Arnon Rosan manufactures giant Lego-like building blocks, which can be converted into furniture or walls for offices, classrooms, and military training operations. Theyve been used to build a life-sized ice castle in New York Citys Bryant Park and a 17-foot-tall menorah in Washington, D.C. But now his company, EverBlock Systems, is sending truckloads of plastic blocks and interlocking wall units from New York to Louisiana to build a temporary hospital for coronavirus patients.

We dont wish for disaster, certainly, Rosan says of the virus sweeping the country. But were happy to be able to respond with something that we know people need and solves the problem quickly and efficiently.

State and federal governments and health systems across the United States are scrambling to find space to treat patients as coronavirus cases have quickly overwhelmed emergency rooms and ICUs. Convention centers and arenas from Los Angeles to Philadelphia are being transformed into temporary hospitals, as are outdoor spaces, such as New York Citys Central Park.Today In:Healthcare

The one thing all these places have in common? They have enough room to set up safe and appropriate working environments for the medical staff and the equipment and supplies that are needed, says Dr. Irwin Redlener, Director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University.

For his part, Rosan is busy working to fulfill an order to build 2,000 patients pods and 130 nurses stations for the field hospital under construction inside the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.

Louisiana-based Dynamic Construction Group, the primary contractor on the hospital project, tapped EverBlock on March 26 to provide its products. At that point, Rosan had a head start: there were nearly a thousand wall panels and 60,000 blocks in his companys warehouse ready to load onto the 53-foot trucks that would take them down to New Orleans. But hell need to provide a lot more. Rosan estimates the total project will require close to 6,000 panels and 150,000 blocks. In addition to 13 full-time employees, hes recently hired 9 temporary workers to help scale up production at the companys manufacturing facility and warehouse in the Bronx.

Were being asked to deliver a years worth of product in one month, says Rosan. Though his usual orders have dried up, hes already expecting EverBlocks revenues to more than double from an expected $7.5 million to more than $20 million by the end of this year. The convention center contract alone will likely come in well above $10 million, he says.

This isnt Rosans first time supplying material for disaster relief projects. His previous company Signature Systems Group, which he founded in 1999, manufactured temporary floor and roadway systems that could gain access to remote sites, such as oil rigs. Rosan says he supplied modular floors for tents used by the National Guard following Hurricanes Katrina, Ike and Sandy. He also worked on the flooring for a tent project for the World Food Programme in Haiti after the earthquake.

In 2013, he sold Signature Systems Group to a private equity firmand was looking for something new to keep busy. He declined to disclose the deal price, but said at the time of the sale, the company had around $90 million in revenue. His current company began as a side project the idea for developing the companys giant blocks came from his kids. But when customers began to realize their potential, the company took off.

People seem to just engage and resonate with this concept of Wow this oversized building block. I can build anything, he recalls.

EverBlock is delivering the walls and blocks that make up the tented structures in which patients will sleep. Each pod is an individual chamber that will have its own ventilation duct to ensure that patients with different viral loads are kept separate. Dynamic Construction is working on the ventilation, electrical and all of the other construction components needed to make the temporary hospital function.

These beds will be for patients who are not fragile. They dont need to be on a ventilator, they dont need an ICU bed, but they still need to be hospitalized, Louisianas Democratic Governor Jim Bel Edwards said earlier this week at a press conference outside the convention center. While the original plan had been to care for 1,000 patients at the facility, Edwards had to quickly double that number a few days later in response to the surge in patients. The goal now is to have 1,000 beds set up by early next week and the full 2,000 beds by April 20.

My philosophy is when these things happen, you have to react in real time, Rosan says. Thats something that were just really good at that quick rallying of resources to make it happen.

Katie Jennings, Forbes Staff, Healthcare

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Health6 hours ago 5 Ways To Cope With The Self During Isolation - Forbes Africa

Nine days, which feel like nine weeks, have gone by, as of this writing, since Broadway went dark and New Yorks theatres closed their doors. By the time you read this, it may well feel like nine years. The suddenness with which the citys performance ecosystem has vanished defies comprehensionits as if the Great Barrier Reef had died overnight. Grasping for comparison, we have to look well beyond the proximate disasters of Hurricane Sandy and 9/11, when, ultimately, the shows went resolutely on. Theres been some optimistic speculation online as to whether Shakespeare wrote King Lear in quarantine when the plague forced the Globe to close, in the summer of 1606. (A comforting thought, if you happen to be both a genius and good at focussing in times of existential crisis.) During the Second World War, London initially shut its theatres and cinemasa masterstroke of unimaginative stupidity, George Bernard Shaw called the decisiononly to reopen many of them when it became clear that morale needed boosting. But keeping calm and carrying on is not in the pandemic playbook. We are our own threat. The enemy is within.

Whats immediately apparent, in a suddenly theatreless world, is how difficult theatre is to replace. The mechanismbodies doing things in front of other bodiesis too basic. (Or bodies cavorting with other bodies, as the case may be; among this seasons now suspended offerings was Taylor Macs new play, The Fre, in which the audience was seated in a ball pit.) You can tape theatre and stream it, for which I am hugely grateful, not least because it gives more people access to shows. But what you watch through this method is inevitably only a facsimile of the real thing. Its like eating a food that you can smell but not taste.

The New Yorkers coronavirus news coverage and analysis are free for all readers.

