like everything to be peaceful and easy.

Does it make you feel guilty?

No, because I think they have had incredible opportunities and will be better off. My job is not to make their life easy. My job is to prepare them for life, and they are very well prepared for life. I think whatever comes their way, they will look at it from a perspective of “how do I deal with this and how do I fix it and leave things better.” That was my job.

What has been the biggest surprise, to date in public office?

How quickly something can happen and everything that day changes. Washington is very different because you have no control over your schedule. Literally somebody else could derail all your plans instantaneously. We have had a series of crises since I’ve been governor. The first year we had year-round flooding, hit by a bomb cyclone. We then had COVID, which no one could have predicted. This year we had tornadoes take out towns, fires, and situations where dangerous people have done bad things. No matter what you think is in store or think this is going to be a quiet week, there tends to be something that comes up.

As someone that is future focused, and the many the obstacles you face in the position, how do you keep going?

I don’t think about the obstacles. I really don’t think that my job is hard or that my life is difficult, either. I keep perspective. I tell my husband this quite often because we talk about challenges or upcoming things that are hard on my full schedule. I could be a farmer and I would still be working 20 hours a day. No matter what I do, it is my nature, and I can get obsessive. I tell him all the time when something bad happens, “You know what? We did not get a phone call that one of our kids has terminal cancer today.

We did not find that somebody we dearly love was just killed in an accident. So, we’re good. We can handle whatever this is.” I think a lot of it is perspective. We saw people, especially during the pandemic, completely lose perspective. They listened to what was on the TV and what the experts were telling us. People stopped making rational decisions.

Women in politics are hit in one of three ways. They are vilified as promiscuous, the “B” word, or crazy. How did you navigate the mire?

I have been hit with all three, multiple times and I am shocked by it every time. I think people know me and we are such a transparent family. I don’t know of another elected official that puts their family life out there, with their kids. All the funny, awkward, difficult moments, we are an open book. I think that is what this job requires in this day and age, you have to be real. My reaction is to run into the fire, particularly when I think a lot of people would want to stay home and stay away from the news or stay away from the bad articles. We tend to schedule public events and gather our family and go spend time with people.

Do you do “forge on” without your family?

A lot of times I do, especially now that our children are grown because they have lives too. Public appearances do not always work for everybody’s schedule, especially since my husband still has a business and I have a granddaughter now, so everyone is heading in different directions. But I tend to fight back a little bit and prove that they are wrong.

Is it possible to fight back in today’s media with the political polarization?

You never will get all the facts, or the truth with the media.

I have learned that over the years. I never was quite as cynical

Before she was elected to Congress, Kristi Noem spent the majority of her time working the family farm and ranch.

Here, she is on the ranch with her son, Booker.

as I am now. I literally have sent all the information on a story that the media requested, and they did not use any of what we provided. They wanted to tell an emotional story. It has been a challenging political environment. I go into meetings where people that are in elected positions would not normally take questions and ask for questions because if something is difficult to talk about or an accusation has been made that is not true, I want to talk about it. If there is a subject that a lot of people want to avoid, I find it best to rip the Band-Aid off and just talk about it; expose the fact that the whole truth has not been put forward. I find the best public servants are people that never saw it in their future and were a little reluctant to do it, but also decided that they couldn’t just complain about things, that they needed to be willing to try to fix them.

What is your purpose and what do you want to accomplish?

I wish I could tell you because I have spent a lot of time thinking about this. To be a purposeful person is an incredible gift and discipline. I am very purposeful about the tasks I want to accomplish. But true purpose is also investing in people and spending time with people, which is where I fall short. I tend to be very task oriented.

When my time is over, I would hope that people would say she raised wonderful children, worked hard, never quit, saw a problem, and tackled it. I have no idea what the next year will bring either.

I never say, “I’m going to be a failure if I don’t do this,” because I never intended to be here, planned to be in DC. or in the legislature. I honestly have not planned out my life. If there is an opportunity, then we do it and I don’t wait for somebody else to say that it is their job. Growing up, it was never somebody else’s job to do something. It was “all of our work” to be done, and we did it. I will just do the work that I know I’m supposed to be doing, always making sure we are making good decisions, that impact families and have a long-lasting effect, not just for the next six months. I want my family to have the opportunity to grow up like I did, which I think was incredibly special.

What do you hope your legacy will be?

I would hope my legacy would be one of Integrity. “She did what she said she was going to do.”

What piece of advice you would give a young woman just entering maybe her twenties, that is uniquely yours?

To say yes. This world tells you to focus more on yourself, to say no to some things and to spend more time in reflection and less doing.

I would tell them the exact opposite. If somebody asks you to go do something, go do it. You don’t have to do it forever. You can do it for a few months. You can decide that is not for you and try something different. But if you say yes, you might meet somebody there that will change your life forever. You might find you have a gift or a talent that you had no idea that you had, it might be the one evening or the one meeting that changes the rest of your life.

Say yes and do it. One thing that I realized when I was serving in office was that men wake up in the morning with amazing confidence. They automatically assume they are the best person for the job and everybody around them should see it. Women, not so much. We tend to think, I don’t know if I can do that job. I don’t know if I’m good enough. I don’t know if I am the best person for it. Women need to be at that table. They have a completely different perspective than anybody else. The only way that we get good policy and good decisions is to hear all perspectives and to hear those different voices around the table. Women need to be there. It is not thinking that you are the best person, but your voice needs to be there, to be a part of the solution.

You said yes?

Yes. ■

MELINA MARA / THE WASHINGTON POST / CONTRIBUTOR / GETTY IMAGES

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PHOTOGRAPH BY BEN ROLLINS

Laura Interview Date: February 23rd, 2022

LAURA TURNER SEYDEL is the firstborn daughter of American

entrepreneur, businessman, and founder of CNN and TBS, Ted Turner.

