065° BEL BIGUINE LA - selected by Les Mains Noires

"At last! At last a new French West Indies compilation! And not the least! We are very happy and quite proud to present 'Bel Biguine La', a special selection focusing on rare early Biguine dirty recordings from Guadeloupe and Martinique from late 50s and 60s! 12 rare tracks accompanied by liner notes about the songs, the musicians and the incredible Disques Emeraude, very first record label to record Guadeloupian music in Guadeloupe and run by Robert Mavounzy’s brother, Marcel Mavounzy. ... Until the early 50s, all the creole records were produced and recorded in Paris by majors like Columbia, Pathé-Marconi, Odeon, etc. The musicians were, between others, Sam Castendet, Eugène Delouche, Alexandre Stellio, Al Lirvat. Honoré Coppet track and the other from his brother Barrel Coppet are perfect example of those metropolitan recordings even if they are from late 50s and early 60s. ..."
les mains noires (Audio)
mixcloud (Audio)

Pen + Brush 120th

"Pen + Brush was founded in 1894 as a private club for women artists and writers. This makes it older than any other professional women’s organization in the United States as well as most New York art institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney. The Pen and Brush Club, as it was then called, was legally incorporated in 1912, eight years before women gained the right to vote. The famous muckraker Ida Tarbell served as its president for 30 years (1913–1943), and early honorary members included two first ladies (Eleanor Roosevelt and Edith Wilson) and the Nobel prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck. The club was headquartered in a grand 19th century brownstone on 10th Street that was a hub for distinguished professional women. ..."
Brooklyn Rail
Pen + Brush
W - Salmagundi Club
NYC-ARTS: Profile: Pen + Brush (Video)

Valentine’s Day Party at the Pen and Brush Club, 1932. Courtesy Pen + Brush.

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970)

"John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band is the debut solo album by English musician John Lennon. It was released in 1970, after Lennon had issued three experimental albums with Yoko Ono and Live Peace in Toronto 1969, a live performance in Toronto credited to the Plastic Ono Band. ... In July 1970, Lennon started to record demos of songs he wrote that would show up on John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, and on one particular day, the 26th, Lennon recorded numerous demos of his song 'God', which includes the line 'I don't believe in Beatles'. Lennon's therapy was never completed due to the expiry of his US visa. ... Throughout the album Lennon touches on many personal issues: his abandonment by his parents, in 'Mother'; the means by which young people are made into soldiers, in 'Working Class Hero'; a reminder that, despite his rage and pain, Lennon still embraces 'Love'; and 'God', a renunciation of external saviours. ..."
Wikipedia
Rolling Stone: John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band By Lester Bangs
John Lennon – John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (Video/Audio)
#23: John Lennon, "Plastic Ono Band" (1970)
MoMA: John Lennon, Plastic Ono Band with Yoko Ono
Discogs (Video)
amazon
YouTube: Mother, Working Class Hero, God, Power To The People

2009 September: John Lennon - Live in New York City (Madison Square Garden 1972), 2014 January: Michael Rakowitz - The Breakup, 2014 April: "Jealous Guy" (1971), 2014 May: Mind Games (1973), 2014 July: Out of the Blue, 2014 December: Double Fantasy - John Lennon/Yoko Ono (1980),  2016 October: "Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)" (1970), 2017 January: Cold Turkey - John Lennon (1969), 2017 April: Revolution - The Beatles (1968)

Jean Genet in Tangier – Mohamed Choukri, Paul Bowles (Translator)

"On a sultry afternoon in the summer of 1973, the American playwright Tennessee Williams stepped into a post office in Tangier to retrieve a package. Like countless other artists and writers - from Mark Twain and Eugène Delacroix in the 19th century to Paul Bowles, Truman Capote, William S Burroughs, Allen Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, Jean Genet and Henri Matisse in the 20th - Williams travelled often to the coastal Moroccan city. With its wild beauty, its jumbled history, its tangle of influences and its peculiar former status as an international zone, Tangier held out to expatriates the promise of adventure and reflection. For some, it was a sleepy, sea-swept city suffused in orange light, a quiet place to live and work. For others, it was dangerous, foreign and exotic, full of spies, tramps and mercenaries. ..."
Our man in Tangier
Kirkus Reviews
W - Jean Genet
W - Mohamed Choukri
[PDF] Jean Genet in Tangier
amazon

Through the novels of Paul Bowles and William Burroughs particularly, Tangier exists and persists in the literary imagination – perhaps as an atmosphere rather than a location – as securely as Dublin is identified with James Joyce.