I hope it doesnt sound too prematurely elegiac to say that one of the things I miss about going to the theatre is the going: leaving home, travelling, with a sense of purpose, to a specific place at an appointed hour. I miss threading my way through the obstacle course of Times Square, secretly proud of my agility. And I miss being part of an audience, one soul among many. I even miss the reliable, infuriating madness of other people. Dear Elderly Sir, who inexplicably texted throughout Greater Clements: I may not think highly of you personally, but I hope youre doing all right. Dear Madam, whose chromatic, flutelike snoring during the first act of The Ferryman led to an intra-aisle shushing war the likes of which I have never heard before or since: my best wishes to you. To the tweens who packed together in a line around the block, just before the advent of social distancing, for a preview of Six: your energy was infectious, I hope only in the figurative sense. Please stay home.

Theatre artists and technicians are out of work right now, which spells terrible anxiety and financial distress. It also means that creative people are trying to find creative things to do. If there is one silver lining to this crisis, its that it hit in the age of the smartphone, when performance is everywhere. So we find our perspective shifted. The ratio is now one to one: me watching you, my screen to yours. Glamour? Mystique? Polish? Shine? No, no, no, and no. But who needs them? This is a time for the curtain to be pulled back.

Instagram Live, previously a place for celebrities to offer the public slick glimpses into their worlds, has been repurposed as a cabaret, abuzz with performing artists doing what they can for us from their living rooms. Patti Smith and her daughter Jesse Paris Smith squeezed together to serenade their followers through the screen. The sublime jazz singer Ccile McLorin Salvant, with Sullivan Fortner on the piano, gave an impromptu concert; it looked as though the pair were performing for their own pleasure, which, in turn, bolstered ours. Rosie ODonnell raised money for the Actors Fund by chatting, via video stream, with other performers, including Cynthia Erivo, Patti LuPone, Idina Menzel, and Chita Rivera. LuPone showed off her jukebox. Andrew Lloyd Webber sang Happy Birthday to Stephen Sondheim; Stephen Sondheim sang Happy Birthday to Andrew Lloyd Webber while vigorously washing his hands. Alan Menken, at a piano stationed in front of a grandfather clock, performed a career-skimming medley that ended, on the nose, with A Whole New World, from Aladdin. The lighting was reassuringly awful. Watching these bits was like getting stuck on a FaceTime call between the famous: cute at first, then a little boring, but endearingly nerdy, with Channel Thirteen fund-raiser-style energy.

It must be hard to make original work under these conditions of general menace, but some performers are persevering. The best Ive seen in the past week was produced by the 24 Hour Plays, an organization whose regular stunt involves putting together plays and musicals that are written, rehearsed, and performed in the space of a single day. On Instagram, the group has been hosting a series of viral monologues: new, very short pieces that were commissioned from homebound playwrights and performed by homebound actors. The first installment, still available for viewing, was posted on March 17th. No surprise that the subject most on the minds of the playwrights was disaster. In a monologue by Lily Padilla, Marin Ireland, playing a dissolute young teacher, delivers, directly into a phone camera, what we soon realize is an application to be abducted by extraterrestrials. Shes ready to be beamed up and away from this cursed planet, but the question is whether the aliens will have her. What I would contribute to your galaxy? she asks, chewing her lip. Well... I am enthusiastic. And I... think thats an important quality on any team. In just four minutes, Ireland, with her big, distant, unreadable eyes and expressive mouth, sketches a portrait of a woman who wants nothing more than to trade in her known life and surrender to the intoxicating unknown. Honestly, Im afraid the world is burning, she says. And its not that Im afraid of dying or even catching fire. I just dont want to watch.

Part of the pleasure of the 24 Hour viral monologues lies in seeing what actors do when left to their own devices, far from the smoothing, sculpting hand of a director. The selfie-video format has the feel of an audition tape, an allusion that the great Richard Kind makes explicit in a quick, clever monologue by Jesse Eisenberg, in which Kind asks Hollywood to cast him against type, for once, as a Gentile. In a piece by Stephen Adly Guirgis called L.A.Yoga Motherfuckers, Andre Royo sits in a car and launches into a disgruntled, hilariously unhinged rant about civility and these Bernie bros and their Bernie hos, who appear to have chased him out of a yoga class after he expressed support for Joe Biden. A coronavirus joke falls flat, but its good to see playwrights bringing new characters into the world to respond, in the moment, to the same things that were responding to. Free from motive, free of the harness of plot, they flicker briefly alive to share these strange times with us and then disappear, but not without leaving a mysterious, human trace.

In good times, we want performance to shake us and stir us, to horrify or delight, to rouse, to make us feel strong things. Daily living can dull the senses (including the moral one), and we ask the theatre to help us sharpen them again. But in a time of fear and strained feeling, when we are thinking non-stop about our welfare and its connection to other people, its comfort that we want. Thats why, while watching the 24 Hour viral monologues, I thought of one of my preferred forms of digital direct address, the soft-spoken parallel universe of the Internet genre called ASMR.

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Performers on Lockdown Turn to Their Smartphones - The New Yorker

A NEW Irish navy vessel docked yesterday across the Liffey from the Dublin convention centre, where it will support a testing centre for the Covid-19 virus.

The Navy ship was greeted by bagpipes played by a member of the Irish United Nations Veterans Association (IUNVA) as it pulled up into the Dublin Docklands yesterday evening.

1

The navy vessel, L Niamh began working to support a nearby testing centre this morning.

The main testing area is set up on tents on the quay wall and nobody being tested will set foot on board the vessel, Lieutenant commander Gavin McCarthy told the Irish Sun.

The swabs used to collect samples will also stay on dry land to be tested.

The navy vessel will be used to provide administrative and technical support to the HSE staff and army medics in the in the main testing centre tents on Sir John Rogerson's Quay.

The ship also provides hot water, food and WiFi to staff working on the quay.

The L Niamh, took over from the L George Bernard Shaw which had been supporting the test centre.