Celebrated for the many philanthropies he has founded and supported over the years, Laura attributes her own passion for environmental health and conservation issues to her father, who raised his five children to be benevolent and aware of the world around them. “It’s in my DNA,” Laura says. Married and the mother of three, she serves as chair for the Captain Planet Foundation, founded by Ted Turner and Barbara Pyle in 1991 and named after the cartoon show, Captain Planet and the Planeteers, which they produced between 1990 and 1996. Today the foundation is a 501©3 public charity that has grown into a worldwide network of young people who strategize, connect, and strive to make a meaningful difference locally and globally to save threatened and endangered species, and ecosystems.

Laura is cofounder with her husband, Rutherford, of the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, which they established in 1994 to monitor and ensure the purity of the waters of the Chattahoochee River Basin, Georgia’s most heavily used water source, and is among many philanthropies that Laura dedicates her time and financial resources.

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Tell me about your brothers and sister?

I have three brothers and one sister. I am the oldest child, my sister is seven years younger and the last child, so we are the bookends in our immediate family. My siblings Teddy, Rhett, Beau, and Jennie all work on environmental issues. Teddy is a world class sailor. He spends a lot of time on the ocean and has been involved with getting at-risk youth to learn about healthy marine systems. Rhett is a documentary filmmaker and photographer and has made many nature documentaries focused on Sandhill cranes, the Chattahoochee River, and other important topics. He has a coffee table book of pictures of wild landscapes, soon to be released. Beau works with my dad, dedicating most of his time to managing wildlife for conservation and running his properties in the Southeast. One of his passions is getting inner city kids into nature by teaching them how to hunt and fish. I believe it is important for our youth to have a connection to nature.

Fishing and hunting are one way to educate and expose them to the outdoors. My sister, Jennie, has had her own television program for eleven years, on PBS. EcoSense for Living is seen in approximately 90 markets across the country. The stories spotlighted in EcoSense for Living are all positive and inspiring.

Jennie does not present a doom and gloom perspective but rather a factual accounting of what is happening and suggestions on how you can help. My brothers and sister are doing amazing work.

Your family is collectively focused on the environment.

How has your father, Ted Turner, maintained strong family connectivity around issues to which he has dedicated his life?

My dad started family gatherings around his philanthropic initiatives over thirty years ago. He wanted to make sure that our family members would get together a couple of times a year, primarily during Christmas holidays, where he combines the gathering with foundation meetings. We do a second, big trip in the summer, an environmental retreat, and bring our children. The fourteen cousins have all built a great bond over those years and remain very close to this day. I think the number one reason he started this beautiful tradition was to bring the family together. It also taught us to work together, to learn about and become quasi experts in the environmental causes that are most interesting to us. The foundation we had was much larger initially because we had Time Warner stock. After the merger with AOL, the value of the stock dropped and so did the value of the Corpus, so we have less funds to grant. But we also are much better at putting that money to work, to achieve our goals.

How might a philanthropy access those grants?

Organizations have to be a 501c3 public charity whose work has to align with the Foundation’s priorities related to land, air and water strategies such as actively managing land for improved resilience, habitat, quality and contributions to climate solutions. The Foundation needs to invite organizations to apply for a grant which can be general support or a specific

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program. We like to see that there is other financial support for the work. Our staff then brings a recommendation to the board for a vote—that’s how it works.

What are your first memories of your father’s dedication to conservation and saving the ecosystem?

My dad really became hyper passionate about the environment during the oil embargo when President Carter was in office. President Carter made recommendations for how the country could save energy collectively. For example, by driving your car 55 miles an hour, no faster, would save a tremendous amount of fuel. Keeping your thermostats at 65 degrees in the winter was another recommendation. At that time, most homes did not have air conditioning. We had an attic fan that sucked the heat out through the roof, which worked like a charm. Even at his house outside of Charleston, we did not have any air conditioning and it got really hot. With the climate warming,

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ELYSIAN Publisher, Karen Floyd, with Laura Turner Seydel, at Laura’s home in Atlanta, Georgia, during the Inspiring Woman interview.

PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHANIE CODY / MAKE-UP BY BECCA BUSSERT

it became hotter and hotter. When my brother was married in Charleston and dad stayed in the house with Jane (Fonda), it was so hot he said, “Okay, maybe now we can get air conditioning,” which we did. Dad has said throughout the course of his career, he did not get wealthy by spending money. He got wealthy by saving it and investing it in things that mattered. Wasting money on energy was not what he was about. I remember being really cold in the winters, but you would just go and get a sweater and put it on. He was not alone in his approach either, he was raised by parents that survived the Great Depression and they passed that ethic to him. When we visited our grandparents, it was the same way. If you got cold, you put on a sweater. You also did not waste food. We composted the coffee residuals, eggshells and grapefruit peels that went in the garden. My grandmother who lived in Birmingham, Alabama, had great big roses which could easily have won awards. She would dig a hole, put the residuals

of those three components in there and cover the dirt back over the hole. The compost created the richest, most wonderful fertile soil that grew these magnificent roses without any spots . . . none of the toxic stuff that you buy at the store today. My grandparents and dad are superheroes for the earth.

There is so much written about Ted Turner, your father, but tell me about your mother.

My mother, Judy, is from Chicago. She was a big sailor, which is how my mom and my dad met. She sailed for Northwestern University, and he sailed for Brown. They ended up racing against each other. They were both skippers which is probably why it did not last because there’s only one skipper on a boat. She has stayed in the Northeast and lives in Michigan.

She is an artist and blows glass, which is quite amazing. She had a bookstore with her second husband for about 35 years.

She was not integral in your life as a young person?

I was three years old when my parents divorced and we moved from Atlanta to Chicago with her. When I was five and my brother Teddy was three, we came down to visit dad for a holiday and never went back. I never regret that happening, but I do remember receiving a letter from her just saying that she would not see me for a while because it was better and less confusing.

Shared custody wasn’t an option since they were living in two different parts of the country. I did not see her again until I was 14 years old. When I got married in 1991, it was important for her to come to the wedding, and I really wanted that relationship. She came 30 years ago, and it has been a great relationship ever since, something I really value.

