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Humanities Washington: Measuring Mourning: A Ritual for Loss (VIRTUAL)

6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
Virtual Live Events

This participatory presentation explores a recently-resurfaced Ashkenazi women’s tradition of feldmestn—the practice of measuring ancestors’burial places with candlewick, later burnt for the living and the dead.  

How can this two-century-old Eastern European Jewish tradition help us grapple with contemporary catastrophes, as well as old displacements, genocides, and assimilation? When we do not know where our people are buried, what do we measure? Brown will share some of her own art practice.

Maia Brown (she/her) is a visual artist, Yiddish musician, writer, translator, and educator. Brown has a background in oral history and fine art, including a Watson Fellowship to study storytelling and advocacy in South Africa and the North of Ireland. A candidate for a Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College, she is a dedicated student and teacher of her own tradition as well as the many ways people have reached out to each other across communities.

Brown lives in Seattle.

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Humanities Washington || Big Apples, Big Business: How Washington Became the Apple State (VIRTUAL)

6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
Virtual Live Events

Why do so many apples in the grocery store look the same? And why do so many come from Washington?  

In this talk, explore how Washington became the top apple producing state in the country, and how, in the process, it transformed apples into an industrialized commodity. Many regions in the West attempted to grow apples, but in Washington, big apples became big business thanks to the work of scientists, investors, irrigators, railroad corporations, marketers, and apple growers. How does the history of Washington apples reflect larger changes happening in the American food system—changes that continue to affect our environment and the way we eat today? 

Amanda L. Van Lanen (she/her) is a Professor of History at Lewis-Clark State College and the author of The Washington Apple: Orchards and the Development of Industrial Agriculture. She earned a Ph.D. in history at Washington State University, and blogs about food history at historyreheated.com.

Van Lanen lives in Asotin.

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