The Irish Naval Service described the scene on Twitter, saying: "Welcomed alongside by a Lone Piper, Christy OBrien, IUNVA, L Niamh arrived in Dublin yesterday and took over from L George Bernard Shaw"

They said the vessel was "now helping to run a test centre as part of glaigh na hirean's [the Irish Defence Forces] efforts to assist the HSE fight Covid-19."

Live Blog

The L George Bernard Shaw sailed from the Dublin docklands this afternoon after handing over their responsibilities to the L Niamh the night before.

A navy spokesperson said that he was not able to tell The Irish Sun where the ship's next destination was.

Irish navy vessels have also been supporting test centres in Cork and Galway.

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Coronavirus in Ireland Navy ship greeted by bagpipes as it arrives in Dublin docklands to support Covid t - The Irish Sun

The Queen of the Universe, Jane Fonda, is now on TikTok. Which means anyone who doesnt have the app needs to download it ~immediately~ because this is content the world needs right now.

She an incredible actor, a top-class philanthropist and a boss b*tch activist. And now: A TikTok star.

Jane posted her first vid of her reviving her notable 80s aerobics workouts, with a PSA at the end.

During this isolation period, we can get right into our glute with Jane OR we can join her Fire Drill Friday that sees the activist stand up to politicians on climate change each week.

Its gotten her arrested a couple times for protesting (hell yeh!), but her efforts in urging US politicians to end fossil fuel consumption has had buzz around the world with many other celebrities have jumped on board.

Even though were stuck at home, 82-year-old Jane is still doing her part to tackle the climate crisis. And so should we.

So, whip out your leg warmers and leotards and get stretching because theres still a battle to be fought as Jane holds her Fire Drill Fridays!

- Tait McGregor

Main Image Credit: Licensed by Getty

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Jane Fonda Reviving Her 80s Aerobics Workouts To Save The Climate Is The Reason We All Need TikTok - MTV News Australia

Do you remember the little Richard Sandrak? Perhaps you remember him better by his nickname Little Hercules. The photos of this child who with just 6 years was able to lift more than 80 kg of weight they went around the world more than 15 years ago and, today, they have become viral.

This was Richard when he was 6 years old.

Richard was born in Ukraine in 1992. His father, Pavel, was a world champion in martial arts, and Lena, his mother, was an aerobics instructor. The family moved to the United States when Richard was just 2 years old.

Started by stretching and exercises aerobics, but before long I was already lifting weight.

The Sandraks hired a coach personalFrank Giardina, so that his son would become the strongest child in the world. And they did it.

Unfortunately, Richard did not have a childhood of which he is proud. His father was very demanding of him, he was never allowed to eat sweets, ice cream or junk food and he lived under the pressure of having to improve every day.

When the little boy turned 11, his father was imprisoned for assaulting his wife. Thats when Richard left bodybuilding.

Now exercises cardiovascular to keep fit and he also has an awesome job. Richard does dubbing in films from action from Universal Studios Hollywood. Still he confesses that he does not regret his past.

We leave you a video of Richard as a child:

The crisis caused by the coronavirus has put us in a few days in a situation that nobody could imagine. The threat to everyones health must be our first concern. And then, the social and economic consequences that are already hitting our community hard. But our commitment to you and to all of our readers is stronger than ever.

Producing this content you are reading costs money. The money that allows writers, editors, and other staff of MMA.UNO can support their families. We do not close our content like other media do, because we want everyone to be able to read it.

But we do ask those who can collaborate with us to help us. For this we include a voluntary donation button, We are going to allocate this money to our editors and improve our content.

People who can collaborate with us in the short future will be able to read our content through advertising.

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Do you remember little Hercules? This is how he is now! - Explica

To the left of my desk is a full-length window, with a partial view of the copper spire of Holy Cross Church, Kenmare, and Ballygriffin townland; behind it is the hazy outline of Mucksna mountain, part blue, part purple-yellow with its flecks of gorse and heather. A dusty, late afternoon sky is smudged with the occasional cream or lilac cloud.

My desk faces away from this view; it looks at a plain cream wall. This is the way I best focus my mind. Its baffling how much the brain wants to be creative everyone has that one novel they want to write but when it comes to the actual business of doing it, the mind will go to extremes to distract itself from the task, and that includes gazing at a beautiful view.

I was never one of those students who could study in the garden. Id simply sink into idleness. Really, if you can learn to be idle and not be riddled with guilt listen to a robin in a nearby bush, smell honeysuckle, watch the light glisten on open water its one of the most pleasant sensations you can experience. But then, of course, the end result is youve done absolutely nothing.

Today, Im on day eight of the Corvid-19 lockdown. On the desk sit proofs of the new Roddy Doyle novel, Love, and Tennis Lessons by Susannah Dickey. Ive a diary open with a to-do list mostly scratched out. There are some items still pending: Joe Wicks high-intensity interval training YouTube workout (likely postponed again), an art essay (it has been pushed to the following day, each day this week, till now), and floss (something I put have on my daily to-do list, as its the only way I can be sure Ill actually do it).

Youd think for an introverted writer type, being locked up in the countryside for anything from a few weeks to many months, would hold out the opportunity to dive into a large creative endeavour; that for my personality and occupation, itd be quite easy to turn these Corvid-19 lemons into lemonade. The reality is, over the past eight days, I have found it near impossible to read for more than 15 minutes at a time and my writing has gone to hell.

Id been mid-way through two brilliant books as this crisis hit: Okay, Lets Do Your Stupid Idea by Patrick Freyne (full of warmth and wit), and The School of Life by Alain De Botton (compassionate and wise), but since lockdown, Ive made little headway. I keep rereading the same handful of pages because nothing sticks.

I was asked to read for a new online literary series, The Holding Cell, and as I prepared my reading, I likewise found it impossible to even find the flow in my own story, one that I worked on for over five years.

