Hasta La Gadget!

Written in 1985, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale has never been out of print. So to call renewed interested in the beloved dystopian story a “resurgence” might be disingenuous ― the book’s popularity was never in question. 

Nonetheless, as President Donald Trump has ascended to the highest public office and policymakers have suggested revoking basic women’s rights, the story of Gilead ― a militant and theocratic future-version of the United States reliant on a group of sexually enslaved handmaids to repopulate its dwindling republic ― evokes a different kind of urgency.

Perhaps that’s why the new Hulu adaptation of the book, starring Elisabeth Moss, is stirring up enough political parallels that people are clamoring to buy, borrow or read by whatever means necessary Atwood’s original source material. (Even high school teachers are using the book to talk about America today.)

Thanks to a public artwork in New York City, anyone trying to get their hands on the book can do so free of charge. A massive installation on Chelsea’s elevated park, the High Line, designed by graphic artists Paula Scher and Abbott Miller, houses 4,000 complimentary copies of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Yes, passersby can simply take a book from the massive installation, no charge whatsoever, and return home with a free novel that warns of a dictatorial future.

By removing the books from the wall, participants will reveal “messages of female empowerment and anti-authoritarian resistance,” including the novel’s central battle cry: “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum,” or “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

“The Handmaid’s Tale provides a chilling reminder of how easily the darkest currents of repression can re-surface,” the artists expressed in a statement. “The installation we designed shows how these dark messages are often accompanied by bombastic language and imagery: spectacle becomes a form of persuasion. Cracks in the floorboards reveal empowering texts, glimpses of resistance for an uncertain age.”

The glorified public bookshelf, flanked by stunning images of the handmaids from the book and show, will be open through April 30, near the High Line’s 16th Street entrance. The Hulu series, for those who’ve yet to binge on its first three episodes, began streaming on April 26.

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KILIFI COUNTY, Kenya ― Each morning before the heat rises, Kanze Kahindi sets out from her one-room hut near the village of Changojeni for a six-mile walk to the nearest small river. She returns eight hours later, balancing a yellow 5-gallon jerrycan of water on her head. Her chest and legs ache when she finally deposits the 42-pound container in her home, but there’s barely time to rest. Soon she’ll be cleaning and cooking food for her eight children.

While men in communities like Kahindi’s till land and care for livestock, women and girls arguably have the most important responsibility when it comes to their family’s survival: fetching water to use for daily drinking, cooking, cleaning and irrigation.

Changojeni is one of the driest villages in Kilifi County, in southeast Kenya. But water scarcity is a major problem in the entire area. Though the Galana River, connected to the Indian Ocean, flows through the county, many villages are too far away to access its water, and they’re largely shut off from modern conveniences like pipelines. Water collected from open sources, like dams and rivers, is often polluted.

Kilifi County’s situation isn’t unique. Although Kenya is one of Africa’s more developed nations, only 63 percent of its citizens live in areas where water can be accessed nearby, according to World Bank statistics. On average, Kenyans must walk about six miles a day to collect water.

Water has only become more scarce as the region struggles with a crippling drought. In villages like Kahindi’s, it hasn’t rained in almost two years. Many of Kilifi’s natural water sources are drying up. The drought has left about 2.6 million people in urgent need of clean water.

The international nongovernmental organization WorldVision began working with Kilifi County on water accessibility in 2008. They completed six boreholes and a 52-mile pipeline that delivers water from storage tanks and from the river straight to communities. They’re in the process of constructing more boreholes and another pipeline.

The project is yet another reminder of just how significantly water access can affect the daily lives of women and girls.

“The time gained is going to be used for other activities, like education,” said Thomas Makanga, Kilifi County’s director of water affairs. “The girl child who has been used to collect water now is going to have time for her own studies. Also, this water [will allow us to] have some small gardens, many vegetables. This type of activity is going to alleviate the economy. It’s going to change the livelihood of this place.”

HuffPost recently visited Kilifi County and spoke with women of all ages about their relationships with water ― how the lack of it has affected their lives, and how improved access could change the lives they’ve envisioned for themselves and their children. Their stories have been condensed and edited for clarity.

Gladys Mapenze, 26

When Mapenze was a girl, there was no such thing as immediate access to clean water in her village, Kibaoni. In 2012, when Kilifi County and WorldVision began working on the pipeline, Kibaoni applied for the construction of a water point ― a tap where water is sold for two Kenyan shillings, or about 2 cents, per 20 liters.

Since its construction, the water point has been supplying 1,500 people across three villages. The women of Kibaoni no longer spend hours fetching water. Instead, they take turns manning the water point, Mapenze explained. They were trained in how to read its meter and manage its finances.

