wind

PARIS — There’s a present-day answer to the question that was posed in verse by the French medieval poet and street brawler François Villon: “Where are the snows of yesteryear?”

They’re right here, in high summer, on Paris’ oldest bridge, the Pont Neuf, where an enormous art installation, a trompe l’oeil inflatable snow-clad mountain range, has arisen over the river Seine.

Using about 200,000 square feet of printed fabric, Paris-born street artist JR has created “La Caverne du Pont Neuf.” It’s his version of and homage to the innovative work of groundbreaking environmental artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

They’re the fabled duo who first wrapped the arches of this same bridge in straw-colored fabric in 1985. Over the years, they also surrounded 11 islands in Florida’s Biscayne Bay with flamingo-pink cloth, hung saffron-colored fabric “gates” in New York’s Central Park, installed a “running fence” of billowing white material across nearly 25 miles of Sonoma and Marin counties and, in 1991, planted 3,100 yellow umbrellas, blooming like 20-foot-tall poppies, through the Tejon Pass north of L.A.

I interviewed Christo in 2011, and he was eloquent about how his and his wife’s work alters perceptions of nature, and about the deliberately transient character of the art itself. JR, an acolyte of their work, told me in an email that “an ephemeral artwork forces you to come now, and usually to come with other people. The visit becomes a shared moment … and this moment becomes a memory.”

In a city celebrated for artworks that have survived for centuries, this installation was very nearly too transient. A kooky hailstorm in late May, a heat wave in June, followed by ruthlessly ripping winds, delayed the opening by days. At last, beginning one midnight, the air pumps began and the work arose like a limestone-colored soufflé. It will be open around the clock until June 28.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Back in 1985, Christo’s engineer on the Pont Neuf project, Ted Dougherty, pointed out that above 25 mph, “wind is not our friend.”

The piece works from two vantage points: from afar — visible from a lot of central Paris — and also from inside it, in the “cave” part. Pedestrians crossing the bridge pass through a fabricated interior, a cavern-like space printed in 3D realism and enhanced with a specially designed scent to evoke the dank, earthy aroma of humankind’s early habitations.

JR and Thomas Bangalter in “La Caverne du Pont Neuf” in Paris.

(Tara-Jay Bangalter)

JR intended it to be both. “From the start I designed two works in one. There is the silhouette — what you catch from the quais, from the bridges, from a boat on the Seine or simply walking past on your way somewhere else. That image belongs to everyone, including the people who never chose to look at art that day.”

And then, he said, “there is the inside, which is slower and more intimate, almost in the dark, hard to photograph.” That aspect is “a journey to cross the bridge, to go from darkness to light.”

When Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the arches of the Pont Neuf more than 40 years ago, it took years of planning and permits to make it happen. “La Caverne du Pont Neuf” was a breeze by comparison.

JR, whose other vast outdoor works have delivered double-takes of humans’ scale and their architecture, told me that cities have come to understand “that public art brings people together and that the image travels around the world. Once Christo showed it could be done safely and beautifully, the conversation changed. It was much easier for me to have my project accepted, thanks to them. They also proved the economic positive impact to the cities they worked in. I believe there should be more large-scale, ambitious public art projects.”

It’s one thing to conceive of such a project and another altogether to make it happen — so much technology, compared to, say, mixing paints and choosing a paintbrush. But the science that “La Caverne” required “is the art, not an obstacle to it,” JR said.

“Trompe l’oeil turns adults back into children,” JR said.

(Elea Jeanne Schmitter)

All the canvas, the engineering, the meticulous assembly, the permits — “none of that is preparation for the work, it is the work. Christo taught me this. The process is visible, and even more after the storm we experienced a couple of days before opening to the public. Nature always reminds you who is in charge. When the wind tore the canvas before we opened, we took it down, re-sewed it, reinforced it,” all in full public view.

“Where I stay careful is in not letting the technology become the subject. The augmented reality by Snap’s AR Studio adds to the project, doesn’t take you away from it.”

That air should be JR’s vital collaborator — no complex and costly scaffolding for these magic mountains — is nothing new in Paris.

The first free flight of humans above the earth, on Nov. 21, 1783, sent aloft two men in a hot-air balloon crafted by the Montgolfier brothers from silk fancifully painted in blue and gold with figures of the zodiac. It wafted across Paris for about 25 minutes at about 3,000 feet. Ephemeral, yes — and unforgettable.

