Buddhism

Surviving in Isolation, Where the Steppe Has Turned to Sand

The road ends, and the old Soviet car I’m in — a Lada Niva — begins to shake on the unpaved lane. In the darkness, Erdni, the driver, somehow manages to maneuver between large gullies and mounds of sand that seem impossible to discern.

After a couple hours of driving east from the Russian city of Elista, I find myself in the heart of the Kalmyk steppe — at the farming spot, or camp, where Erdni lives with his wife, his children and his father.

equivalent of New Year’s Day, is the date on which Kalmyks traditionally add a year to their age — a kind of culture-wide birthday.

“After surviving 2020,” he says, smiling, “we could easily add five years.”

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Michael Friedlander, Urban Architect of Offbeat Designs, Dies at 63

In the 1970s, Michael Friedlander was an architecture student at the Cooper Union, his head bursting with bodacious, unconventional designs. Upon graduating, he settled for a stopgap job with the City of New York, which included more prosaic assignments like drafting blueprints to renovate locker rooms for sanitation workers.

Over his 40-year career with the Sanitation Department — he was an in-house architect, a manager of various projects and finally director of special projects — Mr. Friedlander never gave up on his crusade to transform the public’s view of civic architecture from intrusive mediocrity to something worthy of approval, or even veneration.

His vision was ultimately epitomized in the form of a sculptural Sanitation Department salt-storage shed on the fringe of TriBeCa. The glacially blue concrete crystalline cubelike structure, 69 feet high, is called the Spring Street Salt Shed and appears, with a little imagination, to form a coarse grain of salt.

Mr. Friedlander described the $20 million structure as a whimsical “architectural folly” that can hold 5,000 tons of salt.

in 2015: “Opponents of the sanitation project in Hudson Square may not have gotten exactly what they wanted. But they were fortunate. They got something better.”

Mr. Kimmelman added, “I can’t think of a better public sculpture to land in New York than the shed.”

Mr. Friedlander replied, unpretentiously, “There are people inside.”

That garage won an award in 2007 from the city’s Art Commission (now the Public Design Commission). So did a shed with translucent tent fabric in Far Rockaway, Queens, that is used to store ice-melting salt for sanitation trucks to spew on winter roadways. He also received a lifetime achievement award from the commission.

But Mr. Friedlander is probably best known for overseeing the design and construction of the Spring Street Salt Shed, at West and Spring Streets near the Hudson River, as well as the adjacent garage. Those structures won an Honor Award from the 2018 American Institute of Architects.

Tobi Bergman, the chair of Community Board 2, which had initially opposed the project, told Architect magazine in 2016: “Anybody who has seen it has to be happy with it. It’s a real example of how these things can be done well.”

Mr. Friedlander told The Times in 2015 that his secret to overcoming not-in-my-backyard opposition to public works was straightforward: “Build the best building in the neighborhood.”

“I keep learning from one building to the other,” he said. “I may not make a ton of money, but I’m having fun.”

Michael Jay Friedlander was born on June 6, 1957, in Manhattan to Frances (Kempner) Friedlander, a teacher, and Joseph Friedlander, an insurance representative.

Jeffrey, Bruce and Kenneth. Jeffrey Friedlander retired as second in command in the city’s Law Department in 2015.

The salt shed had many mothers and fathers, starting with the architects who collaborated on the project, WXY and Dattner Architects; Amanda M. Burden, who chaired the City Planning Commission under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg; and James S. Polshek, a member of the Public Design Commission.

Rick Bell, executive director of the excellence program in the city’s Department of Design and Construction, said in 2015 that the shed might be the most important change to the public face of the Sanitation Department since its fleet was painted white in 1967.

The shed’s concrete walls are six feet thick, leading the architect Richard Dattner to imagine some future civilization stumbling upon it just as Charlton Heston’s character discovers the remnants of the Statue of Liberty in the film “Planet of the Apes.”

“They will wonder,” Mr. Friedlander said, “why did these people worship salt?”

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Caution vs. Optimism

The news about the state of the pandemic in the U.S. has been largely positive in the past few months. The vaccines are highly effective, and millions of people are receiving doses each day. Cases, hospitalizations and deaths have fallen sharply from their January peaks.

But infections are rising again. The U.S. has averaged 65,000 new cases a day over the past week — a 19 percent increase from two weeks ago. That puts the country close to last summer’s peak, though still far below January levels.

aren’t surprised. “For literally a month and a half, we’ve all been predicting that the second half of March is when B.1.1.7 would become the dominant variant in the United States,” says Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown School of Public Health. “And sure enough, here we are.”

The increase is not distributed equally. “New York and New Jersey have been bad and are not getting better, and Michigan’s cases are rising at an explosive rate,” Mitch Smith, a Times reporter covering the pandemic, said.

Hospitalizations are also rising rapidly in Michigan, with Jackson, Detroit and Flint among the metro areas experiencing the highest rates of new cases in the country.