During those years, who filled the “mother” role model in the absence of your natural mother?

My grandmother did. She lost her only daughter, my dad’s sister, to lupus, to a long, painful, horrible death. Back then they had no way of managing the disease. She used to call me Mary Jean sometimes and I became like her surrogate daughter and ended up living with her for a couple of years when I was in middle school. My great-grandmother and my grandmother lived together so I was with them both.

Multi-generational influence from your father’s mother and grandmother?

Yes, they were in the hotel business in Cincinnati during the Great Depression. They would collect the untouched and unwanted food from the tables after people left, like the big baskets of bread that they put on tables. From the leftovers they created a soup kitchen out their back door. My grandmother wanted to go to college, but she had to stay home and help with the business so that her brother could go to college instead. He went to Cornell. She would tell us about feeling sorry for herself

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WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF SUSTAINABILITY? because she could not have a new pair of shoes until she passed a woman sitting on the street that did not have any feet. It shifted her whole way of thinking about life. I think what I learned from my grandmother and my great-grandmother was how to live within your means, and to live in reality. Many people today are over-consuming, which is not what you did during the great depression. I just keep coming back to that.

Other than your grandmother, were there any other women’s strong influences before the age of 25?

Not really. No. How did you meet your husband, Rutherford?

My father was receiving an award at the Governor of Georgia’s International Businessman of the Year Award Ceremony. I was my dad’s “date” because he was between relationships. Rutherford’s dad, Scott Seydel, was also getting an award and we were seated at the head table. I sat right next to my future father-in-law. We got on fabulously and had a wonderful evening. I did not meet Rutherford, who was there that night with his, at the time, girlfriend. He asked his dad

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“who is Ted’s young girlfriend?”, to which he replied, “that’s not his girlfriend, that is his daughter.” We later ended up meeting through a mutual friend. He was charming and very talkative, which was refreshing because we cared about the same things. I had been working at Green Peace International in England and was passionate about whales and the harp seals that were being clubbed to make trinkets. My heart just was being ripped out of my chest. Most people glaze over when you start talking about those types of issues. They call you a tree hugging, granola eating, environmental extremist . . . but he valued, shared, and liked the same interests. We went on to do great projects together.

Are you a partnership or soulmates?

We are definitely soulmates which makes for a much better, long-lasting relationship. Physical attraction to somebody can wax and wane, but he is my best friend. I could not do what I do if I had a husband who expected me to put three meals on the table every day, which I did during COVID. But I missed that part earlier in our marriage. I felt bad for being away—it

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Ted Turner and Laura at Ted’s 75th birthday celebration. Opposite: Laura’s three children– Vasser, Laura Elizabeth and John R.

MY DEFINITION FOR SUSTAINABILITY IS LONGER-TERM THAN MOST PEOPLES. I THINK HUMANITY SHOULD CONSIDER SUSTAINABILITY THROUGHOUT OUR CHILDREN’S LIFETIMES AND THEIR CHILDREN’S LIFETIMES. MUCH LIKE THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE WHO CONSIDER THEIR IMPACT TODAY ON THE SEVENTH GENERATION OR 120 YEARS FROM NOW. I DO NOT THINK WE ARE DOING THAT.

was a sacrifice, especially for our youngest daughter who would ask “Mom, why can’t you just be like some of the other moms and do what they do…drive us here and there? And why can’t you have a family dinner every night”? I tried to explain it to her, but now at 25, she fully recognizes and understands what I was doing. I was fighting for her future and the future of all young people.

Do you think that you have to make an either/or choice to emulate a traditional role model versus a work/passion focus?

Everybody has to find their own balance in life. When I was young, I really wanted to be married. I wanted to have children and I did not really picture myself doing anything else. I did not know what I wanted to study in college, so I only applied to one university, which is where I went.

This seems so strange to me because your father has such a strong personality and is a visionary. I assumed he would task and propel his daughters to “change the world.”

He always made it clear to his children, that he would not put pressure on us because his father had put so much pressure

on him. He lost his sister to lupus and was treated like the only child. My grandfather was hard on my dad. I think the way he responded to what he went through was to encourage us to do whatever we wanted to do but to do it well. Ultimately, he wanted us to be happy. Dad taught my brothers how to hunt and fish. He also took my brothers ocean racing, which took them away from home a good bit. It was also fine with me not to go because I didn’t find joy in those things. However, both my sister Jennie and I fell in love with horses and spent time riding and competing.

Competition and passion are pervasive themes in your family. Is this hereditary?

It is in my DNA. It did not take me long to figure out what I was passionate about. When I was young, my grandmothers filled my head with “the prince charming story.” I heard it from my grandmothers so much I really started to believe it. But when I saw what was going on in the world my perspective changed.

I grew up in nature and my siblings and I spent all our time in the outdoors playing, which is something today’s children do not get to enjoy nearly enough. They develop this terrific fear

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Eco Manor’s Laura Turner Seydel with Jim Bethea of Bethea Insurance Group during The Fireman’s Fund Insurance Press Conference Launch of Green Insurance at “Eco Manor” in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2008. The sculpture represents mother nature as a warrior fighting for survival with her hands bound in barbed wire and holding a butterfly symbolizing rebirth.

PHOTOGRAPH BY RICK DIAMOND / WIREIMAGE / GETTY IMAGES

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of bugs and dirt because it is so unknown to them. I think a natural evolution for me was to be concerned with what was happening to our environment. Dad was sitting on this mountaintop of global information, suddenly you could see we were messing up the world.

My dad was seeing these big gaps and opportunities. He used his media platforms to educate others, to make them understand how amazing nature is. He wanted to connect their hearts with the idea of preserving our wildlife. He also wanted to show the world what happens when you do not take care of our planet. You cannot drink fresh water, crops will not grow, there is not enough food to eat, land dries out and burns up. This is what we are doing, and it is affecting our microclimates.

When we take down the rainforest, we change the hydrological cycle. We affect the rainfall, dry out the ground. We are dewatering many of the aquifers so quickly. My dad showed me that by taking action, and putting your passion to work, you can actually solve problems.