2017 August: Three Stones for Jean Genet told Patti Smith (2013)

The Catch - September 29, 1954

Willie Mays hauls in Vic Wertz's drive at the warning track in the 1954 World Series.
"The Catch refers to a defensive play made by New York Giants center fielder Willie Mays on a ball hit by Cleveland Indians batter Vic Wertz on September 29, 1954, during Game 1 of the 1954 World Series at the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan, New York City. In the top of the 8th inning with the score tied 2–2, Giants starting pitcher Sal Maglie walked Indians lead off hitter Larry Doby. Al Rosen singled, putting runners on first and second. New York manager Leo Durocher summoned left-handed relief pitcher Don Liddle to pitch to Cleveland's Wertz, a left-handed batter. Wertz worked the count to two balls and one strike before hitting Liddle's fourth pitch approximately 420 feet (130 m) to deep center field. In many stadiums the ball would have been a home run, which would have given the Indians a 5–2 lead. However, the Polo Grounds was larger than average, and Mays, who was playing in shallow center field, made an on-the-run, over-the-shoulder catch at the warning track for the out. ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Willie Mays makes "The Catch", an amazing over-the-shoulder grab

Exoplanet Hunter Sees a Black Hole-Shredded Star

This computer-simulated image shows gas from a tidally shredded star (orange) falling into a black hole (tiny dark dot in upper left). Some of the gas also is being ejected at high speeds into space (stream stretching right).
"What happens when a supermassive black hole shreds a star? One such tidal disruption event (TDE) is showing astronomers that there’s still a lot we don’t know about these rare, distant, and brilliant phenomena. It’s pretty rare that a black hole tears into a close-venturing star — a Milky Way-type galaxy might see a supernova every century, but only see a TDE every 10,000 or 100,000 years.  Now, though, automated telescopes scanning the night sky are catching more and more star-shredding events as they happen throughout the universe. ..."
Sky & Telescope (Video)
Gargantuan Black Hole Shreds Star in Rare Cosmic Find (Video)

2015 June: Black Hole Hunters, 2019 April: Black Hole Image Revealed for First Time Ever

Why the Trump Impeachment Inquiry Is the Only Option

"The peaceful transfer of presidential power through free and fair elections is the crowning glory of American democracy. It concretizes the people’s will, conferring legitimacy, assuring stability. President Trump may have finished second in the popular vote, but he is the legitimate president. In the normal course of events, his mismanagement of the nation’s affairs would be left for the electorate to repudiate, through support of a challenger in a primary race or, failing that, in the general election. But the course of events is not normal. Mr. Trump campaigned as an iconoclast, but it became clear early in his administration that his disruptiveness was aimed less at bringing fresh thinking to bear on stale policymaking than at assaulting the vital institutions of governance themselves. He has attacked the legitimacy of law enforcement, of intelligence agencies, of Congress and of the courts — of anyone he judges to threaten him politically. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: Why The Times Editorial Board Supports an Impeachment Inquiry
NY Times: White House Classified Computer System Is Used to Hold Transcripts of Sensitive Calls - A Guide to Impeachment
NY Times - Trump’s Efforts to Push Ukraine Toward a Biden Inquiry: A Timeline
***NY Times: IMPEACHMENT Six Times Opinion
W - Mueller Report (June 9, 2019)

The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum - Heinrich Böll (1974)