The outlook is more encouraging in much of the West and South, though cases have started to tick up in Florida, where officials in Miami Beach instituted a curfew this month to prevent crowds of spring breakers from gathering.

while warning that “reckless behavior” could lead to more infections.

The solution, Jha believes, is honesty. “There’s been this debate throughout the whole pandemic: Should we be more optimistic or should we be more pessimistic? My personal strategy has been to just be honest with people,” he says. “Be honest with people and give it to them straight. I think most people can handle it.”

In other virus news:

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Politics

the second day of Derek Chauvin’s trial, six people who were at the scene last year as Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck testified. The teenager who recorded the video at the center of the case said she sometimes lay awake at night, “apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more.” (Here are the takeaways from Day 2.)

Two Capitol Police officers are suing Donald Trump, claiming he is responsible for the physical and emotional injuries they suffered during the Jan 6. riot.

These photos show the conditions in an overcrowded border facility in Donna, Texas, that is housing more than 4,000 migrants.

A January airstrike by the French Army targeting militants killed 19 civilians in Mali, a U.N. report found. The attack intensified calls for about 5,000 French troops stationed there to leave.

G. Gordon Liddy, who concocted the bungled burglary that led to the Watergate scandal and the resignation of Richard Nixon, died. He was 90.

The N.F.L. will add a 17th regular-season game, the first expansion of the league’s schedule since 1978.

The Final Four is set for the N.C.A.A. basketball tournaments, after No. 1 seeds in each bracket — Gonzaga for the men and Stanford and South Carolina for the women — won last night.

Opinions

Morning Reads

Under the Sea: “There’s no bottom, no walls, just this space that goes to infinity. And one thing you realize is there are a lot of sea monsters there, but they’re tiny.”

Lives Lived: Alvin Sykes converted to Buddhism in his 20s and led a monk’s life in the name of social justice. Though he was not a lawyer, he devoted himself to prying open long-dormant murder cases from the civil rights era, including that of Emmett Till. Sykes died at 64.

Satan Shoes.

That outrage is by design, as The Times’s music critic Jon Caramanica writes. “What ‘Montero’ has caused — or rather, what Lil Nas X has engineered — is a good old-fashioned moral panic,” he writes. “The song, the video, the shoes — they are bait.”

Lil Nas X found major fame in 2019 with his viral hit “Old Town Road.” But what has kept him relevant is the skill set he developed before that, as an ardent Nicki Minaj fan on social media. That experience made him a master at steering online conversations, a talent that translates well to pop stardom.

“He is a grade-A internet manipulator and, provided all the tools and resources typically reserved for long-established pop superstars, he is perfectly suited to dominate the moment,” Caramanica writes. “‘Montero’ may or may not top the Billboard Hot 100 next week, but it will be unrivaled in conversations started.” — Sanam Yar

play online.

Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: ___ chowder (four letters).

If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.

P.S. President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not run for re-election 53 years ago today, the last time a U.S. president has done so. The Times covered the news with a front-page banner headline.

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Trump as You’ve Never Seen Him Before

There is no shortage of merchandise in China devoted to the former president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. There are commemorative coins, toilet brushes and cat toys; countless figurines, including updated versions of Mount Rushmore, plus all those flags, bumper stickers and hats from campaigns past and future. (Does anyone still believe all that “Make America Great Again” stuff was really made in America?).

Enter the Trump Buddha.

A furniture maker and decorator in southern China has cast a sculpture of Mr. Trump in ceramic whiteware, his legs crossed and hands serenely resting in his lap. He is draped in a monk’s robes, his head is lowered and his eyes are closed, as if in meditative repose, an emotional state not typically associated with the 45th president of the United States.

The artist calls it “Trump, the Buddha of Knowing of the Western Paradise.”

“He has been already very successful, but now he is still tormenting himself, being obsessed, having a lot of ideas and doubts,” the creator, Hong Jinshi, said when asked about his inspiration.

Mr. Hong’s sculpture reflects an abiding cultural fascination with Mr. Trump in China that began with his election. Many admired his brash style, his family’s business ties to China and even his early courtship of China’s leader, Xi Jinping, whom he called “an incredible guy.”

appeared last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida, along with Mr. Trump himself.

It remains to be seen whether Mr. Trump’s legacy as artistic muse will be as enduring as, say, Mao Zedong’s. It may depend on Mr. Trump’s political future. Trump 2024 merchandise is already available online.

Mr. Hong considers the Trump Buddha a work in progress. He said the wrinkles on Mr. Trump’s lips are too deep, creating an effect incongruous with his vision. He said he has given no thought of creating a sculpture of Mr. Biden, though he is fascinated by another prominent American entrepreneur, Elon Musk.

He has set aside the first of 100 numbered pieces of the larger works for a particular patron. If possible, he said, he would like to give one to Mr. Trump.

“He has been very, very successful, so from a religious point of view, he should just let go at this time,” he said. “He should enjoy his life at this age.”

Claire Fu contributed research

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