For me, creativity comes when I get out of the way of whatever the impulse is; I feel like a vessel through which ideas are channelled. Its such a curious thing, this muse. Do I write my own stories at all? Sometimes, when Im writing, my protagonist does or says something that surprises me. How is that even possible when its come from my own brain? The easiest comparison I can make to this experience is falling asleep let it happen, and it happens, but if you try to force it, youre a lost cause.

This week I cant get out of the way. The dialogue about coronavirus echoes on in my head: Italian death counts, hand washing, British prime minister Boris Johnson and the women on The View eviscerating US president Donald Trump. All these opinions, more and more ideas and words . . . my head is too cluttered with them to come up with a few new ones.

But, in the absence of words, a different creativity has emerged.

Something fortuitous happened in the new year. Outside my Dublin apartment there is a shared recycling outhouse, where residents separate out bottles, plastic and general waste, and occasionally people leave things that they dont want to throw away, mostly books and small electronics. After Christmas, someone left an unopened painting kit, a small easel and a canvas. I took the set and its been sitting in my car boot since then.

Until last week, Id forgotten about it. Yet, after staring at my laptop with my cluttered brain, I remembered the paints and canvas in the boot. Serendipity, it appeared.

So for the past few days, in the tangle of tweets, posts and articles, Ive been painting a landscape from Reenagross Park in Kenmare, where a small stream snakes through meadow and gorse out to the Kenmare estuary. In a time when Ive lost my ability to compose fiction, Ive found the calm, mental space that is creativity. Is the painting a work of any real merit? Probably not. Im what my old school art teacher wouldve called a Sunday afternoon painter, a reasonable hobbyist, though I guess thats not the point.

Im not alone in this. In a group chat on WhatsApp, Ive discovered my closest friends (now scattered and closed-in around Europe) likewise turning to art in whatever way they can. One friend in a locked-down Paris sent a video of her French husband playing the accordion on their Montmartre balcony at dusk, to which those in invisible apartments up the street cheer; another friend (who Ive only ever known as a suited barrister) sent a video of him playing Beethovens Moonlight Sonata on the piano perfectly. One of my work colleagues, in a Zoom call, showed a completed cross stitch (now auctioned on Twitter for charity); another confessed to creating pottery.

Im glad Ive found some way to be creative, a way to remain calm in the chaos. Im glad my friends and colleagues have too. Im reminded of a quote by George Bernard Shaw: Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable. At this moment in time, it feels more true than ever.

Jamie OConnell works for Penguin Random House Ireland and writes short stories, one of which was Highly Commended in the Costa Short Story Prize last year. He is working on his debut novel. His website is jamieoconnellwriter.com

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When a writer cant write, another art form satisfies the creative itch - The Irish Times

The Kiwanis Club of Little Havana, a vital resource for the city's underserved youth, runs two of the largest events of every Miami winter: Carnaval Miami, known as the largest Hispanic festival in the nation; and the Calle Ocho Music Festival. Jorge Fernandez, the club's president, estimates the revenue from those two gatherings alone funds more than 80 percent of the organization's youth programs annually.

This year, although Carnaval Miami took place as scheduled in early March, revenues suffered because people had already begun to avoid large groups to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. "Usually in liquor sales, we make over $100,000, and that was reduced considerably," Fernandez says. Other events within Carnaval, such as thefood and wine festivalCork & Fork, also saw much lower attendance.

The situation grew much worse when the Calle Ocho Music Festival, initially scheduled for March 15, was canceled. That move meant losing all of the expected revenue from the event, which usually brings in about half a million dollars for the organization, which uses the funds to sustain its youth services for much of the rest of the year. Now, without that money, the club's programming which includes after-school activities, scholarships, and health-related financial assistance is in jeopardy.

The club has only seven full-time staff members at its office and also relies on an extensive network of volunteers and subcontractors. One employee has already been let go because of the financial impact of the crisis. A scheduled soccer tournament has been postponed, and the club is not yet sure what will become of its youth summer camp, which typically serves more than 200 kids.

"At this point, everything is on hold until we know what's going to happen to our finances," Fernandez says.

The playwright George Bernard Shaw once wrote, "Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable."

The Institute of Contemporary Art Miami has moved its programming and exhibitions online.

Photo by Iwan Baan

The arts are a big part of what makes the Magic City so vibrant, and they provide free education and programming for countless communities that need it. As many local arts and culture organizations have closed during the coronavirus crisis, Miamians are questioning how people will experience art during this time and how these organizations, many of which are nonprofits, will stay afloat. Like the Kiwanis Club, most face financial losses and are trying to devise creative ways to serve their communities.

"Artists contribute so much to our world and help us to unlock our own creative imagination," says Johann Zietsman, president and CEO of the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. "We need to keep them in mind and make sure to support them now and when things improve."

For museums, the financial hit of closing can be considerable. The president and chief executive of the American Alliance of Museums recently told the New York Times that approximately a third of American museums were already in debt or close to it before the pandemic. "Three-quarters have now closed, and one-third will not reopen if the crisis continues," she told the Times.

For now, Miami's museums are channeling their efforts into helping people engage with artwork from afar. The Bass now offers virtual tours of select exhibits on its website, shares daily "Cafecito Break" posts on social media at 3:05 p.m., and is working to expand its Instagram-only gallery, @TheBassSquared. Launched in 2019, it began as an attempt to make art more accessible online and to show work created for the digital realm.

"Our curators are currently investigating new ways to activate the Instagram gallery in the coming weeks as an extension of the exhibition programming, including the presentation of video works from the collection," says Silvia Karman Cubi, the museum's executive director.

