This yr I’ve seen the solar rise in 4 completely different nations. Nicely, nearly. In three of them I watched the darkness inch its method in the direction of mild: daybreak in Berlin in January was gray and melancholy; London a month later was predictably overcast; at dwelling in New York, although town has loved vivid blue morning skies this winter, the skyscrapers make it exhausting to see a dawn.
However this month in Sharjah, I had a soul-expanding view each morning. I might get up, take my hotel-room espresso out on to the balcony and watch because the sky appeared to sew seams of orange, pink and yellow bands of sunshine, earlier than a radiant yellow disc made its method up from the horizon. I watched, mesmerised, till it was glowing-hot white and blinding within the sky.
I’ve lengthy been fascinated by the facility of this distant star, the best way it performs with the environment, casting shadows, streaming mild, illuminating corners and dancing in our midst. Folks previously had a extra pronounced relationship with the solar, an attunement to its day by day rhythms, which industrialisation and expertise have more and more curbed. However we’re nonetheless depending on this celestial surprise, even when we aren’t pressured to recognise that truth day by day. I’m wondering how our lives could be affected if we have been a bit extra attentive to the star whose day by day rising reminds us that, by no effort of our personal, we’ve been blessed to see one other day.
I might gaze all day at Edvard Munch’s “The Solar” (1910-11), a large portray that hangs within the Aula corridor on the College of Oslo. A white radiating orb sits on the centre of the work, holding court docket like a deity. Its mild emanates out on to the water, mountains and greenery in concentric golden circles and pink, blue and white beams of energy. Munch’s solar feels alive, pulsating past the boundaries of the canvas and into our very lives.
Munch’s work appears to honour each the scientific realities of the solar, which holds the entire colors of the spectrum in its blaze, and its expansive, soulful symbolism. It triggers a deep consciousness in me concerning the primacy of galaxies and creation, a reminder of how the residing planet existed earlier than any of our furthest ancestors walked the Earth. Void of human figures, this canvas reminds us that the Earth was completely effective even with out us current. We’re its friends.
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But, as the continuing local weather disaster evidences, our delusive tendency is to dwell on Earth as if we made it, personal it, and may create extra of the sources we abuse and deplete. The phrase that involves thoughts the longer I interact with Munch’s solar is reverence: that blend of homage, appreciation and love due a factor or a being. The solar reminds us of our human limitations. And after we are reminded of our limitations, I feel we’re extra open to a renewed sense of curiosity and surprise, in addition to a recognition of our must collaborate with others. Reverence is simply one other doorway to an illuminated and lively creativeness, the place all our actions and behaviours, good or dangerous, start.
The bronze sculpture “Anyanwu” was created in 1954-55 by Nigerian artist Ben Enwonwu. A towering, lithe girl is wearing conventional apparel, with a headdress and jewelry from Benin. She arches her physique forwards, her arms stretched gracefully out. The sculpture symbolises a imaginative and prescient of a brand new nation rising in the direction of independence. It is usually an imaginative illustration of Ani, the Igbo goddess of the Earth, as she rises to salute the solar, which to the Igbo is a spirit deity referred to as Anyanwu. In Igbo the phrase interprets to “eye of the sunshine”.
The solar as a life supply has impressed peoples throughout historical past and cultures, from the traditional Egyptians to the Greeks, Aztecs and past. Apart from the class of type and sheer aesthetic great thing about Enwonwu’s sculpture, I’m drawn to it as a result of it’s like an icon, a picture suggesting a religious worldview that has the potential to form our behaviour, our beliefs and our mental concerns.
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The sculpture’s posture can be superbly symbolic, prompting me to ask, to what can we first flip our personal our bodies initially of every new day? The place can we first direct our consideration every morning? In the direction of worries, fears, gratitude, reward? As a result of I feel that no matter we bend in the direction of is what influences us, and shapes the selections we’ll go on to make.
“The gradual lifetime of daylight” is made out of handblown panes of colored, layered glass, set diagonally right into a shelf created from driftwood from Iceland. The overlapping panes create a blended spectrum of orange, yellow and inexperienced, and have massive circle and ellipsis cut-outs and gold reflective discs. The arcing sample provides the phantasm of gradual motion and the passing of time. To me, it invitations meditative reflection.
Eliasson’s work makes me consider our grand phantasm that the solar is pirouetting its method throughout the sky, when all of the whereas it’s the Earth that’s spinning on its axis, taking us from dawn to dawn. We really feel nothing, however we’re always in movement.
