I was talking to my brother about how I might best serve my students during the emergency, and the topic of on-line classes came up (as it has for everyone who teaches some sort of movement-based activity), and my brother pointed out that I should have been turning my study into a studio suitable for producing and streaming on-line classes.
Sadly, I have not done so. If I were to try to stream classes from here, they’d mostly consist of pictures of the vast amount of clutter in my study, so they’d look like this:
I’ll spare you that for the time being.
But, if the emergency continues, I suppose it’s possible that I’ll get my act together to tidy up my study to the point where it could sort-of be a studio.
Maybe.
Watch this space!
In the meantime, there are a variety of videos of me and other people doing taiji and qi gong at communitytaichi.org (a few recent videos are here). If you want to see videos of me in particular, there are few taken by a couple of my students here.
Barbara Nell Land née Neblett passed away peacefully on February 22, 2020 at Carle Hospital in Urbana, Illinois at the age of 96.
Barbara was a writer.
After graduating from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism she won a Pulitzer Travel Scholarship which provided funds for travel and reporting while she wrote many articles on the role of women in the reconstruction of postwar Europe.
The list of places she worked as a journalist would be long, but notably included the Miami Herald, Life Magazine, Armed Forces Network, The New York Times, and Reno Gazette-Journal. She wrote over twenty books, including many co-authored with her husband Myrick Land.
Among her books she was perhaps most proud of The New Explorers about women scientists in Antarctica. She had a life-long fascination with the continent from third grade, when she read in the Weekly Reader about a boy scout who traveled to Antarctica. She complained to her father that boys could do things like that and she couldn’t, and her father replied “When you grow up you can do whatever you want.”
Years later, when researching the book, she got as close as New Zealand, approved for the official flight to the research station, only to be unable to board because the scientists and their equipment reached the weight limit for the plane.
Although she never made it to Antarctica as a working writer, she did eventually visit as a tourist, taking two cruises there in her 80s.
Barbara was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky on July 11, 1923 to Robert Neblett and Jacqueline Neblett. She is survived by her son and daughter, Robert Land of Santa Barbara, California, and Jacquelyn Brewer of Savoy, Illinois, and by her granddaughter Kyra Yorkland. She was proceeded in death by her husband Myrick Land.
No funeral service is planned. The family will scatter her ashes in Nevada, near where her husband’s ashes were scattered. In lieu of flowers, please donate in Barbara’s memory to the UNR Foundation, Barbara and Myrick Land Scholarship Endowment (175218), c/o UNR Foundation, Mailstop 0162, Reno, NV 89557. The family would like to thank all the people at Willowbrook of Savoy who took such good care of Barbara the past three years.
I wasn’t very good at taking pictures of Barbara, but she always liked this one, taken at Turkey Run in Indiana.