For young art lovers, the Bass is also providing educational resources, including lesson plans, printable coloring pages, and Art Camp From Home, a replacement for their usual spring art camps.

Over the past five years, the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami (ICA) has been building a free digital archive of videos to supplement its exhibitions and programming. These days, the ICA Miami Channel is the best way to engage with everything the museum has to offer whether it's a video of a site-specific Judy Chicago work, a dance performance, or an artist sharing the inspirations behind his or her work. The museum also plans to offer exclusive members-only content soon, and becoming a member is one of the best ways supporters can help the museum. The ICA doesn't charge for admission but has still had to cancel ticketed public programming that would have brought in revenue.

"While we rely less on box office revenues than other cultural institutions, during this time, our team is working tirelessly to ensure the ongoing sustainability of our funding sources in anticipation of an economic slowdown," says Alex Gartenfeld, the ICA's artistic director.

The Arsht Center hopes to reschedule canceled performances for later this year.

Photo by Justin Namon

Theaters and other performance venues face similar challenges (as do the many workersemployed for shows). Even one of the biggest, the Arsht Center, is preparing to make adjustments to adapt to unprecedented circumstances.

"The Arsht Center is in good financial standing, and we are optimistic that we can weather this storm," Zietsman says. "Clearly, this crisis will have a financial impact, and that may mean we will have to adapt some of our medium- and long-term plans. This is uncharted territory, so it is not clear what the long-term effects will be yet."

The Arsht hopes to be able to reschedule canceled performances. Still, in the meantime, it's collaborating with local artists to offer resources and entertainment online for instance, guiding children in artistic projects they can complete at home.

As for the Kiwanis Club, it probably won't be able to reschedule its canceled gatherings. "It takes us a whole year to put these events together, and we're all volunteers," Fernandez explains. He hopes that the club will be able to program a new event in the fall and that the city government will step in to help Kiwanis and other struggling organizations.

"I understand the reasons for canceling the festival. It was a better decision not to have Calle Ocho because of all the people that would be in close contact with each other. At the same time, we were impacted by it, and hopefully, the city can find some ways of helping our organization," he says. "The world is undergoing an experience it never has before, so we'll have to adapt to the circumstances."

Suzannah Friscia is a freelance arts and culture journalist based in Miami. She has contributed to the Wall Street Journal, Dance Magazine, Pointe, and other publications and earned a master's degree from the Columbia School of Journalism.

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Miami Museums and Arts Organizations Adjust to Coronavirus Pandemic - Miami New Times

These are difficult times and getting physically intimate with a partner has grown even riskier. So, many might be wondering how they can have some super hot romantic moments with a partner without getting sexually intimate? Don't worry, your search ends here. We bring to you a few non-sexual gestures to increase intimacy and romance with a partner. Cooking a meal together The famous playwright George Bernard Shaw had once said, "There is no sincerer love than the love of food. In case you don't know, cooking is more than just an essential life skill; cooking is therapeutic. It has the power to bring two souls closer. Most of us are aware of the aphrodisiac effect of spices, right? So, cooking a meal together with a partner and breaking down into a sweat while working in front of the cooktop can be an exciting experience. Also, it will help both to learn about each other's taste for food. Learning a new hobby together Do you know what is the best part of being in a relationship? Sharing the same experiences and growing together. Learning something new together can be an experience of a lifetime and you will remember those moments fondly forever. It can be something as simple as learning to dance (you can choose from waltz, salsa, jazz etc. that can be done with a partner) or something adventurous like mountain climbing. Creating a memory book This is one activity that a lot of relationship counselors advise their clients to exercise. You and your partner can create a 'memory book' together. It's almost like the Facebook memories that keep appearing on your social media feed; only this one is not in the virtual world. You can take a nice notebook and write about your favourite memories like when you first met, the place where you went out for your first dinner etc. To make your memory book more interesting and graphic, you can use pictures to support your memory. This exercise would help both the partners to revisit their old memories and grow closer.

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Best non-sexual gestures to increase intimacy and add romance to your love life - Times of India

What did Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung, Haitis Duvalier, Romanias Ceausescu, and Ethiopias Mengitsu have in common? They were all dictators in the 20th century and now they make appearances Frank Diktters new book, How to Be a Dictator: The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century.

Diktter is a historian who specializes in modern Chinese history. He resides in Hong Kong and teaches at the University of Hong Kong. His three-volume Peoples Trilogy, which covers communist China from 1945 to 1976, won him worldwide fame. The trilogy covers the darkest period in Chinas long history, a period that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been doing everything in their power to erase from history.

Thanks to Diktters books, he has kept that history alive and exposed. Through his thorough research, Diktter has informed the rest of the world of the unbelievable miseries the Chinese people suffered under the CCPs ruinous policies and the evils of the partys socialist ideology. Writing these books also enabled Diktter to closely examine Mao, one of the worst dictators and mass murders in the 20th century. Diktters insights into Mao likely inspired him to write How to Be a Dictator.

The title of the book is a bit misleading. Unlike Machiavellis The Prince, Diktters book is not a how to guide for whoever aspires to be the next dictator. Instead, through analyzing the rise and fall of dictators, he shows us how one becomes a dictator and the nature of a dictatorship. Its hoped that next time, the public will be wise enough to stop a would-be dictator before he causes too much harm.

Diktter presented eight dictators of the 20th century: Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung, Francois Duvalier, Nicolas Ceausescu, and Mengistu Haile Mariam. Each chapter reads like a mini-biography. They came from different cultures, reached the peak of power in different circumstances, and ended their lives in different ways. However, they all share a number of commonalities.

Their road to power was paved with corpses. Mao began to purge his Communist Party rivals from the late 1920s on through the early 1930s, long before he became a dictator. He used torture, nonstop interrogations, and threats of execution to get false confessions.

