It is impossible to avoid — the real-life event that frames the play “26 Pebbles” is disturbing. Heartbreaking.
Which makes all the more remarkable the play’s uplifting message of human resilience and the ability to come together after an unspeakable tragedy — the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
An exhibit curated by a UC Merced professor reintroduces the seven-decade career of an American artist of Japanese descent who defied systemic racism and created a body of artwork true to her unique vision, even as the mainstream arts community kept her at arm’s length.
Fernando Malagon and his mom stood at the head of a line for guided tours of the university he plans to attend this fall. The informational stroll around UC Merced would be more for her than for him; he visited the campus five years ago on a seventh-grade field trip from Modesto.
Of course, the university has grown since then, not just in square footage but in opportunity and possibility.
UC Merced researchers are shedding light on a little-explored aspect of cross-cultural communication that involves no spoken words but sometimes can cause confusion and anguish for children acting as interpreters for older family members.
In a thick rainforest in Papua New Guinea, they're tracking bats. Researchers glue radio transmitters to the creatures’ little, furry bodies, then wait. And wait. When a bat flits to another position, the humans sprint through the foliage, stop and take a reading.
It’s 1 a.m. The researchers will do this all night, running from spot to spot, triangulating the bats’ movements. Logging data.
Having a blast.
“It’s just fun, right?” Betsy Dumont said, recounting a moment lived on the way to becoming one of the world’s top bat biologists. “It’s hard and it’s fun.”
The unflinching demand for justice drives the moving images and impassioned ideas packed into the agenda of this year’s UC Merced Human Rights Film Festival, presented by the university’s Global Arts, Media & Writing Studies department.