The product of a strong father and divorce is a familiar theme amongst many of the women I have interviewed. You have been married for over 30 years. Is that the effect or lesson you learned from having divorced parents or is it because you made a commitment and never deviated?

It is a combination. Witnessing what happens when people get divorced is always very sad because, for the most part, it does not go well and is a hardship, especially for the children.

Rutherford and I both experienced divorce in our family. We are both the oldest of five, with fathers who had been divorced three times.

We did not want that for our children, and it was just ingrained into our personal choices..

Fortunately, we are very compatible and lucky to have found one another.

There are three core and foundational areas of focus, for your father and you. The first one is nuclear threat, somewhat short term. Second is a comprehensive concern for the environment and the global eco-system.

The third is what you describe as having “overreached the caring capacity of the earth” or overconsuming. Let us delve into the first, nuclear threats.

There are three existential threats that my dad talked about constantly while we were growing up, and he used his megaphone in the media to build awareness for the world at large. In the short term, it was the threat of nuclear weapons which would just be devastating for people and for nature.

Does the situation in Ukraine give you a consternation?

Of course, I think people everywhere are experiencing increased stress and anxiety from what we are all witnessing.

For goodness’ sake, the risk has never been higher than now. It just seems to be the way of the world as there are more signs of fighting, animosity, fear, racism, escalation of gun violence, and domestic violence. What we are seeing, whether firsthand or watching through the media, is absolutely frightening. Dad started CNN because he wanted to show the world the truth.

He put war in people’s living rooms. The first war that people could watch live and in real time was the Gulf War. He showed the atrocities of war; innocent people dying, cities being blown

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up, antiquities demolished, and the destruction of nature. It is absolutely ridiculous. I serve on the Nuclear Threat Initiative Board where experts contend that we are beyond where we were for the Cold War and the risk of nuclear war is escalating.

What do you think is the solution or antidote to diminish the threat of nuclear war?

I think more women in positions in leadership and politics, much like the Indigenous tribal nations. There were certain tribal nations where the war chiefs were women, and they were the ones to make the decisions on whether it was worth going to battle because they had to send their children. I think we can learn a lot from Indigenous people, because they survived in harmony for thousands of years. It took a couple hundred years to create the existential threats with weapons. I find it hard to believe that in my home state of Georgia, you can wear

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Steven Hein (Director, Lamar Q Ball Raptor Center) with peregrine falcon, Ted Turner and daughter, Laura Turner Seydel.

PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANK MULLEN / WIREIMAGE / GETTY IMAGES

an overcoat, cloaking assault weapons designed to kill a lot of people extremely fast, and go into a church, a store, or walk down the street armed. I agree with Pope Francis, the amount of money spent on weapons of mass destruction is a sin when there are so many people in this world that don’t have access to basic human rights like fresh food and water.

The second bucket is our global eco-system. Is that where you now spend most of your effort, time, and energy?

Yes, because my father’s long-term concern, is now here. We see the devastation of escalating temperatures, air pollution, rising seas . . . I have been so focused on environmental health and environmental conservation, but I just cannot do it all, so I spend a lot of time working with “intersectional issues.” An example of what this means is when you talk about climate change, you must talk about issues in relation to people’s lives

and the effect on them personally and their communities. For fishermen, concern is over the water levels in the rivers and the warmer temperatures are causing fish to go belly up.

Does this also apply to ranchers?

Yes. Ranchers are watching their range lands dry up because they have been overgrazed and the rainfall patterns have changed. The antidote is to regenerate the life in the soil and there are techniques of managed grazing that can lead to many win-wins for wildlife, the climate, livestock and for ranchers. On our fourteen ranches, nearly two million acres, we are implementing the principles and best practices of regenerative agriculture and the bison on our properties are helping to do it. I am passionate about this.

What are other examples you might give?

When talking to people who live in an urban setting, their intersection is the health of the community where asthma rates are high, because of dirty outdoor air from the transportation sector and the energy sector. I started an organization that addressed this with Stephanie Blank 17 years ago called Mothers and Others for Clean Air. There are so many ways to talk about what matters to diverse groups. But you cannot just say, “It is global warming,” people want to hear about solutions.

Am I hearing you define “intersectional issues” as the connective messaging that is needed for people (at the most local levels possible) to understand how they are personally affected by the destruction of the eco-system?

Yes, creating the narratives for people to connect with and building awareness that gets people to take action. With the Captain Planet Foundation, we have educated and trained youth activists around the globe.

Now they are making a difference themselves like banning plastics in their school districts and their communities, shutting down coal fired plants, closing pollution sources that are contaminating their water supply.

What is your definition of sustainability?

My definition for sustainability is longer-term than most peoples. I think humanity should consider sustainability throughout our children’s lifetimes and their children’s lifetimes. Much like the Indigenous people who consider their impact today on the seventh generation or 120 years from now. I do not think we are doing that. Healthy planet, healthy people. Today, we take more than what we should and are degrading the ecosystem, the life of the planet . . . we are taking resources and not giving enough back. I love the term regeneration because that is what we have to do, figure out how to build back a lot of what we have taken.

We should focus not just on how to keep the rainforest but planting new rainforests and new mangroves.

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Laura pictured with the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper’s custom made boat that includes a water-jet engine and double aluminum hull bottom which patrols and monitors the entire length of the river starting with the headwaters in North Georgia running south 430 miles to the Georgia-Florida border.

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At the end of the day, why do you think people do not engage holistically on the environmental causes you are so passionate about?

We have 10 years left and people do not want to hear that. Just like Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth. People just do not want to believe it and the topic is polarizing.

10 years before what?

Before we cannot put the genie back in the bottle. Environmental destruction, global warming, wildfires, oceans rising and eroding away the seashores, extreme weather. The heat index will rise for people who live in urban settings, and for people who work in the outdoors, there will be an uptick in disease like Lyme disease, asthma, and heart disease.