Once confessions were obtained, prisoners were nonetheless killed without amnesty for being counterrevolutionaries, despotic landlords, and reactionary rich-peasant elements. It was estimated more than 1,000 CCP members were killed as the result of Maos purge. For Mao, this was merely a rehearsal of terror tactics he would rely on again and again to suppress dissent as he climbed to the peak of his power.

Once in power, the killing didnt stop because, as Diktter observes, power seized through violence must be maintained by violence. All these dictators established armies of police, secret police, informants,spies, interrogators, and torturersto put down any real or imaginary threats, as well as keep the population under control through fear.

Hitler was responsible for the killing of six million Jews during the Holocaust. Millions of Russians were executed or sent to gulags in Siberia due to Stalins Great Purge or Great Terror (1936-1938). At the height of the Soviet purge in 1937 and 1938, Diktter observes the execution rate was roughly a thousand per day, with people accused of being class enemies, saboteurs, oppositionist or speculators, some denounced by their own neighbors or relatives.

In 1977, after surviving an assassination attempt, Ethiopias dictator Mengistu authorized house-by-house searches in Addis Ababa. Sometimes cameras and typewriters were treated as evidence of spying activities. Suspects were arrested in the hundreds and executed on the outskirts of the capital. They included children as young as eleven,Diktter writes.

Ideologically, Mussolini and Hitler were suspicious of Communists/socialists but their fascism was in fact a dark version of socialism. The rest of the six dictators in this book explicitly claimed they followed Marxist ideology with their own interpretation and imposed socialistic economic policies, which caused similar disastrous results in all their countries. Stalins agriculture collectivization campaign in Ukraine, which forcefully replaced Ukraines independent farms with state-owned collectives and sent procurement squads to villages to grab every last bit of food at gunpoint, claimed the lives of close to four million Ukrainians, about 13 percent of the population.

Following the Soviet model, Mengitsu compelled seven million households in Ethiopia into peasant associations, which were owned by the state. These associations imposed grain quotas on the villagers, forcing them to sell their crops to the state at prices determined by the state, Diktter notes. In addition, farmers were conscripted to work on the states infrastructure projects without pay, becoming tenants of the state.

Mao topped them all in terms of the scale of the calamity resulting from his socialist policies. His Great Leap Forward movement (1958-1962), hoping to turn the nationfrom an agrarian economy into an industrialized communist society within a decade through agriculture collectivization and backyard iron/steel furnaces, was the direct cause of the Great Chinese Famine (1959-1962), during which between 20 to 30 million Chinese people perished in three years.

While these dictators rule by fear, they all wanted to create the illusion of popular support. At the height of their power, their images were ubiquitous in the nations they ruled. Their portraits could be found outside every building, inside every building, factory, office, and home. People bowed to their portraits and statues when passing by.

Under their watchful gaze, people studied and recited every word these dictators said or wrote. They were showered with great titles, each more outlandish than the previous ones. Stalin was called the Great Driver of the Locomotive of History. Ceausescu was hailed as our lay God, the heart of the party and the nation. Mao was compared to the sun.

Dictators were worshiped like gods. A memorial was built at Mussolinis birthplace, and every party member was recommended to go on a religious pilgrimage there and take an oath of loyalty and devotion to Il Duce. In China, people started and ended a workday by bowing to Maos portrait. Newlywed couples exchanged collections of Maos writings as wedding gifts. Even today, many Chinese like to hang small charms with Maos portrait inside their car as if Chairman Mao still carries some magic power.

Some of these types of expressions of devotion to a dictator might be genuine at times, but mostly, they were fake. Dictatorship creates liars. Dictators lied to their people and people who lived under a dictator learned how to lie in return.They had to smile on command, parrot the party line, shout the slogans and salute their leader. They were required to create the illusion of consent. Those who failed to play along were fined, imprisoned, occasionally shot, Diktter writes.

Everywhere Romanians dictator Ceausescus visited, Diktter observes the crowd cheered enthusiastically with the secret police in the background to ensure that everyone joined the chorus. Similarly, at Kims state funeral, secret police kept watching everyone, trying to measure their sincerity by observing their facial expression and listening to the tone of their voice. Knowing they were being watched, North Koreans tried to outdo one another in displays of grief, pounding their heads, collapsing in theatrical swoons, ripping off their clothes, waving their fists at the sky in feigned rage.

While domestically, people put on acts of admiration and love for their dear leaders for the sake of survival, every single one of these dictators collected admirers from the west. In 1939, Winston Churchill described Mussolini as the Roman genius. After a two-hour private meeting with Stalin, American socialist George Bernard Shaw proclaimed there was no malice in him but also no credulity. French journalist Pierre Hamelet wrote a Romanian government-sanctioned biography of Ceausescu and portrayed the dictator as a passionate humanist who announced nothing less than the coming of a new era.

It was through these western admirers lavish and wholehearted praises that each dictator got to perpetuate his myth and the illusion of popularity, while the rest of the world looked away from the horrors in these dictatorial regimes.

In the end, some dictators met their death in most gruesome fashion: Mussolini and his mistress were shot and their bodies hung upside down from a girder; Hitler and his mistress committed suicide in an underground compound; Ceausescu and his wife were lined up against a wall and shot. Stalin was found lying on the floor, soaked in his own urine. A blood vessel had burst in his brain, but no one had dared to disturb him in his bedroom. Medical help, too was delayed, as the leaders entourage was petrified of making the wrong call, Diktter records. Stalin died three days later.

Other dictators such as Chinas Mao and North Koreas Kim died of natural causes. Since they made their parties accomplices in their crimes committed against humanity, their party successors and in Kims case, also his bloodline, have made adjustments in their governance as the time goes by to sustain their staying power, while relentlessly preserving these dictators legacies as justification for the new generation of dictators: Xi Jinping in China and Kim Jong-un in North Korea.

