Lao-language The Rocket at Northland Public Library, August 13.

Australian Lao-language film The Rocket will play at Northland Public Library on August 13. It's this month's selection in the Foreign Film Series. It was one of four films to open the 2013 Three Rivers Film Festival last fall.

The Akha people of Laos believe that giving birth to twins is bad luck. The main character’s twin is stillborn and it is believed that he will bring bad luck to everyone around him. Ten years later, the family gets word that their village will soon be under water due to a Dam project. After calamity-filled adventures, he tries to prove that he’s not bad luck by building a giant rocket to enter into an exciting and dangerous competition, the Rocket Festival. This film has won 25 awards and has been nominated for 20 others.

The movie starts at 1:30 pm, and is in Lao with English subtitles. Northland Public Library is located in McCandless Township in the North Hills (map).

I Live in Fear (生きものの記録), Hiroshima-Nagasaki Legacy Exhibit, Shibori Peace Quilt, and remembering the "miracle of terror".

A reminder, the 1955 Akira Kurosawa film I Live in Fear (生きものの記録) will play at the Melwood Screening Room (map) in Oakland on August 5. The film is co-sponsored by Remembering Hiroshima, Imagining Peace as a commemoration of the 69th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the 6:00 pm screening is followed by an 8:00 pm Skype interview with Japanese students.

Remembering Hiroshima, Imagining Peace has again this year planned other activities around the commemoration. From August 4 through 15, Hiroshima-Nagasaki Legacy Exhibit will be on display at the City-County Building downtown. The exhibit "consists of photographs, graphics, poetry, and artwork" and is co-sponsored by Veterans for Peace.

From August 5 through 10, the Pittsburgh Children's Museum will host the Shibori Peace Quilt Project. From 12 to 3 each day, visitors are invited to dye small pieces of cloth in the Japanese shibori style. These pieces will then be woven into a quilt to be presented to representatives from Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 2015. The museum's website has a bit more:

Today, there are Museums of Peace in both cities where people can go and learn about the bombs, feel sad together, and forgive each other for the war. One of the things that makes things stop hurting so much is when people who remember what happened teach their children about how painful war is, and how poisonous bombs are. Another thing that helps is to make something beautiful to share.

Please join the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh and Remembering Hiroshima, Imagining Peace to make a Shibori memorial honoring those who were hurt in World War II, and their children and grandchildren who have been healing and rebuilding their communities ever since.

The Pittsburgh Children's Museum is located on the North Side (map).



Also on the North Side, along the Northshore Heritage Trail, is a permanent memorial to the victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A marker at Frederick Franck's "The Unkillable Human" reads:

At Hiroshima Franck was confronted with the shadow of a human being burned into a concrete wall by the atomic bomb.

The indestructible spirit rises from the ashes.

At the time of 2012's post on the memorial and contemporary coverage on "the miracle of terror", the Shadow Project had placed bungee cord outlines of bodies, seen above, replicating similar memorials that turn up this time of year. The sculpture by Franck is located basically across the street from Warhola Recycling on Chesboro St. (map).

Asian Garden coming to North Fayette.

A bridge at one end of a pond that comprises the Asian garden; from the Pittsburgh Botanic Garden's Facebook page.

On Friday the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review wrote about the Pittsburgh Botanic Garden, opening on August 1, which will include an Asian garden as one of its five Woodlands areas.

The 60-acre Woodlands section that will open next week features five areas: a Cove Forest, an Asian Garden, European and English woodlands and an Appalachian Plateau. Cove forests are unique to the Appalachians and lie in small valleys closed at one or both ends.

A master plan posted in February says the contents of the Asian Woods will include: Lotus Pond and Teahouse; Stream & Primrose Garden; Bench Garden; Azalea Bowl; and Maple Trail and Rustic Shelter. It will abut a Rock and Gravel Garden.

The Pittsburgh Botanic Garden is located at 798 Pinkerton Run Rd. in Oakdale (map). It's open Thursday through Sunday from 9 to 5 from August through November, and until dusk on Saturdays. General admission tickets are $9 for adults and $8 for students and seniors.

First rendition of Sichuan University-Pittsburgh Institute.

Last week the University of Pittsburgh put that artist's rendition of Sichuan University-Pittsburgh Institute on its website. The institute at Sichuan University's Jiang'an campus is set to open in Fall 2015 with an initial enrollment of 100 undergraduates across three majors, though a University of Pittsburgh press release says the enrollment is projected to reach 1,600. Ground was broken for the institute on July 2.

