Revolutions of 1848

Barricade on the rue Soufflot, an 1848 painting by Horace Vernet. The Panthéon is shown in the background.
"The Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Spring of Nations, People's Spring, Springtime of the Peoples, or the Year of Revolution, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe in 1848. It remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history. The revolutions were essentially bourgeois revolutions and democratic and liberal in nature, with the aim of removing the old monarchical structures and creating independent nation-states. The revolutions spread across Europe after an initial revolution began in France in February. Over 50 countries were affected, but with no significant coordination or cooperation among their respective revolutionaries. Some of the major contributing factors were widespread dissatisfaction with political leadership, demands for more participation in government and democracy, demands for freedom of the press, other demands made by the working class, the upsurge of nationalism, and the regrouping of established government forces. The uprisings were led by ad hoc coalitions of reformers, the middle classes and workers, which did not hold together for long. ..."
Wikipedia
Guardian - 1848: Europe's year of revolution – from the archive
YouTube: What Were the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848?

2013 October: French Revolution of 1848

John Ashbery’s Reading Voice

John Ashbery at 92Y in 1970
"The Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92nd Street Y has a seventy-year archive of recordings—it began hosting readings in 1939 and recording them in 1949—and it offers a unique opportunity to study poets’ voices and reading styles. Between 1952 and 2014, John Ashbery made seventeen appearances on the stage of the Poetry Center. He read with other poets—Barbara Guest, Mark Ford, Jack Gilbert, John Hollander, J. D. McClatchy, W. S. Merwin, Kenneth Koch, Ron Padgett, and James Schuyler. He read with painters—Jane Freilicher and Larry Rivers. And he joined in readings honoring other poets—tributes to Frank O’Hara (1970), Elizabeth Bishop (1979) and Marianne Moore (1987). ... As a scholar and poet who uses software to analyze performance style in poetry recordings, I was thrilled when Bernard Schwartz, the Poetry Center’s director, invited me to study the archive. The Ashbery readings seemed, to me, like a perfect corpus to begin with. ..."
The Paris Review (Audio)
NYPL: Finding Ashbery

The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1950s

A Collection of Vintage Fruit Crate Labels Offers a Voluptuous Vision of the Sunshine State

"Ah, Florida… The Sunshine State. Tourists began flocking to it in earnest once the railroads expanded in the late 19th century, drawn by visions of sunset beaches, graceful palms, and plump citrus fruit in a warm weather setting. The fantasy gathered steam in the 1920s when citrus growers began affixing colorful labels to the fruit crates that shipped out over those same railroad lines, seeking to distinguish themselves from the competition with memorable visuals. These labels offered lovers of grapefruit and oranges who were stuck in colder climes tantalizing glimpses of a dreamy land filled with Spanish Moss and graceful long-legged birds. Words like 'golden' and 'sunshine' sealed the deal. (The reality of citrus picking, then and now, is one of hard labor, usually performed by underpaid, unskilled migrants.) ..."
Open Culture

State Under Siege

"It is an article of faith among many strategists and activists within the Democratic Party that shifting demographics will be its salvation. The Republican electorate gets older and whiter with every election. Greatest Generation and boomer Fox News addicts can’t live forever, and Big Data shows that it’s merely a matter of time until the modal Republican voter is firmly in the minority.
 When I come across this talismanic bit of folk wisdom, I counter with an example that has little relevance to anyone under 40: apartheid-era South Africa. ... The South Africa case may seem extreme, akin to Trump-Hitler analogies. Yet both in spirit and in practice, the modern GOP is embracing a similar strategy of maintaining power in a nation where it has managed to win the popular vote in a presidential election exactly one time since 1992. ..."
New Republic (Audio)
Harvard Politics: The Future of Federalism
W - States' rights
W - John C. Calhoun
W - Steve Bannon

John C. Calhoun, circa 1801.