Wikipedia - "The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, or: How violence develops and where it can lead ... is a 1975 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Heinrich Böll, written for the screen by Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta. Schlöndorff and von Trotta wrote the script with an emphasis on the vindictive and harsh treatment of an innocent woman by the public, the police and the media. The film stars Angela Winkler as Blum, Mario Adorf as Kommissar Beizmenne, Dieter Laser as Tötges, and Jürgen Prochnow as Ludwig. Katharina Blum is an innocent woman who works as a housekeeper for a famous corporate lawyer, Hubert Blorna, and his wife Trude. Her life is ruined by an invasive tabloid reporter, Werner Tötges, who works for a tabloid simply known as The Paper. Katharina lands in the papers when the police begin to investigate her in connection with Ludwig Götten, a man she has just met and quickly fallen in with love, and who is accused of being an anarchist, a bank robber, and an alleged terrorist. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Heinrich Böll
amazon
MUBI: The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum
YouTube: The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum

Lee Morgan - Cornbread (1967)

“Philadelphia horn-blower Lee Morgan had been with Blue Note Records for almost nine years when he recorded Cornbread, his 12th album for the label, in a single session held on Saturday, 18 September 1965. Originally from Philadelphia, Morgan was a precociously-talented trumpet prodigy who made his debut recording at the tender age of 18 for Alfred Lion’s famous label, on 4 November 1956.  … Cornbread’s nine-minute-long title track was the first of four songs composed by the trumpeter on the album. It was driven by a boogaloo-style groove created by Ridley, Higgins and Hancock that had been the salient feature of ‘The Sidewinder’. Rendered in a finger-clicking soul-jazz vein, the tune also had a catchy harmonised horn line and featured some blazing trumpet improv from Morgan. Hank Mobley takes the second solo, Jackie McLean the third, followed by Herbie Hancock with an inventive passage of busy extemporisation. …”
‘Cornbread’: Lee Morgan’s Tasty Blue Note Classic (Video/Audio)
LondonJazzCollector (Audio)
W – Cornbread
Discogs (Video)
amazon

2018 January: I Called Him Morgan (2017), 2015 December: Art Blakey - Paris Jam Session (1959), 2019 May: "I Remember Clifford" - Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers (feat. Lee Morgan) (1958)

Habibi Funk, the label playing hide and seek in Medina

"In the alleyways of Casablanca, a man is walking around with a photo in his hand, questioning the locals sitting on cafe terraces, in the hope that one of them recognises the mysterious singer whom he discovered by chance on a ‘45 turntable, hidden behind broken electronic devices and stacked in a second-hand shop. This man is Jannis Stürtz. He is stomping through Medina in search of the foundations for what would eventually become Habibi Funk in 2015: ‘In the beginning, it was way more difficult. For example, trying to find Fadoul was like a one-year process. We found someone who recognised the photo and then we only knew where his family used to live ten years ago, and we just had the name of a neighbourhood in Casablanca, not the street name or anything.’ ..."
Pan African Music (Video)
YouTube: Jannis (Habibi Funk) • Vinyl Set • Le Mellotron

2017 June: Ahmed Malek and Other Treasures From Habibi Funk’s North African Crate - Digging Expeditions, 2017 July: Lebanon: Various artists - Jakarta Radio 010 Mix, 2017 December: From the Counter: Beirut, 2018 June: "Habibi Funk 001 Mix" by Jannis of Jakarta Records (Mix of Arabic 60s & 70s)

Why Can’t New York City Build More Gems Like This Queens Library?

"Against a phalanx of mostly dreary new apartment towers, the soon-to-open Hunters Point Community Library by Steven Holl Architects is a diva parading along the East River in Queens, south of the famous Pepsi sign. With its sculptured geometry — a playful advertisement for itself — it’s even a little like the Pepsi sign. Compact, at 22,000 square feet and 82 feet high, the library is among the finest and most uplifting public buildings New York has produced so far this century. It also cost something north of $40 million and took forever to complete. So it raises the question: Why can’t New York build more things like this, faster and cheaper? ..."
NY Times
Queens Public Library: Long-stalled Hunters Point library will finally open next week (Video)

Rooftop bleachers offer sweeping views of Manhattan and a place to stage events.