Artists and couturiers are fond of the whimsy of trompe l’oeil, the trick of the eye, the illusion of reality. I am a sucker for it, for fashion like that of clothing designer Elsa Schiaparelli. JR has used it often, as a massive-scale magical deception to make the Louvre Pyramid “disappear” into the old Louvre, and opening up an imaginary subterranean world below the Eiffel Tower.

“Trompe l’oeil turns adults back into children,” he told me. “You know it isn’t real, you know that ‘La Caverne du Pont-Neuf’ is not made of rock, that this is printed canvas. And yet your eye wants to believe it, and for a moment you let yourself. That gap between knowing and believing is where the play happens, and people love being inside that gap.”

Earth Wind & Fire’s “September,” with its nonsensical phrase “ba-dee-ya,” has been streamed more than 2.3 billion times on Spotify, more than the band’s next five songs combined (including “Let’s Groove,” “Boogie Wonderland” and “Shining Star”).

In his visually and sonically vibrant film “Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs. That’s the Weight of the World),” drummer, DJ and director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson (“Summer of Soul”) shows how the funky but aspirational band was much more than its biggest hit musically.

But he also explores, in depth, the complexities of the band’s central figure, Maurice White. A self-affirming visionary who wanted to bring hope to people, White mixed journaling with talk of spaceships and metaphysics. However, he was also traumatized by a childhood in which his mother moved to Chicago for more opportunities, leaving White in Memphis, where he was once brutally beaten by white policemen. Those scars created a man who was a distant father and equally remote with his band members at the peak, mistreating them with casual disdain until everything fell apart.

Questlove recently spoke by video call about the film, now streaming on HBO Max, which features interviews with family, surviving band members, childhood friend Booker T. Jones and a couple of fans named Barack and Michelle Obama. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What drew you to this story?

In 2020, I was DJing on the internet, live streaming and I was DJing to calm people down from thinking they’re going to die in the apocalypse. One day I did an Earth, Wind & Fire set and when I got to the fourth hour, I thought, “Yo, is this one of the most relentlessly positive groups of all time?”

I started researching the lyrics and realized this band tricked us into positivity, like getting us to eat our vegetables. I started wondering how a band like that got past the velvet rope and realized that none of it was by accident, it was all by design. Their music was so good and you start singing the lyrics and there’s an osmosis effect of positivity that gets you.

When I started this in 2023, I had a spooky feeling that the turmoil of 2020 was going to visit us again, so I thought people would want something to watch that will help them plant seeds of what to do.

Maurice White, the band’s central figure.

(Henry Diltz / HBO)

You save “September” to the end. Was it so people would see the band was more than their biggest hit or to send audiences off humming and happy?

It’s an unlikely legacy song. They have so many meaningful songs like “Shining Star,” while “September” is a leftover that was a filler song from a greatest hits album that became a career-defining song.

Initially, I was coming out the gate with “September,” just, “Let’s get this out the way.”

It took a while. Early on the Obamas weren’t part of the project. I interviewed them the morning after the 2024 elections; they were so professional and so in the moment and also helped us process the day.

We’d never gotten to see them sit next to each other and be playful and dance. And I didn’t say, “OK, let’s see how you move, dance for 12 seconds,” I was just playing something and they started dancing and the camera happened to be running.

But they put the song in context. In 2009, they said, “What’s the statement we want to make to America to show this is a new era at the White House?” And Earth, Wind & Fire was chosen to be one of the bands at the inauguration and it was that song. So my producer said, “Now we can treat ‘September’ like an encore.” We used that story to show how that song grew on its own organically.

White is a complicated guy. Was it challenging to balance everything in your narrative?

Oftentimes Black artists are seen as caricatures or one-dimensional. It’s easy to do the gotcha of “You’re so positive and metaphysical, what about this or that?” My goal is always to find a human element that you see yourself in. In Maurice’s case with his career, he did drink the Kool-Aid. But his personal life stemmed from not ever forgiving his mother for leaving him behind when he was little. When we hold anger and other emotions in, when we refuse to talk to our partners or friends — and you want people to read your minds — that’s when it becomes a problem. But I wanted to show that in a way where I don’t spell it all out. Hopefully people will make the connection of the importance of dreaming and planning and affirmations but also the importance of letting things go, like forgiving people.

PARIS — Russian teenager Mirra Andreeva was already a tennis phenom at age 15.

At 19, she’s a Grand Slam champion.

The eighth-ranked Andreeva ended the run of 114th-ranked Polish qualifier Maja Chwalinska by 6-3, 6-2 in the French Open final on Saturday.

Andreeva became the youngest player to win the women’s singles title since Monica Seles, who was 18 when she landed her third straight French Open in 1992.