학원 in Pittsburgh? Murrysville man starts SAT academy based on South Korean models.

Yesterday's Tribune-Review profiled Jesse Lee, who started mySchooler Academy and Education Consulting after being dissatisfied with options for preparing his own son for the SATs:

Lee moved to the United States from South Korea in 2000, earning a master's degree in information science from Carnegie Mellon University.

“A couple years ago I thought about it, that I just needed (to provide) that for college preparation,” said Lee, 46, who lives in Murrysville with his wife, Kyung, and son Jay, a junior at Penn-Trafford High School. “Originally we started this year in January: Saturday classes started at that point and then we just expanded them. Our students just needed more, so we set up doing a summer schedule for them.”

Talk with author of Love Beyond Measure: Memoir of a Korean War Bride, July 29.

On July 29, the South Butler Community Library will host author Katie Schell to discuss her 2013 book Love Beyond Measure: Memoir of a Korean War Bride:

Encounter a breathtaking story about one of the first Korean women to ever live in Moon Township, PA. This memoir details the amazing life of her mother Ock Soon Lee’s journey as a young Korean peasant who survived unspeakable suffering. Orphaned at age seven and farmed out to households as a slave, Lee experienced near-starvation and capture by the North Korean Army. Yet, incredibly she survived and fell in love with an American G.I. from McKees Rocks. After immigration laws changed in the late 1950’s she became one of a small handful of Korean War brides to make it to the United States. This is a true story of incredible courage that carried Ock Soon Lee from life as a peasant in Korea to that of a proud American. It is a story of strength and love during the Korean War. It is a story you will never forget.

Japan-America Society of Pennsylvania's Picnic with Iwate Prefecture Teenagers, August 7.

The Japan-America Society of Pennsylvania (based in Pittsburgh) has announced an August 7 picnic with a group of six teenagers from Iwate Prefecture. From the JASP event listing:

Come and join us Thursday, August 7th, 2014 at 6 p.m. for a picnic in Schenley Park. We will be picnicking with six teenagers from Iwate Prefecture who were affected by the tsunami earthquake in 2011. These children are visiting Pittsburgh courtesy of UK-based The PINE Foundation, and were selected on the basis of their stellar participation in extracurricular English-learning activities by the Children’s Empowerment Iwate Charity (http://www.epatch.jp/). This picnic is a great opportunity to help them gain more knowledge of U.S. culture and give them positive thoughts of the world after they suffered from huge trauma in the tsunami earthquake.

Meats and beverages will be provided by The PINE Foundation. Please bring a side dish to share, as well as any picnic chairs you may have.

Registration is required by July 31, and can be done so online or by calling a number provided at the link. The picnic will be held at Westinghouse Shelter (map).

Korean-style fried chicken place Chick'n Bubbly to soft-open in Oakland Monday, July 28.

Chick'n Bubbly announced today, during its free sample giveaway, that it will have a soft opening on Monday, July 28. Chick'n Bubbly is a Korean-style fried-chicken place at 117 Oakland Ave. (map), next to Oishii Bento---routinely voted the best local Korean and Japanese restaurants by Pitt News readers---with whom it shares owners. We scanned a menu below:

Free samples of Chick'n Bubbly on July 25.

Chick'n Bubbly announced on Facebook a little before noon that it would offer free samples of its Korean-style fried chicken from 12:30.



Chick'n Bubbly is under construction at 117 Oakland Ave. (map), and will be Pittsburgh's first Korean fried chicken place.

Pittsburgh-based papercutting artist Bovey Lee in the news this week.

Vase I (detail 2), via her website.

This week a couple of blogs (1, 2) have profiled Hong Kong native and Pittsburgh-based papercutting artist Bovey Lee. An excerpt from her artistic statement:

My narrative-based cut paper explores the tension between man and the environment in the context of power, sacrifice, and survival. These three “motivators,” as I call them, drive all our desires and behaviors toward one another and the environment. We live in a time when we overdo everything from technology to urbanization to consumption. My recent work is informed by our precarious relationship with nature in the twenty-first century, i.e., what we do to the environment with our super machines and technologies and what nature does back to us in reaction.

I hand cut each work on a single sheet of Chinese xuan (rice) paper backed with silk and both are renewable and eco-friendly materials.