“We started selling water, accumulating profits. Our account started becoming fatter and fatter,” Mapenze laughed. “Now we’re able to use that money to offer small loans to help with your household, your children’s education ― any need that arises.”

The newfound water also allowed Mapenze and 19 other women to launch a tree nursery project. The group cultivates fruit and nut trees like eucalyptus, mangoes, passion fruit, and cashews, and sells the saplings to community members.

Pauline Kadzo Kahindi, 55

Kahindi is a resident of Changoto, a village with no water source. She lamented the particular physical and developmental issues that women face when they lack access to water. For example, no water means no local hospitals or health centers. 

“We are the ones taking care of babies,” she said. “When babies get sick, we carry the babies on our backs to the same place we fetch water to get health care for the babies.”

In addition to child care, women are responsible for cleaning and cooking, she said. That requires a lot of water.

Richer families are sometimes able to pay someone 100 shillings, or 10 cents, to fetch water on their behalf and deliver it on a motorbike, Kahindi explained.

But for her, “it’s very difficult to get that 100 shillings.”

It hasn’t rained in Changoto in almost two years, and the absence of water is threatening her children’s education.

“From our home to the school, the children walk two hours,” she said. “We have to wake up very early and get them on the road so they can be in school on time.”

But with the drought stretching on and on, they now have to choose between going to school and fetching water.

Alako Bashora, 70

Bashora, a mother of 15, said she has lived in the village of Chamari her entire life. As a young girl, she used to walk to a town 25 miles away to collect water.

“I would go, fetch water there, do some household chores like washing my clothes, and come back the next day,” she said. “I’d actually take two days.”

With water collection taking up so much of her time, Bashora never went to school. If she could do it all again, Bashora said, she would live somewhere with water nearby so she’d be able to pursue an education. “My passion would have been learning medicine so I could have assisted other women in giving birth, instead of women being assisted by men in giving birth,” she said.

As of this month, Chamari has its own direct source of water. But the project was years in the making. The county government and WorldVision drilled a plot for a borehole a few years ago, but the water yield was too low to be able to pump much out of the earth. They started again from scratch, looking for a better location. The project was finally completed in early April, to the joy of Chamari’s villagers.

Bashora sat and watched as the borehole spat water. She’d never seen water emerge from the ground like that.

“I felt as if that water was being poured on my soul,” Bashora told HuffPost. “My soul was getting watered. It felt like a tree that had lost hope being rejuvenated.”

The first thing she planned to do once she fetched water, she said, was to wash herself and her clothes, and then cook a meal for her family.

Want to help? Support organizations like World Vision, UNICEF, the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and other humanitarian organizations working to save lives in the East African nations ravaged by drought.

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A children’s clothing line is encouraging kids to develop a social awareness that leads to action. 

In January, Kim Lieb and Tia Clarida launched Little Activists, a socially conscious kid’s apparel company. Little Activists features clothes with empowering messages about love and tolerance for infants, toddlers and kids. 

The company’s founders drew inspiration for the project from their children. Clarida has a 6-year-old-son named Ryder, while Lieb has have 2-year old twins ― a boy named Sam and girl named Charlie. 

“As with most moms, when we had kids, our lives and views of the world changed drastically. Seeing the innocence in our small children, we realized that the hate and discrimination that plagues our world today is a learned behavior,” Lieb told HuffPost.

“We wanted to flip that on its head and teach our kids from an early age the power of love and to realize that we share this world equally,” she added. “We would all achieve so much more if we broke down those negative barriers at an early age.”

Clarida and Lieb have both worked in marketing for years and often discussed how they could parlay their professional experience and personal journeys as moms into making a positive impact on the world. Always looking for awesome shirts for her son, Clarida had an epiphany in the middle of the night last year ― “to create cool, fun T-shirts that talked about modern day issues from a place of love and positivity.”

She and Lieb started working on a business plan for Little Activists the next day. They did a soft launch over the summer to get feedback from friends and family and officially opened shop in January.

Some of their most important customers are their kids. Clarida said Ryder loves loves their baseball shirts with anti-bullying and environmental protection messages. “It’s helped us talk about the ‘why; behind protecting the environment and being kind to animals and others,” the mom said.

Lieb’s children are only toddlers, but she’s dedicated to empowering them to make good choices and show love to all. “Every night before Sam and Charlie go to bed, they tells us that they are ‘brave, smart, strong and kind’ and we are now able to put that in context by citing examples ― often times from the shirt they wore that day,” she said.

In conjunction with the brand, Clarida and Lieb also launched a charitable giving program called Project aWEARness. Through this initiative, they raise awareness and funds for different social causes by working with nonprofit organizations to develop products.

“Our creative team works with each customer to design a shirt based on their specific input; then we build an online boutique that features the product and an overview of the fundraiser’s mission,” Lieb told HuffPost. “We then provide the customer with a shareable link that they can use to promote the shirt sale to their network. After 30 days, Little Activists will fulfill the orders and donate 100 percent of the proceeds directly to the cause.”