“You’re so young and talented. It’s so annoying,” Chwalinska told Andreeva during the awards ceremony.

When Andreeva executed a backhand cross-court winner on her first match point, she threw her racket into the air and dropped on her knees to the clay to celebrate.

Mirra Andreeva returns a shot against Maja Chwalinska during the French Open women’s final on Saturday.

(Thibault Camus / Associated Press)

During the trophy presentation, Andreeva took the unusual step of thanking herself “for believing in myself, always giving my 100%, even when it’s tough, trying every day to be better as a person and as a player, believing that I can do this, fighting so many demons inside of me.

“Only I know how tough it was for me,” Andreeva added. “How nervous I was throughout these two weeks.”

Chwalinska was attempting to become the first qualifier to capture the Roland Garros title.

Andreeva was born in Siberia and moved to Sochi and eventually France to develop her tennis career.

She drew loud applause from the crowd on Court Philippe-Chatrier when she spoke a few words of French during the trophy presentation.

“Thanks for your support today and over these past two marvelous weeks here in Paris,” Andreeva said. “It was very important for me.”

Alexander Zverev plays Flavio Cobolli in the men’s final on Sunday to conclude the wildest Grand Slam in recent memory.

Andreeva has been considered a Grand Slam contender since she burst onto the scene as a 15-year-old at the 2023 Madrid Open, where she became the third-youngest player to win a main draw match at a WTA 1000 tournament and made the quarterfinals.

Lately, Andreeva has had to contend with playing under neutral status and without her country’s flag due to the war with Ukraine.

When she beat Marta Kostyuk in the semifinals, Kostyuk refused to shake her hand, as has been the custom for Ukrainian players facing Russians ever since the war started in 2022.

Andreeva has gone a step further than her coach, Conchita Martinez, who lost the 2000 French Open final to Mary Pierce.

Pierce presented the winner’s trophy to Andreeva.

The final was played under mostly sunny skies but wind was a factor in the first Grand Slam final for both players.

Chwalinska double-faulted on the opening point of the match but she was the first player to hold serve in the fifth game for a 3-2 lead.

But then Andreeva won nine straight games to take control as she found a way to hit through the wind and answer Chwalinska’s array of spins and drop shots.

Andreeva produced 25 winners to Chwalinska’s 10 and also had fewer unforced errors: 26 to 29.

There was a strong Polish presence in the crowd.

When Chwalinska was introduced, fans held aloft red-and-white Polish flags and chanted her name: “Ma-ja, Ma-ja.”

Andreeva had little support from the crowd, although there was a shout of “Davai Mirra!” (“Go Mirra”) in Russian late in the match.

In men’s doubles, top-seeded Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos retained their title with a 6-4, 6-2 win against Harri Heliovaara and Henry Patten.

Dampf writes for the Associated Press. Samuel Petrequin contributed to this report.

Nope, it’s not AI. It’s just a really big flag with bright lights, draped on Hoover Dam for the next several weeks.

As a display to mark the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence, the states of Nevada and Arizona and the federal Bureau of Reclamation teamed up to hang and illuminate an enormous American flag on the dam on Memorial Day.

The display, scheduled to be in place through July 4, is visible to anyone crossing between Arizona and Nevada on U.S. Route 93, which goes across the top of the dam. The flag is 150 feet tall and 300 feet long, spread on the south-facing side of the dam and lit by 550 LED lights (powered by dam-generated electricity).

A wider view of the illuminated U.S. flag at Hoover Dam.

(Michael Bittle)

It’s a spectacle that comes at a challenging moment for Hoover Dam, as experts warn that Lake Mead’s dwindling water levels could threaten the dam’s ability to generate hydropower. “Slap a flag on it, that’ll fix it,” suggested one of several Reddit commenters who were moved to snarkiness by the flag image.

The dam, a frequent day-trip destination from Las Vegas, stands 35 miles east of the Las Vegas Strip, about 295 miles northeast of Los Angeles. The site features a visitor center and overlook, and guided and self-guided tours.

Installation of the display involved dozens of riggers and two cranes. The flag, which is roughly the dimensions of a football field, has been previously used for celebrations at Indianapolis Colts and Las Vegas Raiders football games.

Within two days after it was hung, gusts of wind up to 50 mph prompted organizers to lower the flag last Wednesday as the National Weather Service declared a wind advisory for the area. Organizers raised the flag again late Friday.

Strong winds are not uncommon in the area. Organizers said weather “may periodically require the flag to be temporarily lowered.” Updates on the flag’s status can be found on the Hoover Dam Facebook page.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority paid for the display. A spokeswoman said the cost, including flag, production, installation costs and six weeks of lighting, will be between $750,000 and $1 million.