Fania Records: How A New York Label Took Salsa To The World

"Just as Chess Records is synonymous with the blues, Motown with soul and Blue Note with jazz, New York’s Fania Records is inextricably tied to the sound of Latin-American salsa music. The label was the brainchild of an unlikely partnership between an accomplished Caribbean musician from the Dominican Republic and a Brooklyn-born Italian-American who was a former police officer turned divorce lawyer. Johnny Pacheco and Gerald 'Jerry' Masucci met in 1962 when the latter became the former’s divorce attorney. But they also shared a mutual love of Latin music (Masucci had worked in Cuba at one time) and, in 1964, they decided to start a record label that began as a small-time operation on the Big Apple’s mean streets but which would eventually become a global brand that conquered the world. ..."
udiscover (Video/Audio)
Vinyl Me, Please Partnering With Fania On Three Reissues, Merch, And VMP Classics Record Of The Month (Video/Audio)

2014 October: Fania at Fifty

The Interior Decorators of Bloomsbury

Omega chairs in the Dining Room at Charleston.
"In the summer of 1913, at 33 Fitzroy Square in London, the ornate Georgian house where the Pre-Raphaelites once gathered became the venue for another visionary artistic enterprise. Founded by the Bloomsbury painter and art critic Roger Fry, the Omega Workshops Ltd. was an interior decor and furniture company that sought to provide struggling artists with a regular income. 'There is a certain social-class feeling, a vague idea that a man can still remain a gentleman if he paints bad pictures,' Fry observed, 'but must forfeit the conventional right to his Esquire, if he makes good pots or serviceable furniture.' At the Omega, the distinction between fine and applied arts was dismissed. In the upstairs studio, fine artists designed colorful and original furniture, ceramics, textiles, and rugs, while downstairs two showrooms were open to the public, who could browse and purchase the wares. Fry, who coined the term post-Impressionism, wanted to energize fusty British homes with the French art movement’s vibrancy and brio. ..."
The Paris Review
Post-Impressionist Living: The Omega Workshops (Video)
A Five-Step Guide to Bloomsbury Interiors

Plate with overglaze painted sailing boat design, Duncan Grant, 1913-14.

2019 April: Bloomsbury Group

Children of 9/11, Following Their Fathers’ Last Footsteps

Leonard Ragaglia Jr., as a child, with his firefighter father who died on Sept. 11, 2001.
"They were just children when their fathers ran toward the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001. They grew up revering parents — firefighters and police officers — who were killed that day, or died years later from the toxic dust. When a reporter starts to ask them 'How old?' — wanting to know their current age — many reflexively answer '7' or '5' or '10,' their age when their families were upended by a terrorist attack that remains painfully etched in the city’s collective memory. On Tuesday, a record number of these children of slain rescuers will take an oath, like their fathers did, to serve New York City. ..."
NY Times

Mike Florio, 24. Son of John J. Florio from Engine 214, Brooklyn.

2011 September: The Encyclopedia of 9/11, 2011 September: WNYC's Guide to 9/11 Arts Events, 2011 September: September 11, 2001, 2014 May: The 9/11 Story Told at Bedrock, Powerful as a Punch to the Gut

Black Friday (1869)

Photograph of the blackboard in the New York Gold Room, September 24, 1869, showing the collapse of the price of gold. Handwritten caption by James A. Garfield indicates it was used as evidence before the Committee of Banking & Currency during hearings in 1870.
Wikipedia - "The Black Friday gold panic of September 24, 1869 was caused by the efforts of two investors, Jay Gould and his partner James Fisk, also called the Gold Ring, to corner the gold market on the New York Gold Exchange. The scandal took place during the Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, whose policy was to sell Treasury gold at weekly intervals to pay off the national debt, stabilize the dollar, and boost the economy. The country had gone through tremendous upheaval during the Civil War and was not yet fully restored. This period, known as the Gilded Age, was a time of great industrial growth which invited much investment and speculation. Abel Corbin, a small time speculator, married Virginia Grant, the younger sister of President Grant. ... A panic on Wall Street ensued and the country went through a few months of economic turmoil. Thanks to Grant's efforts, as well as of his administration, a national depression was averted. Gould and Fisk hired the best defense available. Favored by Tweed Ring judges, the conspiratorial partners escaped prosecution. An 1870 government investigation, headed by James A. Garfield, exonerated Grant of any illicit involvement in the conspiracy. ..."
Wikipedia
PBS: Black Friday, September 24, 1869
NY Times: October 16, 1869, Harper's Weekly