Sun Ra Arkestra Live In Kalisz, 1986

"Sun Ra Arkestra’s debut concert in Poland is getting its first vinyl offering, this October via Lanquidity Records. Taking place on the 7th of December in 1986 as part of the 13th instalment of the International Jazz Piano festival, the 10-track performance included ‘Prelude To A Kiss’, ‘Children Of The Sun’ and ‘Mack The Knife’. Alongside Sun Ra on piano and synthesizer, it featured an 11-member Arkestra, with Danny Ray Thompson on bassoon and sax, Laurdine Kenneth “Pat” Patrick on baritone saxophone, alto saxophone, and Fender bass, Marshall Belford Allen on alto sax, Tyler Mitchell on bass, Ronald Wilson on tenor sax, John Gilmore on tenor sax and clarinet, James Jacson on Bassoon and ancient Egyptian infinity drums, Leroy Taylor on alto sax, alto & bass clarinet, Tyrone Hill on trombone, Earl 'Buster' Smith on drums and Carl LeBlanc on guitar. ..."
Sun Ra’s 1986 Poland concert recording released for the first time (Audio)
bandcamp (Audio)
Sounds of the Universe (Audio)

Lenox Lounge

"Lenox Lounge was a long-standing bar in Harlem, New York City. It was located in 288 Lenox Avenue, between 124th and 125th. The bar was founded in 1939 by Ralph Greco and served as a venue for performances by many great jazz artists, including Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane. Harlem Renaissance writers James Baldwin and Langston Hughes were both patrons, as was Malcolm X. The bar deteriorated through the middle of the 20th century. Alvin Reid, Sr. purchased it in 1988 and restored the original Art Deco interior from September 1999 to March 2000, during the only closure in the bar's history. ..."
Wikipedia
Dissent: Harlem Is Everywhere
LAST CALL: WHO’S TO BLAME FOR DESTRUCTION OF THE LENOX LOUNGE?
Voice: Remembering the Lenox Lounge
YouTube: Lenox Lounge Legacy

Circa 1956: Sarah Vaughan and friends at the piano in Lenox Lounge Zebra room.

2009 February: Harlem Renaissance, 2010 August: A Nightclub Map of Harlem, 2010 October: Apollo Theater, 2014 May: History of Harlem, 2014 November: A Harlem Throwback to the Era of Billie Holiday, 2015 February: A Nightclub Map of Harlem, 2017 June: During Prohibition, Harlem Night Clubs Kept the Party Going, 2018 March: Rent party, 2019 January: Apollo Theater Is Celebrated in a New Graphic Novel

Betye Saar The Legends of Black Girl’s Window

Black Girl's Window. 1969
"After nearly a decade of focused work in printmaking, artist Betye Saar created her autobiographical assemblage Black Girl’s Window in 1969. This exhibition explores the relation between her experimental print practice and the new artistic language debuted in that famous work, tracing themes of family, history, and mysticism, which have been at the core of Saar’s work from its earliest days. Celebrating the recent acquisition of 42 rare, early works on paper, this is the first dedicated examination of Saar’s work as printmaker."
MoMA (Video)
MoMA: 9 audios (Audio)
NY Times - Betye Saar at MoMA: Prelude to a Revolutionary Breakthrough

The Syria Withdrawal’s Other Victims

"In Deir Ezzor, the largest city in eastern Syria, on the banks of the Euphrates River, protesters last week chanted and raised signs calling for the downfall of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorial regime. But they also raised U.S. and French flags, hoping the anti-ISIS coalition might keep its forces in the region. 'I remember when we were taught at a young age about the French colonialist occupier, when the [Syrian] regime pretended to be a champion of national sovereignty,' one of the protesters, a USAID-funded project manager, Abdul Rahman,* told me. 'And now we got to an unprecedented point, in which we ask an occupier to protect us, and we fail to obtain this [protection]. And protect us from whom? From the criminals of our own country.' ..."
New Republic

Junior Byles - Fade Away (1976)