The third core area of focus is overconsumption, or as you call it having “overreached the caring capacity of the earth”?

Yes, because there are approximately eight billion people on a finite planet with finite resources. One half of a percent, of all the water on earth, is potable and can be used to irrigate crops. Water in China is so polluted that they cannot even use it for industry. They dewatered the aquifers in the Northern China plain where they grew most of their food and fed their people. The same happened in the Middle East, where many countries dewatered their aquifers and were unable to produce enough grain to feed their people. Extremism and the violence came out of the Middle East because it is 150 degrees and food cannot be grown. The Arab spring started as a result of rising food prices because of importing . . . everything is interconnected.

For what do you want to be remembered?

I want to be remembered by my children and grandchildren for doing everything in my power to ensure a healthy and livable planet for them and future generations.

Your children play a role in your legacy; can you tell me about them?

My three kids are amazing. Of course, all mothers are biased about their children. I really appreciate and admire them individually, and they are sincerely passionate about the work that they do. I believe it is because they were influenced by their grandfather and what Rutherford and I do, and have done, their whole lives, in working to affect some of the toughest issues that will impact their lives and their children’s lives. John R is 29 years old and he is the Director of Sustainability for the city of Atlanta, a job he has held for six years now. The city of Atlanta was one of the first cities to sincerely address food desert issues and the first in the country to hire a Director of Urban Agriculture to address community gardens, as one small example. Our daughter, Vasser, is living her passion centered on ocean health as the campaign director for a nonprofit to fight deep seabed mining. She speaks at conferences, does media and podcasts. Interestingly, Vasser is a family name given to her that means water in German. Laura Elizabeth graduated in 2020 from the film school at UCLA and she is very dedicated to the entertainment industry. Music is her specialty, and she produces music videos. She also just launched her own

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production company. She has a great ability to influence young people about social and environmental causes.

Tell me about a few organizations that you both support and with whom you work?

I try to work with and support organizations that address urgent challenges affecting the health, functionality, and vitality of our life support system: our air, water, land, food, biodiversity, and climate. I serve as chair for the Captain Planet Foundation which has been working collaboratively for over thirty years to engage and empower young people to be problem solvers for the planet. I cofounded the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper which has fought hard and smart since 1994 to make the water of the Chattahoochee River and its tributaries drinkable, swimmable

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Laura Turner Seydel speaking at the annual Captain Planet Foundation Gala which raises money every year to support the programming of the Foundation.

and fishable. I also cofounded Mothers and Others for Clean Air which works to protect the health of our most vulnerable populations—especially children—by reducing the impact of air pollution and climate change throughout the Southeast.

Global warming and connecting children with nature are two of your passions. What organizations do you champion in these areas and why?

I am passionate about the boards on which I serve. Project Drawdown which was the first to enlist researchers to map, model and measure the top 100 scalable solutions to address global warming. The Children & Nature Network, whose mission it is that all children grow up realizing the many benefits—physically, mentally, developmentally, and cognitively—that exposure to nature provides is also important to me.

At the end of your life, what do you want your dad to know?

Well, I tell him every chance that I get . . . but he usually leads by saying “Laura, I’m so proud of you.” A lot of parents do not tell their children when they are proud of them.

But he does on a regular basis. I would say, “I am so proud of you, dad. I would not be doing this work if it were not for you. Look at all you have done and the amazing difference you have made on a global scale. You are passing it down and have influenced the thinking of millions of people around the world, with “Captain Planet and the Planeteers.”

Millennials that watch the cartoon have an ethic for social causes and environmental causes. I do tell him that on a regular basis. I have a great life thank you, dad. I have a great life. You gave me these great opportunities to be able to make my passion the reason for getting up every day.

You can ask God, any question, what would it be?

I would ask him if we all start taking care of your creation and the least of these children, as you have mandated us to do, then will you let us live on this planet for another couple hundred years, at least?

What is your favorite book and why?

The most important book is Drawdown, the 100 Top Solutions to Address Global Warming.

People want solutions. Personally, of the top ten solutions to solve the climate crisis, I love number three, which is reducing food waste.

Number four, which is eating a more plant rich diet, and then number six, educating girls and number seven is family planning. If you add three and four together, that’s the number one solution to address the climate crisis. And if you add number six and seven together, that becomes the number one solution for the climate crisis.

What piece of advice can you give your younger self and a young woman who is coming into her own, in today’s world?

Growing up, I was always hung up on being judged for how I looked. I felt that there was a “perfect standard” to meet and what mattered most to society was how you looked. Words matter and what people say is important. You can see it in social media where young girls are bullied and/or become hyper-focused on looks and manipulate the way they look for the world. I would hope to change what we are seeing now with teenage girls. I do believe we are finally changing because media and advertisers have been pressured to do so. For the first time, models are more real, they are full-figured, and they have imperfections. In hindsight, I wish that I had felt comfortable in my own body. I would not have gone through some of what I experienced. I would remind my younger self and the young women who follow, what my grandparents would say “beauty is as beauty does.” ■

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hotosynthesis is the principal source of oxygen in the atmosphere and the process by which plants capture energy from the sun. This energy is then stored in chemical bonds formed when carbon dioxide and water combine to produce carbohydrate compounds.

Photosynthesis is like lighting a fire under logs in a fireplace: without the fire, the logs do not burn and when they don’t burn, they don’t give off heat. Without photosynthesis, the carbon cycle could not occur. Oxygen-requiring life would not survive, plants would produce no oxygen and die, and without oxygen no human or animal could survive. You see, photosynthesis is the underlying foundation to all life.

Here’s the science: the process produces carbohydrates in all green and non-animal foods consumed by humans and warm-blooded creatures. Carbs give off energy and when carbs metabolize in our system, they break the bonds between the atoms that make up each carb molecule that stores and releases energy in your body. Without the energy from the foods you eat, your body cannot function.

HOW PHOTOSYNTHESIS WORKS

“Photo” means light and “synthesis” means combination— therefore, photosynthesis means the process by which light combines carbon dioxide and water to form nature’s way of creating, maintaining, and supporting organic, human, and animal life.