Panic in Gold room on Black Friday

The Byrds w/Gram Parsons - Mr. Spaceman (1968)

"The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo, released 50 years ago this week, is one of the foundational documents of country rock. But it could’ve been a much different album. 'My original idea for Sweetheart of the Rodeo was to do a double album, a chronological album starting out with old-timey music, not bluegrass, but pre-bluegrass,' Roger McGuinn, the band’s leader, told Rolling Stone in 1970. 'And then get into like the 1930s advanced version of it, move it up to modern country, the ’40s and ’50s with steel guitar and pedal steel guitar—kind of do an article on the evolution of that type of music. Then cut it there and kind of bring it up into electronic music and a kind of space music and going into futuristic music.' The man largely responsible for bringing McGuinn’s ambitious vision back to earth was Gram Parsons, a mostly unknown 22-year-old Harvard drop-out from Florida armed with a sizable trust fund and a sweet Southern accent. ..."
Pitchfork: Gram Parsons’ Cosmic American Trip (Video)
YouTube: The Byrds w/Gram Parsons - Mr. Spaceman

2008 March: Gram Parsons, 2011 March: Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris. Liberty Hall, Texas, 1973, 2012 May: Sweetheart of the Rodeo, 2013 January: Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel, 2013 September: Flying Burrito Brothers - Live At The Avalon Ballroom 1969, 2014 February: The Gilded Palace of Sin - The Flying Burrito Brothers (1969), 2014 March: Burrito Deluxe - The Flying Burrito Brothers (1970), 2014 May: GP (1973), 2014 September: Grievous Angel (1974), 2015 October: Top 10 Gram Parsons Songs, 2016 November: Death of Gram Parsons, 2017 March: Sleepless Nights (1976), 2017 April: The Complete Reprise Sessions (2006)

The fantasy of window shopping in New York City

"When Ashcan artist Everett Shinn painted this woman seemingly spellbound by the stylish mannequins behind a department store window, the concept of “window shopping” was a relatively new phenomenon. Shinn completed the painting, simply titled 'Window Shopping,' in 1903. It perfectly captures the consumerism ushered in by the rise of the Gilded Age city’s magnificent emporiums, where the latest fashions were on display on the Flatiron and Chelsea streets that once made up Ladies Mile. 'Shinn may have appreciated the way shop windows, like the vaudeville stage, created a fantasy space that functioned also as a site of cultural exchange,' art consultant Janay Wong explained on a Sotheby’s page focusing on the painting. ..."
Ephemeral New York

Gregory Isaacs & U Brown - The Border (1978)

"I don’t want summer to end so I’m going to post one of my all time favorite reggae songs, Gregory Isaacs 1978 classic 'The Border.' This one has everything: a great rhythm, the Cool Ruler’s smooth vocals, lyrics with a message, and U-Brown’s great toasting at the end. My perfect reggae song!"
Song of the Day: Gregory Isaacs & U Brown “The Border” (Video)
YouTube: Gregory Isaacs & U-Brown - The Border 12", Gregory Isaacs & U-Brown - The Border + GG AllStars-Dub Part Two

Hainbach - Gestures (2019)

"... Gestures is an album of disappearing and acceptance. The sense of loss is lifted by interweaving piano phrases, harmonized by fragile oscillators. Gentle movements above radio antennas guided the recording process, adding an incorporeal, dreamlike feel. Wonderfully executed, incredibly unique and entirely Hainbach. ..."
Bandcamp (Audio)
YouTube: Gestures (full album) 34:32

2018 October: Distressed Tape, 2019 February: Sandpaper Is a Form of Change, 2019 February: Hainbach - Gear Top 7: My Personal Favorites In 2018, 2019 May: The Sound of Architecture and Design | Bauhaus, Piezo Microphones and FX, 2019 June: Make Noise Morphage - My "Film Noir" Reel, 2019 August: The Sands Take You | tape loop, OP-1 (2019)