"Kerrie Byles (born 17 July 1948 in Kingston, Jamaica), also known as 'Junior Byles', 'Chubby', or 'King Chubby', is a Jamaican reggae singer. ... Lee 'Scratch' Perry, then working as chief engineer at Joe Gibbs' studio, was scouting for talent for Gibbs' new Amalgamated label, and spotted the group while they were auditioning for the 1967 Festival Song Contest with 'The Time Has Come'. ... Perry signed the group to the label, but left Gibbs soon after. The Versatiles stayed with Gibbs for two years, before moving to work with Perry, and then to Duke Reid's Treasure Isle label, also recording for other producers such as Laurel Aitken.Regarded by some as his greatest work, 'Fade Away' was recorded in 1975 for producer Joseph Hoo Kim; It was a massive hit in Jamaica and was also a big success in the UK, and was covered five years later by Adrian Sherwood's New Age Steppers group. ..."
Wikipedia
Junior Byles - Fade Away
YouTube: Junior Byles & I Roy - Fade Away & Rootsman 12", Fade Away

2013 May: 129 Beat Street: Ja-Man Special 1975-1978

Strange Games & Funky Things Vol. 5 CD Mix - DJ Spinna

"... And this, released in 2010, is Strange Games and Funky Things, Vol. 5. Spinna, Adarkwah, and Jonathan Rau compiled this particular volume. Spinna supplies a 78-minute, 21-track mix, while 16 of the tracks are provided in unmixed form on a second disc. As is the case with the rest of the series, most of the material will not be familiar to those outside the small circle of expert crate-diggers and fiends of likeminded compilation series (Harmless' Life: Styles, for instance). The most popular of the lot here is likely the Soul Searchers' 'Ashley’s Roachclip,' if only through its break, heard in dozens of rap, R&B, and dance songs, from 'Paid in Full' to 'Girl You Know It’s True.' ..."
allmusic
Discogs (Video)
Mixcloud (Audio)
YouTube: Strange Games & Funky Things Vol.5 (Mixed By Dj Spinna)

Forget Lucian Freud's nudes – he was a magnificent painter of plants

Two Plants, 1977-80; Interior at Paddington, 1951.
"Lucian Freud once described one of his plant paintings as 'lots of little portraits of leaves'. Two Plants took him three years to complete and it apparently drove him 'around the bend'. As he recalled: 'I felt like I was composing an enormous symphony, and since I’m completely unmusical, the difficulties were many. And when I took one tiny leaf and changed it, it affected all other areas of it, and so on.' These thoughts, and a few more about how he hoped the painting would convey a 'really biological feeling of things growing and fading', are pretty much all Freud said about the plants in his work. The endless fascination of critics with his fleshy, abrasive-looking models kept the spotlight away from his botanical subjects. ..."
Guardian
W - Lucian Freud

Two Plants, 1977-80

Victory - Joseph Conrad (1915)

"Victory (also published as Victory: An Island Tale) is a psychological novel by Joseph Conrad first published in 1915, through which Conrad achieved 'popular success.^' The New York Times, however, called it 'an uneven book' and 'more open to criticism than most of Mr. Conrad's best work.' The novel's 'most striking formal characteristic is its shifting narrative and temporal perspective^' with the first section from the viewpoint of a sailor, the second from omniscient perspective of Axel Heyst, the third from an interior perspective from Heyst, and the final section has an omniscient narrator. ... Axel Heyst, the novel's protagonist, was raised by his widowed father, a Swedish philosopher, in London, England, and never knew his mother. ... This eventually leads him to the Southeastern Asia, especially to what is now Indonesia, including Surabaya a port in the then Dutch colony of Java."
Wikipedia
Washington Post: Joseph Conrad's Dark 'Victory'
Guardian: Who is Joseph Conrad's winner in Victory?
Gutenberg: VICTORY: AN ISLAND TALE By Joseph Conrad
amazon

2011 November: Heart of Darkness, 2014 May: Nostromo (1904), 2015 December: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad – a trip into inner space, 2016 July: Lord Jim (1899-1900)