Of course, the book leaves out many dictators such as Cubas Fidel Castro. Not being included in the book doesnt mean these other dictators are less evil or less tyrannical. Diktter concludes that all dictators survived by cult and terror. There are enough variety of the eight dictators included in this book to serve asa warning and reminder to all of us: Liberty is fragile. It will require vigilance from everyone to protect it.

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What We Can Learn From The 20th Century's Worst Dictators - The Federalist

Hiawatha Project's "My Traveling Song." Photo by Renee Rosensteel.

Were updating our virtual event guide every week, so please keep reading and sharing. Know about an interesting virtual event taking place in April? Email us here.

Thursday, April 2: Happy Hour Live! with Pittsburgh Whiskey Friends & Pittsburgh Craft Beer Society 5 p.m. Raise a glass and lift your spirits with fellow whiskey and craft beer aficionados. This collective of libations lovers is here to rescue you from the isolation of social distancing with their online happy hours series where its always 5 oclock. Were all missing the citys awesome breweries, bars and distilleries, so join this crew for some much-needed socializing and imbibing you supply the drinks and theyll spark the conversations. Tonights gathering will feature Christian Kahle, owner of Lucky Sign Spirits. To support our local service industry, contribute to this virtual tip jar.

Thursday, April 2: Have No More Bad Days with Inner Rutz 6-7:30 p.m. We all face overwhelming challenges in life its how we experience them that can make all the difference. Dubbed Have No More Bad Days, this five-week virtual course led by Mount Lebanon-based shop Inner Rutz will provide you with tools eliminating stress and anxiety and learn to use emotions to reach your goals, with new topics to focus on each Thursday.

Thursday, April 2: Enjoy PlayTime with Pittsburgh Public Theater 7 p.m. Every Thursday night, make a standing date with Pittsburgh Public Theater Artistic Director Marya Sea Kaminski, who will bring iconic plays right to your living room during live readings that showcase and the work of extraordinary writers.

Friday, April 3: Craft Business Accelerator Web Meeting: Understanding Emergency Capital Options for Regional Creative Businesses 12-1 p.m. Are you the owner of a creative business looking for assistance during the COVID-19 crisis? Bridgeway Capitals Craft Business Accelerator is here to lend a hand. During this free web meeting, you will learn about new loan products with very patient and flexible terms designed to inject working capital into creative businesses, including the Small Business Administrations Paycheck Protection Program. Featured guests are Richard Longo, interim director of Duquesne Universitys School of Business and Small Business Development Center, Michael Dunmire, growth loan officer at Bridgeway Capital and Emily Keebler, program director for Kiva Pittsburgh.

Friday, April 3: The Irishing of English Theatre: An Interactive Online Lecture Series 2-3 p.m. Infuse your Friday afternoon with some classic theatre. Join PICT Classic Theatre Artistic & Executive Director Alan Stanford to discover how prolific Irish writers such as George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett and Oscar Wilde have had a profound effect on the development of English Theatre for more than 300 years. The five-session webinar series will highlight influential Irish playwrights, and discuss the nature of their work and the influence theyve had on the development of English theatrical writing. The free sessions will be recorded and available to watch at your leisure after the event ends.

Friday, April 3: Happy Hour Live! with Pittsburgh Whiskey Friends & Pittsburgh Craft Beer Society 5 p.m. Raise a glass and lift your spirits with fellow whiskey and craft beer aficionados. This collective of libations lovers is here to rescue you from the isolation of social distancing with theironline happy hours series where its always 5 oclock. Were all missing the citys awesome breweries, bars and distilleries, so join this crew for some much-needed socializing and imbibing you supply the drinks and theyll spark the conversations. While youre at it, you can support our local service industry by contributing to this virtual tip jar.

Photo courtesy of Dreadnought Wines/Palate Partners.

Friday April 3: Wine Class with Christel Burks of Les Vignobles Foncalieu 6 p.m. Calling all sippers to Dreadnought Wines/Palate Partners new online classes! Be transported to the Languedoc region in southern France with Christel Burks from Les Vignobles Foncalieu one of the largest producers and exporters of French wines from Gascony who will share some amazing varieties that have their own distinct character. A portion of the proceeds will support Dreadnought Wines and their vendor partners during the current COVID-19 crisis.

Friday, April 3: The Pittsburgh Irish Festival Live Stream Music Series 7 p.m. The Pittsburgh Irish Festival is here to lift our spirits with the power of music. To kick off your weekend, County Mayo and The Wild Geese Turn will turn your living room into a rollicking Irish pub as they perform traditional and contemporary tunes from The Emerald Isle. Sing along with all of the bands and check out all of the performances via the Live Stream Irish Music Series Facebook page.

Friday, April 3: Enjoy PlayTime with Pittsburgh Public Theater 7 p.m. Every Thursday night, make a standing date with Pittsburgh Public Theater Artistic Director Marya Sea Kaminski, who will bring iconic plays right to your living room during live readings that showcase and the work of extraordinary writers.

Friday, April 3 through Sunday, April 5: Experience Hiawatha Projects My Traveling Song Ever wish you could participate in a live theatrical show from the comfort of your own home? Aiming to find joy and connection between young children and caregivers during uncertain or even scary times Hiawatha Projects interactive new musical, My Traveling Song, is sure to resonate with todays audiences. But first, watch this fun video to find out how you can gather simple props from around your home to catch raindrops, make falling leaves and hold your candles up to light the way during the interactive show. The free online performance will be available for 48 hours only, from noon on Friday, April 3 to noon on Sunday, April 5.