They’ve already partnered with actress Megan Boone of “The Blacklist” to promote her onesie brand, Caroline Agnes ― the proceeds of which go entirely to the environmental organization, Earth Justice.

Additionally, Lieb and Clarida have plans to expand Little Activists with an accessories line, a line of products for teens and partnerships with retailers. 

Ultimately, the two founders want their company to help make the world a kinder, more inclusive place.

They also want to teach children that they have a voice, which they can use to stand up for what they believe ― whether it’s rescuing animals, recycling or standing up to bullies. 

Said Lieb, “They are little billboards of love, and there is something for everyone!” 

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Hearts are breaking across Riverdale High today. 

The CW series “Riverdale” is saying goodbye to actor Ross Butler, who plays Archie’s nemesis Reggie on the show. Butler, who recently shot to fame for his roles on “Riverdale” and Netflix’s “13 Reasons Why,” is apparently too busy to continue playing Reggie in Season 2.

“We love what Ross did with the role of Reggie [this season], but because of his commitments to other projects, we couldn’t use him nearly as much as we would have liked,” series creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa told TVLine.

Don’t fret, “Riverdale” fans. You’ll still get your Reggie fix next season. The show’s creators are just planning to recast the role.

“[Next season], we want more Reggie on our show — he’s Archie’s rival! — and because Ross is unavailable to come back to ‘Riverdale,’ we’re looking for a new Reggie,” Aguirre-Sacasa said.

“Those are big shoes to fill, but we’re confident we can find an actor who is as funny and sexy as Ross,” Aguirre-Sacasa added. “And of course we all wish Ross the best.”

We may be jumping to conclusions here, but could one of Butler’s “other projects” be a second season of “13 Reasons Why?” Hey, a girl can dream. 

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<span class="articleLocation”>A bill expected this week in the U.S. House of Representatives would weaken a Food and Drug Administration rule governing e-cigarettes and represent a major victory for the $4.4 billion U.S. vaping industry.

The bill, from Republican Representative Duncan Hunter of California, would reverse the Obama administration’s “Deeming Rule” which deems e-cigarettes to be tobacco products, subject to the same strict regulations governing traditional cigarettes. E-cigarettes heat nicotine-laced liquid into vapor but do not contain tobacco.

Hunter’s bill, which was reviewed by Reuters, would exempt vaping devices from many of those rules, including a requirement that new products be reviewed and authorized by the FDA before being sold. E-cigarette makers say the process is too expensive and would prevent smokers from gaining access to the products.

The bill adds momentum to a series of legal and legislative efforts by tobacco and vaping companies to derail the FDA rule, though it is unclear how much support it will garner.

The move comes as President Donald Trump’s administration is cutting regulations across the board and as Congress is poised to confirm Dr. Scott Gottlieb to lead the FDA. Gottlieb, who held a financial interest in the vape shop Kure, said e-cigarettes in certain circumstances may be a good alternative for smokers.

A separate plan from Republican Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma and Democrat Sanford Bishop of Georgia would exempt thousands of vaping devices currently on the market from FDA approval. The Cole-Bishop proposal is expected to be attached as a rider to Trump’s spending plan, which could be voted on as early as this week.

Hunter’s bill would go further, bringing the entire regulatory process to a halt.

“Cole-Bishop is like gaining the inch, and Hunter’s legislation the yard,” said Joe Kasper, Hunter’s chief of staff.

The FDA rule, which went into effect on Aug. 8, requires that any product introduced after Feb. 15, 2007, be submitted to the FDA for review within two years. Products that were on the market prior to that date are grandfathered and do not require premarket authorization.

The FDA said it does not comment on proposed or pending legislation.

Big tobacco companies such as Altria Group Inc and Reynolds American Inc see vaping products as a promising business line and have lobbied alongside their smaller e-cigarette counterparts against the rule.

“We believe that regulation should promote innovation of potentially less risky tobacco products,” said David Sutton, a spokesman for Altria.

To that end Hunter’s bill would formally incorporate the concept of harm reduction into the FDA’s mission by requiring it to support less-dangerous nicotine delivery products. Those philosophically in favor of harm reduction argue that by promoting products considered less harmful than cigarettes, the overall public health will benefit.

Opponents fear that e-cigarettes are dangerous products that could be used by tobacco companies to addict a new generation of children to nicotine, and, they fear, to cigarettes.

“While we’re always going to have some concerns about kids accessing either cigarettes or vaping pens, that should not motivate the federal government to go in the complete opposite direction and say nobody can have them,” Kasper said. 

(Reporting by Toni Clarke in Washington and Jilian Mincer in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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