Feminize Your Canon: Iris Origo

"Iris Origo might be the most self-effacing writer ever to gain renown as a diarist. Her reputation rests on her unique perceptions of others. As an aristocratic landowner in mid-twentieth-century Italy, she bore witness to all strata of Italian society during the long rise and precipitous fall of fascism. The external circumstances of her life were unquestionably extraordinary. She participated in the final glittering years of prewar Europe’s cosmopolitan society; transformed a region of Italian countryside into a home still visited today for its beauty; and housed, during World War II, escaped prisoners and fleeing refugees. Her writing about this time evinced truths rarely seen in the narratives of historical texts, and did so through illustrative anecdotes that captured the people of the period and what they were feeling. In her diary of the years leading up to the war, A Chill in the Air, there is, for instance, an ever-increasing sense of being shut off from the rest of the world. Letters from England arrive a month late. ..."
The Paris Review
W - Iris Origo
La Foce
JSTOR: Iris Origo’s Italian War Diary
amazon: Iris Origo

Salvador Dalí’s Tarot Cards Get Re-Issued: The Occult Meets Surrealism in a Classic Tarot Card Deck

"Tarot began as a card game and became a tool of occult divination. In that form, with its usually elaborate illustrations, the tarot deck found a major cultural role as an art object: here on Open Culture we've featured decks either designed or inspired by the likes of Aleister Crowley, H.R. Giger, Philip K. Dick, and Salvador Dalí. That last, whose limited edition was published in 1984, has proven to be enough of an object of desire to gain the attention of Taschen, the publisher of visually (and often, in terms of dimensions and weight, physically) intensive photo and art books. Next month they're bringing out a new edition of Dalí's tarot deck, boxed with a companion book by tarot scholar Johannes Fiebig. ..."
Open Culture

Call for cultural and academic boycott of Turkey

"We call on academics, artists and intellectuals around the world to oppose the Turkish invasion of northeastern Syria by boycotting Turkish government sponsored academic, artistic and musical events taking place inside and outside of Turkey. The Turkish state’s invasion of northeastern Syria has brought a dangerous state of war to the only relatively stable region in the country, threatening the lives of thousands with indiscriminate shelling, mass displacement and continuous bombardment. The Turkish attack threatens to do enormous, perhaps irreversible, damage to international standards of law, human rights and human freedom. It also threatens to destroy a unique experiment in feminist social transformation. ..."
ROAR
Noam Chomsky signs call to boycott Turkey and prevent the ethnic cleansing of Kurdish people (Audio)

2016 February: The Feminist, Democratic Leftists Our Military Is Obliterating -  Debbie Bookchin, 2016 May: Turkey’s Authoritarian Turn, 2016 July: How Turkey Came to This, 2017 March: As repression deepens, Turkish artists and intellectuals fear the worst, 2017 July: A Long March for Justice in Turkey, 2017 July: Radical Municipalism: The Future We Deserve, 2017 September: Istanbul: Memories and the City - Orhan Pamuk, 2018 January: Turkey’s State of Emergency, 2018 April: The Unlikely New Hero of Turkeys, 2018 June: How My Father’s Ideas Helped the Kurds Create a New Democracy, 2018 June: How Nietzsche Explains Turkey, 2018 August: The West Hoped for Democracy in Turkey. Erdogan Had Other Ideas.

Pop Ambient from Aldo

"Simple music made with simple tools. The idea might seem obvious, but on YouTube — where many musicians, experienced and new, known and not, share works-in-progress in the form of demos and tutorials — simplicity often isn’t the order of the day. Comprehensiveness is. Here, refreshingly, a single sound source and a single tool for looping combine to let Aldo, a French musician living in London, accumulate and manipulate material. ... This is the latest video I’ve added to my YouTube playlist of recommended live performances of ambient music. Video originally posted at Aldo’s YouTube channel. More from Aldo at instagram.com/aldo.is.taken."
disquiet (Video)

Jon Hassell ‎– Aka / Darbari / Java - Magic Realism (1983)

"The beautiful cover painting by Mati Klarwein serves as an appropriate visual analogy for the music contained herein: an abutting of two worlds, an insinuating blend of early-'80s high tech with ancient Southeast Asia. Over varying, non-specific rhythms supplied by Abdou Mboup, Jon Hassell weaves a music both evocative and plaintive, his modified trumpet sighing like an old Javanese horn pulled into the digital age on its way to what he calls a 'coffee-colored' future where all ethnic traditions become one. The astonishingly vocal sound he gets from that treated trumpet is certainly one of the signatures of this album and one of the more lovely sounds heard anywhere. His compositions have a bit too much direction and drive to comfortably settle into the term ambient, but they remain as relaxed and gently meandering as a jungle stream. One especially nice feature is the subtle electronic burblings that whisper in the background, creating an enticingly busy sense of space. Aka/Darbari/Java is an early high-water mark at the juncture between world and ambient musics."
allmusic (Audio)
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Empire ii, Empire iii, "Darbari Extension" 1.1, Empire V