We might mark time by the solar however, just like the phantasm of the solar’s motion throughout the sky, our time demarcations are illusory as nicely. They’re constructed to present us a way of order, to assist us with the discomfort of chaos and uncertainty. What I really like about Eliasson’s sculpture is that, even when we dwell throughout the perceived security of constructing order by marking time, ultimately it’s what we do within the current that issues. And there’s a radiant magnificence and life-force power to that realisation.
Our lives are a sequence of now moments. What we do with them determines the kind of mild we ourselves would possibly shine on to the world.
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Observe Enuma on Twitter @EnumaOkoro or e mail her at enuma.okoro@ft.com
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The US Federal Trade Commission has voted to ban non-compete agreements, taking aim at contracts that limit employees’ freedom to quit for a new job at a different employer.
The regulator’s commissioners voted 3-2 on Tuesday to implement the far-reaching measure first proposed in January 2023 in a bid to avoid wage suppression and protect innovation. But the move sparked immediate legal pushback.
Non-compete agreements have become pervasive across industries, amid limited oversight and a decline in unionisation, experts say. The FTC said approximately 30mn workers are subject to such contracts, which prohibit employees from working for a competitor or setting up a competing business for a period of time or within a geographical area after they leave a job.
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“Non-compete clauses keep wages low, suppress new ideas, and rob the American economy of dynamism, including from the more than 8,500 new start-ups that would be created a year once non-competes are banned,” said Lina Khan, FTC chair. Non-competes constituted “unfair methods of competition”, she added.
The FTC estimated the new rule will raise an average worker’s earnings by $524 a year. The agency received more than 26,000 public comments on the matter, a sign of its importance to workers and their employers.
But the measure also inflamed industry groups that have claimed it is too drastic and will increase costs while putting trade secrets in jeopardy.
The US Chamber of Commerce announced it would sue the regulator, arguing the agency lacked constitutional and statutory authority to enact the rule, calling it a “blatant power grab” that “sets a dangerous precedent for government micromanagement of business”.
The FTC declined to comment on the chamber’s move.
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Andrew Ferguson, one of two Republican FTC commissioners who voted against the rule, agreed with the argument that the agency lacked congressional authority to adopt the rule.
The expected lawsuit will compound the legal sparring between corporate America and regulators appointed by President Joe Biden who have ushered in tougher stances on rulemaking and enforcement.
Khan is among a new generation of progressive officials who have adopted more stringent antitrust policies in an effort to fight what they argue has been unchecked anti-competitive conduct.
The impending litigation is also set to add uncertainty for businesses, some lawyers said.
“The question is: what are companies supposed to do now?” said Russell Beck, an attorney who sat on a working group tackling the noncompete issue during the Obama administration.
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He said the best course of action for companies was to wait and see how the issue plays out in court. “I think there will be a slew of challenges until a judge issues a nationwide injunction prohibiting the operation of the rule.”
But Rachel Dempsey, an attorney at Towards Justice, a non-profit law firm representing employees, said in a statement that non-compete agreements “keep workers trapped at jobs with low wages and poor working conditions”.
The rule was “a historic step towards protecting workers from employer abuse and empowering them to stand up for their basic rights in the workplace”, she added.
When Doug Johnson received a text that his friend of over a decade, Maxwell Azzarello, had died after setting himself on fire in New York City, he didn’t believe it.
“I was like, ‘No, you got the wrong person. I don’t know anybody that would do that,’” Johnson told NBC News.
Johnson did some research online out of curiosity, and that’s when he saw Azzarello’s face pop up in an article.
Maxwell Azzarello.via Instagram
“Just immediately, chills up my spine, like, in total disbelief,” he said.
Azzarello set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial was taking place on Friday.
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According to police, he walked into the center of the park where protesters were allowed across the street from the courthouse, opened a backpack and threw numerous pamphlets on the ground. He then pulled out a canister, poured a liquid accelerant on himself, lit himself on fire and then fell to the ground.
Azzarello, 37, later died of his injuries, leaving friends and strangers alike wondering what drove him to his actions.
Johnson, who was part of the same friend group as Azzarello in North Carolina, describes him as smart, funny, charismatic and the most intelligent human being he had ever met.
“I keep hearing on the news, you know, how he was a conspiracy theorist, an extremist — and obviously, you have to be extreme to do something like he did,” Johnson said. “But as far as the way the picture’s been painted of him so far, I feel like it’s a really inaccurate depiction of him.”
Selfless, but troubled
A glimpse at social media gives a small window into Azzarello’s thoughts. Multiple pictures of pamphlets entitled “Dips— Secrets of our Rotten World” and “The True History of the World,” were posted to his Facebook and Instagram, expressing anti-government views. In his pamphlets, he accused powerful people of running Ponzi schemes and warned of an imminent economic collapse and coup.