Sunlight is the energy that fuels the photosynthetic process. When carbon dioxide and water from the atmosphere enter into the process, an organic chemical called adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is formed.

ATP, which is crucial in the relationship between energy and living things, is known as the “energy currency for all life.” ATP is the chemical that manufactures chlorophyll, the small, light-absorbing, green-pigmented organelles that store the sun’s energy. Chlorophyll absorbs energy from blue and red-light waves. These, in turn, reflect as green pigment which is why most plants and leaves are green.

Chlorophyll occurs in several forms. Chlorophylls a and b are found in most plants and green algae, chlorophylls c and d are found in other types of algae, and chlorophyll e is a rare type of pigment found in golden algae. Interestingly, the chlorophyll molecule is quite similar in structure to hemoglobin, the pigment that carries oxygen in the red blood cells of humans, and all mammals and vertebrates.

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CELLULAR RESPIRATION TO PHOTOSYNTHESIS

Chlorophyll is then stored in tiny structures in the plant’s cells called chloroplasts and one of the byproducts that is produced in this part of the cycle is oxygen, which is released back into the atmosphere as life-supporting oxygen. This is called cellular respiration and no living thing can exist without it. Cellular respiration in a three-step process: first, cytoplasm (the gelatinous liquid that fills the inside of a cell, which is composed of water, salts, and various organic molecules) breaks down glucose in a process called glycolysis, which releases a portion of ATP. Next, the cell transports the glucose molecules, called pyruvate molecules, into the mitochondria, which is the energy center of the cell. This process is called anaerobic respiration because it does not use oxygen. In the final step of the process, oxygen is produced to create the energy transport chain that produces ATP. Cellular respiration in plants, essentially, is the opposite of photosynthesis.

Humans and animals breathe in oxygen and release carbon dioxide. Given sunlight, plants utilize our carbon dioxide to produce the food. And so, the cycle goes . . . plants release oxygen back into the atmosphere, animals and humans release carbon dioxide, and the symbiotic relationship as old as Creation continues to make the world go ‘round.

NON-PHOTOSYNTHETIC PLANTS

Some comparatively few plants do not use photosynthesis to produce food.

These are called parasitic plants, which mean they rely upon a host to generate nutrients, such as Indian pipe (also known as the ghost or corpse plant) and beechdrops, which take nutrients from the roots of beech trees. Parasitic plants are easy to identify because they are not green, since they contain no chlorophyll, and therefore are hues of white, like mushrooms, molds, and yeasts.

TRAPPING LIGHT

Nothing on the surface of the Earth exists without light. Light travels as a form of energy called photons. Chlorophyll molecules gather by the hundreds to form a complex known as chloroplasts, which is bound by a special protein called a thylakoid membrane. The chloroplast then serves as a reaction center so that when the photon is funneled into the chloroplast, it ignites the first stage of photosynthesis, called the light-dependent reaction. The resultant energy is then processed through the thylakoid membrane, absorbed by the chlorophyll, and converted into one of two forms chemical energy: ATP, or adenosine triphosphate, and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH), also known as the Calvin Cycle. This light-independent cycle occurs between the thylakoid membranes and the chloroplast membranes in a space called the stroma. Energy from ATP and NADPH molecules is used to convert carbon dioxide and water from the atmosphere into glucose and other sugars.

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WHY DOES PHOTOSYNTHESIS MATTER?

Now you understand why photosynthesis is critical to the survival of life on Earth, and how a plant’s ability to convert light energy into chemical energy supplies the energy in the biosphere that supports all living things. Without photosynthesis, plants and animals would disappear as the Earth’s atmosphere eventually loses its gaseous oxygen and perishes.

Consider Humphrey Bogart meeting General Sternwood in The Big Sleep.

Intensified oxygen in the hothouse was like giving the unwell man oxygen through a facemask at a hospital. His orchids breathed out oxygen and he exhaled the carbon dioxide that made the orchids flourish. Consider this a form of recycling; the beauty is, the cycle never runs out—as long as we humans protect the earth, the environment, and the ecosystem.

THE SIGNIFICANCE ON YOUR INNER & OUTER BEAUTY

Mother Nature is supremely beautiful because the light captured by photosynthesis creates more pigments than splendid arrays of greens, but captures all the vibrant or subtle, luscious or demure, extravagant or modest hues in all flowers, fruits, in meadows, forests, and fields, in our gardens, and even the watery life that abounds under the surface of the oceans, seas, rivers, and lakes. All attract light, all utilize light, and all contribute to the beauty in the world—from the early blooms of spring through the quiet slumber of winter. Beauty comes from the rays of light that emit from the sun and although we have discussed how this produces energy, think of how it energizes you—and your beauty.

Sunlight boosts Vitamin D and is essential for good health—which is why it is called the “sunlight vitamin.” Every moment you spend outdoors, even with all-important sun block to protect your skin, boosts your immune system and neuromuscular functions, strengthens your teeth and bones, protects against dementia and aging of the brain, minimizes asthmatic symptoms, and thwarts cancer. Vitamin D is also one of the most powerful hormones for regulating blood pressure and lowering the risk of diabetes. So, while photosynthesis is allowing you to breath oxygen, the same light source—the sunlight—is fueling you from within.

Sunlight also lowers the “stress hormone,” cortisol, which can help lift depression and decrease weight gain.

Light therapy, also known as phototherapy, has been known as a treatment down through the ages but is a relatively new process in modern medicine. This form of therapy can be used to treat psoriasis, vitiligo, acne, among many other conditions.

Sunlight is essential for healthy hair growth. The vitamin D that the sun

helps the body to produce stimulates hair growth, prevents hair loss, and can remedy alopecia (hair thinning). But be careful: as with skin, too much sun is damaging. The epithelial cells that help your hair grow are extremely sensitive to UV light and too much can actually deplete the levels of vitamins E and Ce, which are essential for hair growth.