Orpheus - Jean Cocteau (1950)

"Orpheus (French: Orphée; also the title used in the UK) is a 1950 French film directed by Jean Cocteau and starring Jean Marais. ... Set in contemporary Paris, the story of the film is a variation of the classic Greek myth of Orpheus. The picture begins with Orpheus (Marais), a famous poet, visiting the Café des Poètes. At the same time, a Princess (Casares) and Cégeste (Édouard Dermit [fr]), a handsome young poet whom she supports, arrive. The drunken Cégeste starts a brawl. When the police arrive and attempt to take Cégeste into custody, he breaks free and flees, only to be run down by two motorcycle riders. ... Instead, they drive to a chateau (the landscape through the car windows is presented in negative) accompanied by the two motorcycle riders as abstract poetry plays on the radio. This takes the form of seemingly meaningless messages, like those broadcast to the French Resistance from London during the Occupation. ..."
Wikipedia
Criterion - Orpheus: Through a Glass, Amorously
Roger Ebert
amazon
YouTube: Mark Kermode reviews Orphée (1950) | BFI Player, Orphée Bande-annonce HD

2009 March: Jean Cocteau, 2016 February: In Which Jean Cocteau Gives Elan To This Milieu

How Gordon Matta-Clark took a chainsaw to 70s New York

Hole in the wall gang … work on Gordon Matta-Clark’s Conical Intersect, 1975.
"Bare-chested and swinging high on a suspended platform in the vast interior space of a derelict steel-trussed warehouse on a New York pier, Gordon Matta-Clark, acetylene torch in hand, cut into the walls, the floors and the roof, letting the light in. Along with the sparks raining from his torch, the light cascaded from the sky through the building’s empty void to the water beneath. Arcs of light moved with the sun’s passage through the day. The camera filming all this is alternately dazzled and consumed by mysterious gloom. Hidden then exposed, Matta-Clark is glimpsed hard at work, oblivious to the height and the danger, swaying on his little platform. ..."
Guardian
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte - Reina Sofía: Day's End

New build … the latest Garbage Wall, at the London exhibition.

2011 October: Gordon Matta-Clark, 2018 January: Towards Anarchitecture: Gordon Matta-Clark and Le Corbusier, 2019 October: The Life and Times of Alvin Baltrop

The Astros Have Reached the World Series—and Walkoff Hero José Altuve Has Carved His Name Into Baseball’s Eternal Lore

"Bobby Thomson. Bill Mazeroski. Chris Chambliss. Joe Carter. Aaron Boone. Magglio Ordóñez. Travis Ishikawa. Before Saturday night, only those seven men had reached or won a World Series with a walkoff home run, so each name immediately conjures a memory or vision of a specific swing of the bat. Mazeroski lofted a high, black-and-white fly ball to left. Chambliss tomahawked a homer and met a mob on the basepaths. Carter golfed a line drive and danced all the way home. Such is the material of baseball lore and eternal highlight reels. An eighth player now belongs on that list, and in the future, if the name 'José Altuve' doesn’t immediately inspire the thought of his perfect, pennant-winning swing—bat coiling through the zone, legs pivoting to the pull side, hung slider caroming toward the Minute Maid Park train tracks or, more accurately, the heavens above Houston’s roaring crowd—it will only be because the Astros second baseman is already a franchise legend with copious playoff memories to his name. ..."
The Ringer (Video)
NY Times: Altuve’s Homer Stuns Yankees and Sends Astros to World Series (Video)
MLB: Yanks 0-for-WS in decade for 1st time since 1910s (Video)