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Max Azzarello outside of Manhattan criminal court in New York City, on April 18. David Dee Delgado / Getty Images
On Friday, a user on Substack going by the name M. Crosby — Crosby is Azzarello’s middle name — published a blog post where he wrote that he set himself on fire outside of the Trump trial in New York City. The writer said that this “extreme act of protest is to draw attention to … an apocalyptic fascist world coup.”
Mary Pat Cooney, who worked with Azzarello nine years ago at the Liberty Hill Foundation, an L.A.-based social justice nonprofit, described him as a selfless person who was “always happy to help people” if they had a problem.
“He was highly intelligent, thoroughly dedicated, funny and kind — that’s the person that I remember,” Cooney said.
Azzarello attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and graduated in 2009 with a B.A. in public policy and anthropology, according to a university spokesperson. He also earned his master’s degree in city and regional planning, with a major in urban planning and policy development from Rutgers University in New Brunswick in 2012.
“I swear, as far as history and politics and, you know, social studies, social matters, stuff like that, there wasn’t a topic that he wasn’t knowledgeable in,” Johnson, Azzarello’s friend from North Carolina, said. “And it was like the equivalent of me typing something into Google and then Max is spitting out the information to me, and he was accurate with it.”
But beyond Azzarello’s brilliance, he seemed to be troubled, according to his friends. Both Johnson and Cooney said Azzarello appeared to change after the death of his mother in April 2022.
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Cooney, who kept in touch with Azzarello through Facebook, said the character of his posts became less good-natured after his mother’s death.
“In his previous posts, and all our communication — (he was) concerned, righteous, knowledgeable, a good-spirited guy,” Cooney said. “The guy that came a little later was a bit more of a ranter, had a different level of anger, and was expressing it in a — I don’t know what the right word is, but it was kind of like he was yelling at us to pay attention to him, rather than pleading his case and sharing it for the world.”
In August of last year, Azzarello posted a picture of grippy socks to his Facebook with the caption, “Three days in the psych ward and all I got were my new favorite socks.”
“I was handcuffed, shoved, and put into a psych ward,” Azzarello wrote toward the end of the caption. “I was given no information about why I was there until after my discharge. Though I committed no crime and was released upon my first evaluation, all background checks (like the ones for jobs) will show an incident with police officers that cannot be expunged (until we abolish the government, of course).”
It’s not clear what events took place before Azzarello said he was committed to the psych ward.
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A string of arrests
Azzarello’s alleged stint in a psych ward seemed to precede a string of arrests in St. Augustine, Florida, where he lived before his death.
On Aug. 19, 2023, Azzarello was charged with criminal mischief when he allegedly threw a glass of wine at an autograph by former President Bill Clinton that was on a wall at the lobby of the Casa Monica Resort & Spa, according to a warrant affidavit from the St. Augustine Police Department.
Two days later, Azzarello allegedly returned to the resort and stood outside, where he stripped down to his underwear, yelled and cursed at customers, and was blasting music from a speaker, per an arrest report.
An officer who attempted to make contact with Azzarello said “he just began yelling and was not making any sense.” He was arrested for disturbing the peace. Azzarello was put on probation for this incident, which ended earlier this month.
Three days after that, Azzarello was arrested again for criminal mischief after he was seen on surveillance video allegedly vandalizing property belonging to a nonprofit in St. Johns County, including writing with permanent marker on one of their signs, court documents state. He was also seen climbing into the bed of someone’s pickup truck and going through their belongings, as well as removing a sign placed at a home by pest control warning them to keep pets and children off the lawn.
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“Azzarello was misinterpreting the sign and was telling me that the pest control company was there to exterminate children and dogs,” an officer with the St. Augustine Police Department wrote in the arrest report.
Azzarello was also put on probation in connection with these incidents, which ended earlier this month.
His final moments
Two years after the death of his mother, Azzarello made his way to New York City where he self-immolated. It’s not clear why or when Azzarello came to the city, but NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said he arrived early last week and that family members were unaware that he was there.
When asked if he felt there was a reason Azzarello would self-immolate outside of the Trump trial, Johnson said Azzarello wasn’t specifically concerned about Trump, but would speak generally about the corruption of all politicians.
While struggling to understand why his friend would do this, Johnson hopes people don’t remember Azzarello just for his final moments.
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“He deserves at least to be remembered for the good person that he was, the selfless person that he was, the charismatic, loving, giving person,” Johnson said. “All he wanted was better for people and it didn’t matter if he knew you or not. He wanted better for everyone.”
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.