The dam, a five-year construction job that was completed in 1936 during the depths of the Great Depression, is often hailed as one of the nation’s most impressive works of infrastructure. Though this is not the first time a flag has been draped on it, organizers have called the display “the most ambitious long-duration installation ever attempted at Hoover Dam.”

Picking the wildest fantasy promoted by President Trump as a basis for public policy is increasingly challenging — is it his yarn about schoolchildren being secretly abducted from their classrooms and given sex-changing operations? The notion that the vaccines given to children are like “a vat, like a big glass, of stuff pumped into their bodies?”

Here’s one that has disrupted the economics of renewable energy generation and will cost Americans billions of dollars: It’s Trump’s “completely weird war on wind power in the United States,” based on a sheaf of “fact-free arguments.”

That judgment comes from Steven Cohen, a climate policy expert at Columbia University, who points out that wind already accounts for 10.5% of U.S. energy generation, that it’s destined to continue growing — and that most of it is generated today in red states such as Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa and Kansas.

There is no question that Trump’s weird war against wind is full blown. On the day of his second inauguration, he issued an executive order shutting down all new permits for offshore wind farms and ordered the Interior Department to review existing permits.

A federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the executive order in December, and his orders suspending work on existing offshore wind projects have been halted by other federal judges. The Trump administration has blocked or delayed as many as 165 wind projects on private land, citing “national security” concerns, according to the American Clean Power Assn.

Most recently, Trump has reached agreements with offshore wind firms in which the government will pay them a combined $2 billion to abandon their U.S. projects.

At some level, this crusade resembles Trump’s misguided effort to revive the American coal industry, which is on the glide path to inevitable extinction. In that case, Trump is waging an explicitly partisan and ideological battle. “We’re ending Joe Biden’s war on beautiful, clean coal,” he declared last April.

Trump’s anti-wind program is part of his campaign to dismantle U.S. renewables policy because of its roots in the Biden administration.

Additionally, multiple commentators conjecture that his hostility to wind originated in 2011, when he groused that an offshore wind farm would be visible from one of his golf courses in Scotland. He sued to thwart the “ugly” project, and lost.

But Trump has mustered other arguments against wind, on- and offshore, none of which holds water.

During a cabinet meeting in July 2025, he called wind “a very expensive form of energy.” In fact, on average it’s cheaper than natural gas, coal and nuclear generation. Perhaps more important, the cost has been coming down sharply as technology improves and the sector reaches critical mass: falling to eight cents from 21 cents per kilowatt-hour from 2010 to 2024 for offshore projects, and to 3.4 cents from 11.3 cents for land-based wind farms over the same period.

Trump blamed wind turbines for mass killing whales and birds. Neither assertion is correct.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a federal agency, says “there are no known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind activities.”

The Audubon Society reported in January that although wind turbines can present hazards to birds, “developers can effectively manage these risks without significantly increasing project costs.” The biggest risks to birds come from the climate: “Two-thirds of North American birds are at increasing risk of extinction from global temperature rise,” the society reported — a threat that wind power can ameliorate.

Trump spokeswoman Taylor Rogers didn’t respond to my questions about the derivation of his anti-wind stance, but told me by email only that “President Trump has been clear: hard-earned taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be wasted on unreliable and costly wind farms that pose serious threats to our national security. Instead, we should be strengthening and expanding our infrastructure that produces reliable, affordable, and secure energy like natural gas plants.”

That brings us to the recent deals with offshore wind developers. The largest single deal, signed in March, was with the French firm TotalEnergies, which is to receive approximately $1 billion from the federal government to abandon all of its U.S. offshore wind projects and invest instead in oil and gas projects, including a liquefied natural gas export facility in Texas.

In his March 23 announcement of the deal, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum called offshore wind “one of the most expensive, unreliable, environmentally disruptive, and subsidy-dependent schemes ever forced on American ratepayers and taxpayers.”

This is what Huck Finn would call a “stretcher,” given the decades of subsidies spooned out to the oil and gas industry, reaching more than $30 billion a year in federal and state tax credits, indulgent regulation of pollution and low-cost access to federal lands. Indeed, the investment firm Lazard recently reported that renewables, including wind, are a cost-competitive form of generation even without subsidies. (Lazard’s calculation is of the “levelized cost of energy,” meaning the average cost over a generating plant’s lifetime.)