J.D. Salinger, Unbound

One of Salinger’s spiritual journals.
"When J.D. Salinger was 18, unpublished and spending long hours at his typewriter, he received an encouraging letter from an admirer. 'I accept your story. Consider it a masterpiece. Check for $1,000 in the mail. Curtis Publishing Co.' It wasn’t really from a publisher — those notices wouldn’t arrive for years. It was from Salinger’s mother, who slipped it under his bedroom door one night when she heard him typing. He kept the note for 73 years, until his death in 2010. The handwritten note is now on display at the New York Public Library, in the first public exhibition from Salinger’s personal archives. ..."
NY Times

“When he was working at his desk, his door was usually closed,” his son Matt Salinger said. “I’d hear the typewriter and I’d sometimes hear him laughing. He had a loud laugh, more of a roar. I never knew exactly what he was working on, I just knew he was working.”

2010 January: J. D. Salinger, 2012 July: The Catcher in the Rye, 2014 September: Franny and Zooey, 2016 July: Nine Stories (1953)

Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Studio Sessions - Eric Dolphy

"The discography of the late and very great Eric Allan Dolphy remains one of the gleaming jewels of ’60s jazz, but he’s still too often summarized as an outstanding, highly distinctive collaborator who produced one true masterpiece as a leader. Resonance Records’ Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Studio Sessions is poised to help eradicate this misnomer, reissuing two superb but frequently underrated LPs in mono with 85 minutes of additional material and contextualizing it all with a 100-page book offering a range of perspectives and a wealth of photographs. Featuring the outstanding bassist Richard Davis and the recording debt of trumpeter Woody Shaw, it’s out on 3LP for RSD Black Friday. ..."
The Vinyl District
Pitchfork
Discogs (Video)
amazon
YouTube: Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Studio Sessions (The Story)

2013 August: Out to Lunch! (1964), 2015 November: Eric Dolphy His Life and Art, 2016 February: Outward Bound (1960), 2016 April: Straight Ahead - Oliver Nelson With Eric Dolphy (1961), 2017 April: Far Cry (1960)

In Praise of Painting: Dutch Masterpieces at The Met

"Dutch paintings of the 17th century—the Golden Age of Rembrandt, Hals, and Vermeer—have been a highlight of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection since the Museum's founding purchase in 1871. Opening October 16, the exhibition In Praise of Painting: Dutch Masterpieces at The Met will bring together some of the Museum’s greatest paintings to present this remarkable chapter of art history in a new light. Through 67 works drawn exclusively from The Met’s permanent collection and organized thematically, the exhibition will orient visitors to key issues in 17th-century Dutch culture—from debates about religion and conspicuous consumption to painters’ fascination with the domestic lives of women. ..."
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art: In Praise of Painting: Dutch Masterpieces (Video)

Wheat Fields, Jacob van Ruisdael (1628/29–1682), circa 1670.

Sartoris - William Faulkner (1929)

"Sartoris is a novel, first published in 1929, by the American author William Faulkner. It portrays the decay of the Mississippi aristocracy following the social upheaval of the American Civil War. The 1929 edition is an abridged version of Faulkner's original work. The full text was published in 1973 as Flags in the Dust. Faulkner's great-grandfather William Clark Falkner, himself a colonel in the American Civil War, served as the model for Colonel John Sartoris. Faulkner also fashioned other characters in the book on local people from his hometown Oxford. His friend Ben Wasson was the model for Horace Benbow, while Faulkner's brother Murry served as the antetype for young Bayard Sartoris. ... In the autumn or winter of 1926, William Faulkner, twenty-nine, began work on the first of his novels about Yoknapatawpha County. ..."
Wikipedia
William Faulkner: Novels, 1926 - 1929
Internet Archive: Sartoris
amazon

2011 September: Southern Gothic, 2014 February: William Faulkner, 2015 October: William Faulkner Draws Maps of Yoknapatawpha County, the Fictional Home of His Great Novels, 2015 November: Interviews William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12, 2016 April: Absalom, Absalom!! (1936), 2016 May: The Sound and the Fury (1929), 2016 October: The Snopes Trilogy (1940, 1957, 1959), 2016 December: Light in August (1932), 2017 February: As I Lay Dying (1930), 2017 June: The Wild Palms (1939), 2017 August: Sanctuary (1931). 2017 September: The Unvanquished (1938), 2017 October: 20 Pieces of Writing Advice from William Faulkner, 2017 November: Yoknapatawpha County, 2018 February: Go Down, Moses (1942), 2018 June: Flags in the Dust (1973)

What Happened to the West Village?