Bhai Vir Singh (1872-1957) the playwright, novelist, essay writer, a saint poet, and the originator of modern Punjabi literature, inspired this philosophy: “We cannot imagine beauty without light. Beauty is the most benevolent avatar of light on Earth. The Sun, not Earth, is the original source of beauty. Beauty is a song the Sun sings for the Earth—through photosynthesis.

“Beauty emanates from nature. All nature is beautiful. What is natural is beautiful; what is not natural, is not beautiful. All nature is beautiful, for nature itself is a phenomenon, not just a product, of light. Beauty is a phenomenon, not just a product, induced by photosynthesis. Photosynthesis and beauty go hand in hand. As photosynthesis intensifies, beauty gets enhanced. An enhancement in beauty is owing to intensive phenomenon of photosynthesis.

“Photosynthesis of beauty is not an object of light. It is a subject of light. For beauty-synthesis is evolutionary. As photosynthesis intensifies, as nature expands, as liveliness enhances, and as light reverberates more intensively in living planet, beauty will go on singing its glory. Beauty, in essence, is an inherent subject of cosmic creativity. Beauty is love of the very creative and ever-evolving cosmos.

“Photosynthesis of beauty has a purpose for the cosmos. It is through beauty that life exists in its fullness. It is beauty that generates joy in nature.

“Beauty is a source of joy. Thus, joy is also rooted in light. The joy of being amidst beauty translates into birthing of new organisms.

Thus, beauty is a must for sustainability of life; and sustainability of life for the sustainability of the cosmos.” ■

PHOTOGRAPH BY LEDYX / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

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philanthropy

A WORLD WITHOUT GREEN

BY WINIFRED TOWNSEND

Native boy in the province of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIC LAFFORGUE / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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g igantic tropical trees towering over a densely populated kingdom lush with flora and fauna, and some few indigenous peoples, descended down generations of little-known tribes. The delicate balance of the world depends upon its greatest and most fragile ecosystem— the rainforest. Thirty years ago, one couple saw the need to bring international recognition to its plight as it was destroyed and decimated by irreverent industries. Dr. Franca Sciuto and Trudie Styler, with her husband, music legend, Sting, lit the torch. Now it’s up to the rest of us to follow their lead.

Tropical rainforests are the earth’s most diverse and oldest ecosystem and those that have not been destroyed by mankind have been virtually undisturbed since the Ice Age, 20 million years ago.

They lie between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn and are found mainly in South America, western and central Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. Closely spaced trees that stand a hundred-feet tall form a dense canopy that ensures the survival of the limitless species of flora and fauna that abound. The rainforest is seasonless, hot, and humid, with annual temperatures no colder than 68- and seldom warmer than 95-degrees Fahrenheit.

Relentless rains (over 80-inches of rain will fall a year) wash away the soil’s nutrients in times of flooding, and the canopy prevents sunlight from reaching the ground; however, layers of shrubs, an undercanopy of undergrowth, and ground-growing emergents form tiers that protect the nutrient-rich soil.

The role of the rainforest far exceeds its footprint on, and importance to, the planet. Less than six percent of the earth is covered by tropical rainforests, and yet it plays a vital role in maintaining the

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Franca Sciuto, chair of the Rainforest Foundation, and Founder Trudie Styler at the Rainforest Foundation Presents Soul Survivor.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MYCHAL WATTS / WIREIMAGE / GETTYIMAGES.COM

Opposite: Beyond the rainforest, Mount Semeru, the tallest and most active volcano on the Indonesian island of Java.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DWINANDA NURHANIF MUJITO / UNSPLASH.COM

ecological balance of the global environment and the support and foundation of all life. Precipitation and weather patterns, and floods and drought cycles depend upon the robust health of the rainforest. Above all, the tropical rainforest biome is fundamental to the biosphere, constituting 30 percent of the earth’s oxygen turnover in a cycle that produces 2,247 billion tonnes of stored carbon. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, evaporation from soil and plant surfaces, and the release of water directly by plants, cause at least 40 percent of rainfall. On a single day, a robust tree with a 66-foot canopy pumps around 290 gallons of water into the atmosphere. Air that passes over rainforests produces at least twice as much rain as air that passes over landscapes with fewer trees, thereby creating low pressure regions that generate winds to push rain across the continent.

Fifty percent of the world’s plant species are found in the rainforests: orchids, ferns, bamboo, banana, cassava, and avocado, to name but a few and an abundance of trees that include mahogany, ebony, dyewoods, Kapok, rubber, and mangrove. Rainforests are home to more than half of the world’s wildlife, such as rhinoceros, tapir, gorilla, jaguar, African grey parrot, keel-billed toucan, spider monkey, sloth, hornbill, eagles, flying foxes, and so many more. And rainforests have, since the beginning of time, supported many of the world’s primitive peoples, who for millennia have lived according to a unique set of values, beliefs, and knowledge derived from their observation, interaction, and respect for their environment—such as the Pygmies of the Congo basin, who gather nuts; Indian tribes, which collect wild rubber; and indigenous farmers, who plant and harvest coconuts, coffee, tea, tobacco, sugar, and spices. Twentyfive percent of medicines come from ingredients only found in the rainforest.

Two billion people depend upon the rainforest and their services benefit billions more. At one time, rainforests covered six million square miles of the earth. Alas, less than half that amount remains. And if this plight of

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An average of 137 species of life forms are driven into extinction every day in the world’s tropical rainforests. The forces of destruction such as logging and cattle ranching have all contributed to the loss of millions of acres of tropical rainforest. Many large mammals such as leopards and apes need miles of territory to roam and have a tough time surviving in the smaller and fragmented habitats they are forced into by humans.

PHOTOGRAPHY BYKURIT AFSHEN / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM OPPOSITE: PHOTOGRAPHY BYJUSTIN CLARK / UNSPLASH.COM

deforestation and destruction by worldwide industry continues much longer, humankind shall face severe—and irreversible—consequences.