TotalEnergies fell into lockstep with the Interior Department in its own announcement, explaining its willingness to renounce U.S. offshore wind power because “offshore wind developments in the United States, unlike those in Europe, are costly,” echoing the agency’s position that “the development of offshore wind projects is not in the country’s interest.” Never mind that one factor that makes U.S. offshore wind development costly compared with Europe is the Trump administration’s opposition.

The government subsequently reached an agreement to pay the French company Ocean Winds $885 million to walk away from two offshore wind projects, including one in the waters off California. Ocean Winds described the deal as one driven chiefly by economics, but hinted at pressure from the White House.

“We welcome the opportunity to engage constructively with the administration on this agreement and acknowledge the clarity they have provided with this decision and deal,” Michael Brown, the chief executive of Ocean Winds North America, said when the deal was announced last month. “Our priority remains disciplined capital allocation and delivering reliable energy solutions that create long-term value for ratepayers, partners, and shareholders.”

The TotalEnergies deal, which the government has described as a “refund” of money the firm paid for its offshore leades, raised the hackles of congressional Democrats, who assert that it violates the law and constitution in multiple ways.

“We will hold you accountable for this billion-dollar ripoff,” Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee and Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), ranking member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, warned TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné in an April 29 letter.

Among other infirmities Raskin and Huffman alleged, the government’s national security rationale for canceling offshore wind leases looks “fabricated”; the payout violates the statutory formula for compensation for canceled leases; the money is to come from a fund designed only to pay court-ordered judgments and settlements of lawsuits, which don’t exist in this case; and includes a provision preventing the deal from being reviewed by a court.

The last of those provisions would have to be authorized by Congress, the letter states, asking for documents and a response from the company by Wednesday. Committee spokespersons weren’t available to say whether they received a response from TotalEnergies, and the company didn’t respond to my request for comment. I received no response from the Department of the Interior.

The California Energy Commission has opened an investigation into the Ocean Winds deal.

“The Trump Administration is recklessly spending billions of taxpayer dollars on backroom deals that would turn back the clock on innovation” CEC Chair David Hochschild said. “Taxpayer dollars should be used to build a sustainable energy future, not to pay to make projects disappear.”

What’s especially wasteful about Trump’s crusade against wind power is that it’s almost certain to be time-limited.

It’s hardly debatable that renewables such as solar and wind will be our principal sources of energy in the future; holding back the clock achieves nothing but injecting uncertainty into investment decisions that need to be made now, at a time when the price of oil is on the upswing thanks to Trump’s Iran adventure and Europe and China are racing to transition away from fossil fuels, while the U.S. remains becalmed by ideology.

“In the long run, fossil fuels will be used for petrochemicals and not for burning,” Cohen told me. “Fifty years from now, people are going to be amazed that we burned these rare, useful hydrocarbons for fuel, when the sun was just sitting up there providing an essentially infinite source of energy.”

Lainey Wilson didn’t seem too worried about the high winds that temporarily shut down Stagecoach on Saturday night.

Headlining the festival’s main stage after an hour-long delay — during which fans were ordered to evacuate Indio’s Empire Polo Club before being allowed back in — Wilson looked out at the crowd in front of her and said of the unplanned break: “I hope y’all sat in your cars and drank some tequila.”

Lainey Wilson performs.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

The whoops across the field suggested that might’ve been what happened.

Only the third woman to headline Stagecoach in the past five years, Wilson offered a tight, punchy showcase of the riff-heavy country-rock that’s made her one of Nashville’s biggest stars (after a decade-long come-up in which she’s said she lived in a camper trailer).

“Can’t Sit Still” and “Wildflowers and Wild Horses” were swaggering and Stones-y; “Country’s Cool Again” rode a funky down-home groove. To fill the big stage — it evoked a kind of desert oasis with a glittering horseshoe and a couple of prop cacti — Wilson brought along a horn section and background singers who turned “Dreamcatcher” into a psychedelic roots-soul fantasia.

Not long into the show, Wilson welcomed Little Big Town and Riley Green for an appealingly sloppy rendition — complete with drinks in plastic cups — of Merle Haggard’s “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink.” Then she let Green, whose scheduled performance was scotched because of the wind, stick around to do his “I Wish Grandpas Never Died.” (Also called off Saturday was Journey’s set on the Mustang stage.)

Wilson’s only other guest was the little girl she ushered onstage and pronounced “cowgirl of the night” during “Things a Man Oughta Know.” After that came the singer’s dreamiest hit, “Somewhere Over Laredo,” and an especially sultry take on “Watermelon Moonshine,” the nostalgia-drunk love song from 2023 that’s probably still her finest moment.

Lainey Wilson performs.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)