"I arrived in New York in 2013 and moved into a rent-stabilized apartment on a prime stretch of Bank Street in the West Village. My circumstances suggested time travel: the cracking plaster on my living room walls and my monthly rent had barely been altered since the early Eighties. From my rear window, I gazed at the privacy-glass panes enclosing the four-story townhouse next door, formerly owned by A-Rod. I dropped downstairs to Little Marc Jacobs—the brand’s now-closed children’s clothing outpost, then in my building’s ground-floor—to pick up babysitting jobs with the store’s customers, later finding myself in the living rooms of their nearby townhouses, worth millions. ..."
NYBooks

Best Fania Samples: 20 Latin Grooves That Helped Build Hip-Hop

"From its earliest days in the late 70s, hip-hop has relied on recycling old beats to make fresh sounds. Initially, DJs used two turntables to mix different records together, but in the early 80s, when the first samplers became commercially available, hip-hop artists began to loop short segments taken from vinyl records – a funky drum beat or a horn lick – and use them as foundations for making new music. While many producers plundered James Brown’s back catalogue for samples, the legendary New York Latin label, Fania, also proved a sampling gold mine, and the best Fania samples, from salsa music to boogaloo, are as essential to hip-hop history as any soul and funk records. ..."
udiscover (Video)

2011 November: Charlie Palmieri, 2014 March: Harlem River Drive - Harlem River Drive (1971), 2014 October: Fania at Fifty, 2017 December: Nu Yorica: Culture Clash In New York City - Experiments in Latin Music 1970-77, 2018 December: Latin Underground Revolution: Swinging Boogaloo, Guaguanco, Salsa & Latin Funk from New York City 1967-1978, 2017 June: Eddie Palmieri - Unfinished Masterpiece (1976), 2018 July: The Soul Of Spanish Harlem / El Barrio: Sounds from the Spanish Harlem Streets, 2011 June: Mario Bauzá, 2017 June: Rhythm & Power: Salsa in New York, 2012 February: Rubén Blades, 2017 December: Carlos Vera: Barcelona's Boogaloo: Mixes and Mashups, 2019 April: An NYC Mambo, Boogaloo and Salsa Family Tree

A City Transformed: Photographs of Paris, 1850-1900

Charles Marville, French, 1816–1879,  Place et rue de l’École Polytechnique, from rue Descartes, 1865–69
"Paris transformed into the 'City of Light' through grand-scale architectural renovations, demolitions, and new construction set in motion during the Second Empire (1852–70). With absolute power, Emperor Napoleon III remapped the French capital from the ground up, appointing civil servant Georges-Eugène Haussmann to redesign Paris toward improved safety, public health and sanitation, and traffic circulation. A self-described artiste démolisseur (demolition artist), Haussmann razed densely settled areas of the medieval city center, its labyrinthine streets rapidly giving way to new axes of orderly, wide boulevards anchored by monuments and open spaces for recreation. ..."
The Clark
The Clark: Map of Paris, 1890

Garnier frères, Nouveau Paris monumental. Itinéraire pratique de l'étranger dans Paris (detail), 1890.

Treasures in the Trash: A Secret Museum Inside a New York City Department of Sanitation Garage

"Like many New Yorkers, retired sanitation worker Nelson Molina has a keen interest in his fellow citizens' discards. But whereas others risk bedbugs for the occasional curbside score or dumpster dive as an enviro-political act, Molina’s interest is couched in the curatorial. The bulk of his collection was amassed between 1981 and 2015, while he was on active duty in Carnegie Hill and East Harlem, collecting garbage in an area bordered by 96th Street, Fifth Avenue, 106th Street, and First Avenue. At the end of every shift, he stashed the day’s finds at the garage. ..."
Open Culture (Video)