Saturday April 4: Wine & Cooking Class with Marco Scapagnini of Niche Italy 1 p.m. Vino is going virtual this Saturday. The charismatic Marco Scapagnini of Niche Italy which specializes in unique food and wine tours will lead this session from his home in Sicily. Get a behind-the-scenes look at Scapagninis kitchen, as he discusses Nero DAvola dubbed the most important red wine grape in Sicily and also cooks for the group. Saluti!

Saturday, April 4: Live from The Oaks Theater 6 p.m. Local artists are experiencing significant setbacks due to the Covid-19 crisis, and the Oaks Theater and Pittsburgh Concert Audio are here to help. Broadcast via YouTube and Facebook, this evening of live streaming and prerecorded entertainment will include a web-a-thon benefitting the Greater Pittsburgh Councils Emergency Fund for Artists. Hosted by performer Phat Man Dee, the event will feature Bill Deasy, Aubrey Burchell, Deryck Tines and others.

Saturday, April 4: Chamber Music Pittsburgh presents Emanuel Ax & Friends 8 p.m. Even though Grammy-winning classical pianist Emanuel Ax cant perform in Pittsburgh, the show will still go on. Streaming live from their homes, Ax will be joined by fellow pianist Jon Kimura Parker, mezzo-soprano JNai Bridges, violinist Rachel Barton Pine, clarinetist Anthony McGill and harpist Bridget Kibbey to share some of their favorite pieces. Proceeds from the virtual concert will benefit Artist Relief Tree.

Saturday, April 4: Knights of the Arcade Online Adventure 9 p.m. We could all use some geeky humor as we navigate these uncharted waters. Arcade Comedy Theater is here to deliver the goods with its latest live online show that blends Zoom, Twitch and Dark Magic. The laughter will flow when you open your home, and your heart, to the improv comedy, role-playing games and D&D Adventures of the Knights of the Arcade.

Photo courtesy of Arcade Comedy Theater.

Sunday, April 5: Attend a Virtual Summit with the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh 5:30-7 p.m.What can Pittsburgh and the rest of the country learn from the impactful interfaith, cross-community responses to what was the countrys worst antisemitic attack in 2018? Join the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh to participate in this interactive summit featuring dynamic speakers, performers and action-oriented solutions. The event will include a virtual vigil and name-reading ceremony honoring victims and survivors of identity-based violence and a town hall dialogue.

ThroughSunday, April 5: Cry It Out with City Theatre Company If you missed the chance to see Molly Smith Metzlers play, Cry It Out before it ended its run early due to COVID-19, then dont miss thevirtual performance available through April 5. Directed by Kim Weild, the new play chronicles Metzlers real-life experiences with maternity leave. Thanks to the theaters organizations Pick Your Price initiative, virtual tickets start at just $10.

Through April 9: Watch an Italian crime drama with Row House Cinema Thanks to Lawrenceville movie house Row House Cinema, you can still get your fill of first-run movies via the theaters innovative streaming portal. Tickets are now available through April 9 for the 2019 Italian film, The Traitor, about the life of Sicilian Mafia boss Tommaso Buscetta, who became one of the first to become an informant.

Through Monday, April 10: Submit your movie to Steeltowns Lights! Camera! Quarantine! Contest Some days it seems like the COVID-19 crisis is something straight out of a movie. If you could make a film about a global pandemic, what would it be like? Steeltown is calling all budding directors to flex their creative muscles, pick up that camera or phone and compete for cash prizes. Read the rules and guidelines here, and start rolling.

Through April 20: Submit a proposal to The Office of Public Art Are you a visual or performing artist based in Southwestern PA whos creating new work during this unprecedented time of social distancing? The Office of Public Art wants to hear from you! Its newest initiative, titled Artists Bridging Social Distance in the Public Realm, seeks proposals for new artwork promoting social connection during the COVID-19 pandemic. To learn more, join the virtual information session on April 13.

Watch the Alone Together Streaming Show Nightly at 7 p.m.Created byPete Spynda,Patrick Jordanand Alexi Morrissey, this new, nightlylivestream show is bringing our community together remotely during the COVID-19 crisis. View a nightly schedule of guests and watch the virtual showvia25 Carrick Aves Facebook page.

Check out the Live at 25 Series Nightly at 8 p.m.Created by Hear Corpand Craftons25 Carrick Ave., this virtual program serieswas one of the first initiatives launched locally to support working musicians whose concerts and tours have been canceled or postponed due to COVID-19.The project provides artists with a platform to stream content live from safe, remote locations and can be viewed online via25 Carrick Aves Facebook page. Check their page for dates and performers.

Watch documentary films via WQED Cinephiles have even more great content to check out while practicing social distancing. WQED is presenting Digital Docs, a free series of short documentaries that are now available exclusively here. Shorty but mighty, the documentaries explore everything from history and sports to medicine and human interest stories. Featured this month is Pittsburgh Circus, which chronicles the local subculture of jugglers, fire breathers, aerialists and more. Youll enjoy a circus performance without leaving your house as meet people who can turn a wedding into a big top event, heat up a party or take ballet to new heights.

Send a note to City of Asylums exiled writers While City of Asylums event space, bookstore and restaurant are temporarily closed, you can still support the organization in meaningful ways. All writers in the nonprofits exiled writer sanctuary program are safe, however, it is a very difficult time for them to be both exiled and now also socially distanced. Send a message to any of the writers via email here.

For more virtual events, go here. Know about an interesting virtual event taking place in April? Email us here.

Looking for things to do with kids? ReadKeep the kids engaged and entertained with these hands-on activities and online videos.

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Things to do in Pittsburgh this weekend (virtually and safely) - NEXTpittsburgh