Norway's Northern Lights Train, and the Baklava Guy's backstory
Things I Saw This Week — Friday, June 5
Art
Kera News takes us to five unconventional galleries in North Texas, including Cheerleader in Dallas.
Cheerleader is a gallery in a corrugated metal shack surrounded by steel manufacturing plants. During the day, there’s quite a bit of hammering and sawing going on outside. Cheerleader does not have a bathroom, though curator Brent Birnbaum points out a gas station nearby. Inside the gallery, there are metal barn doors and exposed rods on the ceiling. It’s hard not to be charmed by the whole operation.
“I didn’t want to change too much,” he said. “Perfect museum walls seem really boring.”
The most recent exhibition paired John DeSousa’s textiles with Rebecca Potts’s playful ceramics, all of which seemed to benefit from the rawness of the setting.
Birnbaum established two other galleries in New York before deciding to set up shop at Cheerleader.“I saw opportunity here,” he said.“In New York, there’s 75 spaces like this and here I knew of two. So I thought I can make a bigger impact here for the community.”
Cities
Stories about place.
Berlin: “Less cool, less cold: A new kind of nightlife is taking over Berlin”
Chicago: “Doorways of Chicago”
Los Angeles: “The LA Run Club Doing ICE Patrol”
Miami: “As the Sea Rises and Rents Triple, Miami’s Black Neighborhoods Are Disappearing”
Seoul: “The mysterious village you won’t find on maps of Seoul”
Washington, D.C.: “These grandparents sit on benches, ready to talk to strangers who need them”
Food (and Drink)
A roundup of food news of note:
Science
Progress on the pancreatic cancer and melanoma fronts:
The Associated Press reports on an experimental pill for pancreatic cancer:
Those taking daraxonrasib lived for a median of 13.2 months compared with 6.7 months for chemotherapy recipients. While that may seem like a small improvement, Wainberg said it marked the first drug to show a substantial advantage over chemotherapy.
“Having treated pancreatic cancer for 16 years, I actually started crying” when first seeing the study results, Dr. Rachna Shroff of the University of Arizona Cancer Center, who wasn’t involved with the research, said from the ASCO meeting. She was struck by how “patients stayed on this treatment because it was providing durable and meaningful benefit to them.”
The pills’ effects eventually wane but recipients used them for significantly longer than the comparison group stayed on chemotherapy, reporting less pain and a better quality of life as their tumors shrank. Many still were using the drug after the data was analyzed, which Wainberg said means the survival gap may widen as researchers continue tracking them.
A new trial for melanoma treatment includes an mRNA vaccine and Keytruda (an immunotherapy drug).
The results are striking. After five years of follow-up, 68.8% of patients who received the combination therapy remained cancer-free, she says, compared with 49.1% of patients who received Keytruda alone, which amounts to a 49% reduction in risk. “That’s pretty exciting,” Mehnert says.
In addition, 92% of patients who received the combination therapy were alive at the five-year mark, compared with 71% of those who only used Keytruda. “I think this is strong evidence that this therapy, when used in combination with immunotherapy, can demonstrably reduce the risk of dying from this disease,” she says.
Travel
The backstory of the DoubleTree cookies.
Such is the power of the DoubleTree chocolate chip cookie, a marketing tool baked up 40 years ago that has become an iconic symbol in hospitality — and the heart of the hotel brand’s identity. Every year, the chain’s 700-plus hotels serve more than 20 million cookies.
The cookies became the first food baked in space as part of an experiment at the International Space Station in 2019, with one of the space sweets later landing at the National Air and Space Museum. During the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Hilton released the famous recipe, revealing cinnamon, oats and lemon juice as special ingredients.
All that is to say: The DoubleTree cookie is basically a celebrity.
And five stargazing trains across the globe, including Norway’s Northern Lights Train.
In the far northern reaches of Norway, inside the Arctic Circle, you can ride a train that chases another wonder of the night sky: the aurora borealis. Twice a week from October to March, the Northern Lights Train takes its riders into the dark polar night in pursuit of the aurora’s celestial light show.
From the remote town of Narvik, the train travels along the Ofoten Railway, the northernmost passenger rail line in Western Europe. The destination on this three-hour round-trip excursion (1,495 kroner, or about $160) is Katterat, a mountain village accessible only by rail and free of light pollution, making it an ideal place to spot the aurora. At the Katterat station, local guides and a campfire cookout await, as does a lavvu, the traditional tent used by the Sami people of northern Scandinavia, offering a respite from the cold (as well as hot drinks and an open fire for roasting sausages).
Songs I Listened to This Week
TV/Films I Watched This Week
‘Backrooms’ | In theaters
A film by Kane Parsons, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, and Lukita Maxwell.
‘Widow’s Bay’ | AppleTV
“Widow’s Bay” is a quaint island town 40-miles off the coast of New England. But something lurks beneath the surface. Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) is desperate to revive his struggling community. There’s no wifi, spotty cellular reception, and he must contend with superstitious old locals who believe their island is cursed. He wants these people to respect him. They don’t. They think he is soft and cowardly. And he is. But Loftis is determined to build a better future for his teenage son and turn the island into a tourist destination. Miraculously, Loftis succeeds: tourists are finally coming. Unfortunately, the locals were right. After decades of calm, the old stories that seemed too ludicrous to be true start happening again. “Widow’s Bay” blends genuine horror with an undercurrent of character-driven comedy. Rhys stars alongside an ensemble cast led by Kate O'Flynn, Stephen Root, Kingston Rumi Southwick, Kevin Carroll and Dale Dickey.
‘The ‘Burbs’ | Peacock
Set in present-day suburbia, The ‘Burbs follows a young couple returning to the husband’s childhood home. Their world is upended when new neighbors move in next door, bringing old secrets of the cul-de-sac to light, and new deadly threats shatter the illusion of their quiet little neighborhood.