Les Nabis

Pierre Bonnard, Dining Room in the Country, 1913.
Wikipedia - "Les Nabis (French pronunciation: ​[le nabi]) was a group of young French artists active in Paris from 1888 until 1900, who played a large part in the transition from impressionism and academic art to abstract art, symbolism and the other early movements of modernism. The members included Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Paul Ranson, Édouard Vuillard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Félix Vallotton, and Paul Sérusier. Most were students at the Académie Julian in Paris in the late 1880s. The artists shared a common admiration for Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne and a determination to renew the art of painting, but varied greatly in their individual styles. They believed that a work of art was not a depiction of nature, but a synthesis of metaphors and symbols created by the artist. In 1900, the artists held their final exhibit, and went their separate ways. ..."
Wikipedia
The Radiant Paintings of Les Nabis, the Movement Started by Bonnard and Vuillard
Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Nabis and Decorative Painting
The Nabis 101
Musée d'Orsay: Nabis and decoration. Bonnard, Vuillard, Maurice Denis... (Video)
YouTube: les nabis 26 videos

Les Nabis at Stephane Natanson’s house in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, south-east of Paris, c. 1898. Lying, from left: Felix Valloton, Édouard Vuillard, Stephane Natanson, Marthe Mellot, Thadée Natanson and Misia Natanson. Standing: Cipa (half-brother of Misia Natanson).

Soccer at the Edge of the World

During the week of the Greenland national soccer tournament, the astroturf soccer field in Sisimiut was in near constant use.
"SISIMIUT, Greenland — The boat journey along Greenland’s wild, rocky coast lasted three days. It was long and slow, calling in at what felt like every village on the way to pick up passengers and drop off supplies. The scenery was spectacular: sheer, snow-capped mountains rising from the sea, fjords cutting into untouched wilderness. After a while, though, Inuk Mathaussen found even that started to pall. It was, as he remembers it, pretty 'boring.' All that time at sea was not Mathaussen’s only sacrifice. He had left his partner and their 1-year-old at home for a couple of weeks. He had cashed in valuable vacation time. He had spent hundreds of dollars, too: for transportation and accommodations, for equipment and membership fees. In return, once the boat reached its destination, he would have the dubious pleasure of spending seven nights on a mattress in a school gymnasium, struggling to sleep in a room filled with a few dozen friends and strangers. ..."
NY Times
W - Greenland national football team
Guardian: The unlikely success story of football on the massive island of Greenland

The fog rolls into Sisimiut every few days, blanketing the town with a low-slung, white cloud.

Jane Bowles

Wikipedia - "Jane Bowles (February 22, 1917 – May 4, 1973) was an American writer and playwright. Born into a Jewish family in New York City on February 22, 1917, to Sydney Auer (father) and Claire Stajer (mother), Jane Bowles spent her childhood in Woodmere, New York, on Long Island. She developed tuberculous arthritis of the knee as a teenager, and her mother took her to Switzerland for treatment, where she attended boarding school. At this point in her life, she developed a passion for literature coupled with insecurities. As a teenager she returned to New York, where she gravitated to the intellectual bohemia of Greenwich Village. She married composer and writer Paul Bowles in 1938. The location of the honeymoon inspired the setting for her novel Two Serious Ladies. Bowles had a rich love life. In 1937, she met Paul Bowles and in following year (1938), they were married and went to a honeymoon in Central America. She visited lesbian bars while they traveled together in Paris. ... Bowles, who was an alcoholic, suffered a stroke in 1957 at age 40. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times - The Extravagant Jane Bowles: Always on the Edge of Something
The Best Book of 1943: Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
Millicent Dillon: “the originality and emotional power” of Jane Bowles