Increasing governance by global agencies, such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) to protect the peoples of the rainforest worldwide, and actions by environmental organizations, such as the Rainforest Foundation US, works tirelessly and responsibly to steward the very survival of the life of, and in, the rainforests around the world.

The Rainforest Foundation US partners with indigenous peoples to address in the long-term, the issues of the rainforest and protect the tropical ecosystems of Peru, Brazil, Guyana, and Panama. Responding to climate scientists’ warnings of water scarcity and human vulnerability and Peru’s Ministry of Environment, Rainforest Foundation US work with indigenous leaders such as the Ucayali in Pucallpa, Peru, in the launch on March 12, 2022 of “Imenko Tsiroti,” a new satellite information center and data hub that monitors logging, illegal mining, deforestation and land security as a result of the rising risks and territorial invasions to that region. These activities have directly caused an increase from 32 percent in 2018 worsen to 81 percent in 2020 in deforestation.

“Imenko Tsiroti” derives from the Asháninka word tsiroti, an Asháninka word for a forest bird that sings so loudly all the community can hear—a messenger and a protector whose trill can forewarn danger. “Just like our satellite information center will,” explains Berlin Diques, president of ORAU. Thanks to this center, we will have maps and data that can alert the entire community of the threats they face so that they can protect themselves.”

“For us, having this indigenous-led satellite information center in ORAU will be a great help,” commented Judith Nuntha, an indigenous Shipibo member of ORAU’s Board of Directors, who will serve as the indigenous coordinator of the Rainforest Alert network in Ucayali. “We will no longer have to wait a long time or pay large sums of money to obtain location maps of our own communal territory,” “We’re encouraged because we know that Tsiroti is going to equip the communities of Ucayali with the tools and knowledge needed to keep their families safe and their forests secure. We hope your success helps expand this work to all communities across the Peruvian Amazon,” offered Jorge Perez Rubio, president of AIDESEP, a national indigenous peoples’ organization representing indigenous peoples across all regions of the Peruvian Amazon.

Susanne Pelletier, Executive Director of Rainforest Foundation US said, “We’re honored to join ORAU in launching this new center. We’ve seen from our experience with ORPIO in Loreto that when communities have access to the right tools and support from partners and law enforcement authorities, they defend their rights and

effectively reduce deforestation—sometimes halting it altogether.”

The Rainforest Foundation US is the largest NGO (non-profit organization operating independent of any government) devoted to rights-based forest protection worldwide. Its triumvirate of national organizations are based in Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and along with the Rainforest Fund, share the same mission statement, vision, and values. Their combined efforts are focused mostly in Central and South America, and the majority of projects on the ground are in the Congo Basin and tropical belt. The efforts of the foundation concern land titling and legal intervention, institutional strengthening, territorial monitoring, land management, policy and advocacy in the rainforests of the world and support of its indigenous peoples.

It

all began 30 years ago, when Dr. Franca Sciuto, Trudie Styler, and Styler’s music legend husband, Sting, brought international public awareness to the plight of Brazil’s indigenous Kayapo people. They met with Raoni Metuktire, Chief of the Megranoti-Kayapo people, Xingu Indigenous Territory, Brazil, in 1990 and established the Rainforest Foundation. This historic collaboration fought to uphold the Kayapo’s land rights and in 1993, the legal recognition and protection of the ancestral lands of the Kayapo, a 4,914,000-hectare region known as the Menkragnoti Territory, was secured. In 1994, the Foundation began broadening its initiatives in Brazil and South America, and from 1996 on, expanded into Africa and Indonesia.

To understand the importance of the Rainforest Foundation’s mission, you must first understand the magnitude the rainforest plays in the world’s delicate ecosystems—and the dire consequences that would result if efforts by the Rainforest Foundation’s supporters and ever-expanding global and regional partnerships failed to exist. ■ Editor’s note: You, too, can take up the challenge to stall biodiversity loss and climate change, and eradicate human rights violations in the rainforest. Your donation brings the world one step closer to creating a more sustainable and just future. For more information visit www.rainforestfoundation.org/about/partners.

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back story

T

he launch of ELYSIAN’S SPRING 2022 Issue in Palm Beach was a gala affair where more than one hundred guests, locally and from all over the country, gathered at EVEY Fine Arts, one of the notable galleries worldwide to feature the work of South, Latin, and North America’s foremost trending living artists. Honored, too, were ELYSIAN’S two newest inspiring women: California interior designer, social media influencer and television host BREEGAN JANE, who flew in especially for the event, and the EVEY Gallery’s founder and owner, CARLA BERENICE GROH, who hosted the exciting evening. The weather was balmy, the air electric with excitement, and the food was delicious. As the sun set over the blue Atlantic, there was laughter, delight, and— for the ELYSIAN team—pride in the finest issue we have yet produced in our magazine’s seven-year history. ■

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Top right: Misti and Kevin Hudson with artist, Antonio Guerrero (wearing hat), who donated proceeds from his paintings in support of Ukrainian refuges. Second row center: Publisher Karen Floyd reveals the cover of ELYSIAN’S Spring 2022 issue while “cover girl,” Breegan Jane looks on.

Bottom row: Tony Iannazzone and his sister, Cathy Ellett; Jeff and Kimberli Scott Still; Lori Coon, Ann Bible, Kimberli Scott Still, Jean Shafiroff, Karen Floyd, Lt. Governor of South Carolina Pamela Evette, Jada McAbee, Rhonda Leonard, and Cindy Van Horne; Joseph Knapk and Carla Berenice Groh, coowners of EVEY Gallery, with Kaaren Hale; Breegan Jane and Karen Floyd.

ME CAE QUE SI ESCRIBO MI CANCIÓN, 2021 acrylic on canvas 78 x 78 in

by DALIA MONROY

EVEY FINE ART / PALM BEACH artevey.com

Janice & Jonathan

Phillipe Melka

Discover Zakin Wines.

“Napa’s under the radar jewell,” Antonio Galloni, Vinous.

Beautiful wines crafted by Philippe Melka. St Helena, California www.zakinwines.com • Jan@zakinwines.com