内容摘要：“When you are left with nothing, you start thinking ‘I don’t want to go through anything like this again,’” Ellie Holden said.

“When you are left with nothing, you start thinking ‘I don’t want to go through anything like this again,’” Ellie Holden said.

Sri Wahyuni sits in the raised wooden doorframe, watching as fellow villagers occasionally pass by on the raised wooden platform above the water. Her terrace, already elevated by layers of concrete, is under about four inches of water.Wahyuni and her husband Jaka Sadewa moved to the village after they got married in 2018. She says that when they moved here the water wasn’t like this; You could still ride motorcycles along the main road through the village, and the water level always went back down to normal.

But as time went by, Wahyuni noticed that the water often did not recede, resulting in more flooded days for their home. They decided to do what they could to elevate their home above the water — adding layers of concrete at first, eventually building a permanent wooden level above the water. Despite this, the water still comes into the house occasionally. Still, if they hadn’t raised the house, they’d be neck-deep in water, says Wayuni.Their 3-year-old son Bima sits in Sadewa’s lap. While Wahyuni, who grew up in the village, remembers playing in rice fields, watching adults harvest corn and seeing snakes glide through the grass, her son Bima won’t have the same experiences in the village. She says he will have to adjust, but she also hopes he has the opportunity to live elsewhere by the time he he grows up.“I’m worried that every year the water will get higher. But we don’t have any resources,” she says. “If we had resources, we would move out.”

Kumaison stands on the pathway leading to her house in a flooded neighborhood in Timbulsloko, Central Java, Indonesia, Saturday, July 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara)Kumaison stands on the pathway leading to her house in a flooded neighborhood in Timbulsloko, Central Java, Indonesia, Saturday, July 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara)

Kumaison remembers the time she cried when a bad flood washed away the 400,000 Indonesian rupiah (US$27) she had been saving. Other items, like clothes and furniture, could be cleaned and repaired. But the money was gone forever.

Growing up in the village as a young girl, Kumaison says she remembers her neighbors’ rice fields and shrimp ponds as a thriving business.Novelist John Banville poses in front of Tiziano’s ‘The Emperor Charles V at Muhlberg’ at the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Paul White)

Novelist John Banville poses in front of Tiziano’s ‘The Emperor Charles V at Muhlberg’ at the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Paul White)The painting — a paragon of Baroque sophistication — has fascinated generations of artists. Banville, with his love of poetic detail, is no different.

“I find that ‘Las Meninas’ is always a surprise to me, and a challenge,” Banville told The Associated Press during a recent stroll through the Prado.“It’s the enigma of it, the strangeness of it. Every time I look at it, it becomes stranger again,” he said, surrounded by throngs of museumgoers. “Velázquez looks at you, saying, ‘Look what I did. Would you have been able to do anything like this?’”