Jane Bowles and Paul Bowles

2007 November: The Authorized Paul Bowles Web Site, 2010 February: Paul Bowles (1910-1999), 2011: January: Halfmoon (1996), 2013 July: Tellus #23 - The Voices of Paul Bowles, 2014 January: Let It Come Down: the Life of Paul Bowles (1998), 2014 March: The Sheltering Sky (1949), 2015 January: Things Gone & Things Still Here, 2015 October: The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles – a cautionary tale for tourists, 2015 November: The Rolling Stone Interview (May 23, 1974), 2016 June: Let It Come Down (1952), 2016 December: Paul Bowles & the Music of Morocco, 2017 July: Night Waltz: The Music of Paul Bowles, 2018 July: The Sheltering Sound

Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash Session Unearthed for Bootleg Series

"A session Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash recorded in Nashville in 1969, much of it never bootlegged, is finally set for release in the 15th installment of Dylan’s Bootleg Series, Rolling Stone reports. The 3xCD set compiles their session—where they laid down 'Girl From the North Country,' jammed with Carl Perkins, covered 'Mystery Train,' and wrote Cash’s 'Wanted Man'—with largely unheard and sought-after outtakes from John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline, and more. Bob Dylan (featuring Johnny Cash)’s Travelin’ Thru, 1967 – 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 15 is out November 1 (via Columbia/Legacy). ..."
Pitchfork (Video)
Bob Dylan (Featuring Johnny Cash) – Travelin’ Thru, 1967 – 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 15 out on Nov. 1

The Crisis for Birds Is a Crisis for Us All

A male Baltimore Oriole.
"Nearly one-third of the wild birds in the United States and Canada have vanished since 1970, a staggering loss that suggests the very fabric of North America’s ecosystem is unraveling. The disappearance of 2.9 billion birds over the past nearly 50 years was reported today in the journal Science, a result of a comprehensive study by a team of scientists from seven research institutions in the United States and Canada. As ornithologists and the directors of two major research institutes that directed this study, even we were shocked by the results. We knew of well-documented losses among shorebirds and songbirds. But the magnitude of losses among 300 bird species was much larger than we had expected and alarmingly widespread across the continent. ..."
NY Times
Ny Times: Birds Are Vanishing From North America
Cornell: Nearly 30% of birds in U.S., Canada have vanished since 1970 (Video)
Cornell: Seven Simple Actions to Help Birds

Debatable: Should the presidency have an age limit?

"Life has seven stages, Shakespeare wrote, ending in oblivion, but he might have forgotten an eighth: running for president. Jimmy Carter, the country’s longest-living former chief executive, seemed to express concern on Tuesday that all three Democratic presidential front-runners are septuagenarians. ... The debate: The age minimum for the presidency is 35. Should there be a maximum, too? The average age of American presidents at swearing-in is 55, but recent decades have seen many outliers. At 70, President Trump was the oldest to take office, beating a record set by Ronald Reagan, who still remains the oldest person ever to leave it, at 77. Well before the end of Mr. Reagan’s second term, in 1989, speculation abounded about his mental decline; he would be found to have Alzheimer’s disease five years later. ..."
NY Times
10 reasons there should be a maximum age limit to run for president

The Portable Beat Reader - Ann Charters

"Cutting through bohemian posturing and excess, Charters here reprints much of the most vital, readable and relevant material produced by the Beat generation, primarily in the 1950s and '60s, with some selections from the '70s and '80s. The novels of such leading figures as Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs lend themselves well to excerpting, giving this volume creditable ballast. Representative works of Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gary Snyder are included along with those of lesser-known Beats (e.g., John Clellon Holmes), fellow travelers like Frank O'Hara and Amiri Baraka, and wives and girlfriends often overlooked at the time, including Hettie Jones, Carolyn Cassady and Joyce Johnson. Charters (Kerouac) offers a broad perspective on this seminal literary movement: she links East Coast Beats to the San Francisco Renaissance poets; pays attention to such latter-day Beats as Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg; and explains the position of non-Beat but related writers--Alan Watts, Anne Waldman, Diane DiPrima and the young Norman Mailer--in her helpful introductory essay and notes preceeding each entry. Her energizing, liberating anthology makes it clear that such Beat preoccupations as the bomb, the meaninglessness of modern existence and ecological destruction remain current."
Publishers Weekly
[PDF] Introduction - The Beat Half-Century
amazon