Artist Ed Ruscha Reads From Jack Kerouac’s On the Road in a Short Film Celebrating His 1966 Photos of the Sunset Strip

"In 1956, the Pop artist Ed Ruscha left Oklahoma City for Los Angeles. 'I could see I was just born for the job' of an artist, he would later say, 'born to watch paint dry.' The comment encapsulates Ruscha’s ironic use of cliché as a centerpiece of his work. He called himself an 'abstract artist… who deals with subject matter.' Much of his subject matter has been commonplace words and phrases—decontextualized and foregrounded in paintings and prints made with careful deliberation, against the trend toward Abstract Expressionism and its gestural freedom. Another of Ruscha’s subjects comes with somewhat less conceptual baggage.  ..."
Open Curture (Video)
vimeo: Staff Pick Premiere: A Getty-commissioned short by Matthew Miller (Video)
Ruscha’s “Every Building on the Sunset Strip”: Plotting a motorized city, paper route style
W - Ed Ruscha

Reality Is the Better Writer

"... The story, recounted in the preface to the novel, neatly captures the way fiction and reportage were constantly interwoven across the breadth of García Márquez’s career—the way oral traditions, legends, and popular memories and the evidence of his eyes and ears work to nourish and creatively enrich each other, often across many years. In fact, while his novels and stories may have won him global renown, journalism was his first calling. Not only was it foundational to his development as a writer, but it also remained integral to his work and public persona throughout his life, from his early days as a cub reporter in Colombia until his death in Mexico in 2014. ..."
The Nation
7 Writing Lessons from Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Gabriel Garcia Marquez is immortalized by The University of Texas at Austin

Pasaporte de Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1969-1976.

2018 May: Latin American Boom, 2017 December: New Gabriel García Márquez Digital Archive Features...

Reading Across America: A Scene Grows in Queens

"Queens’ artistic claims in the realm of music are well known, from the Ramones and Run-DMC to Louis Armstrong and Steinway pianos, but Brooklyn is the NYC borough most often thought of as the home of writers and book enthusiasts. With the spotlight on Brooklyn, many people forget that its almost equally populous neighbor to the north has some great literary chops of its own—and with many artists getting priced out of Brooklyn, more writers are moving to Queens every year. In my opinion, Queens has been undervalued as a literary hotbed, and shortly after I moved there several years ago I decided to do something about it. I have always loved the idea of hosting a reading series. ..."
LitHub
Evolving Ethnic Settlements in Queens: Historical and Current Forces Reshaping Human Geography
Long Island City Photos
The Brief, Baffling Life of an Accidental New York Neighborhood
Woodhaven, Queens: Accessible and Affordable

Woodhaven, Queens

2012 August: Springfield Gardens, Queens, 2017 May: The Queens landscape by Frank Gohlke and Joel Sternfeld, 2017 June: Saving Queens’ Secret Wetlands, 2018 April: Corona Is Queens’ Cultural Smorgasbord, 2018 April: The Many Languages (and Foods) of Jackson Heights, 2019 October: Your Guide to Jamaica: Queens’ First, Bustling Downtown

Impulse For Change: The Story Of Impulse! Records

"Founded in 1961 by Creed Taylor, Impulse! Records is regarded as one of the most important and iconic record labels in jazz. Its history is rich with pioneering musicians who refused to sit still, pushing musical boundaries and creating a discography that’s the equal of any other major jazz record label. One man looms large in Impulse! Records’ history: John Coltrane. ... Certainly, Coltrane, who stayed with Impulse! until his death in 1967, was hugely influential and his presence was a key factor in attracting some of the leading protagonists of jazz’s avant-garde movement (namely Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Michael White and Alice Coltrane) to join the roster of what was, in essence, a major label. And yet if you examine the Impulse! Records story in finer detail, you’ll find that, despite its forward-looking motto, 'The New Wave Of Jazz Is On Impulse!', it was a record label that also honoured the idiom’s old guard. ..."
udiscover (Audio/Video)

Tintin

"Tintin (/ˈtɪntɪn/; French: [tɛ̃tɛ̃]) is the titular protagonist of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. He is a reporter and adventurer who travels around the world with his dog Snowy. The character was created in 1929 and introduced in Le Petit Vingtième, a weekly youth supplement to the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle. He appears as a young man, around 14 to 19 years old with a round face and quiff hairstyle. Tintin has a sharp intellect, can defend himself, and is honest, decent, compassionate, and kind. Through his investigative reporting, quick-thinking, and all-around good nature, Tintin is always able to solve the mystery and complete the adventure...."
Wikipedia
The Atlantic: Coming to Terms With Tintin
FT: Tintin and the war
Guardian: How could they do this to Tintin?

2008 May: Georges Remi, 1907-1983, 2010 July: The Adventures of Tintin: Breaking Free, 2011 December: Prisoners of the Sun, 2012 January: Tintin: the Complete Companion, 2012 December: Snowy, 2015 August: The Black Island (1937), 2015 September: King Ottokar's Sceptre (1938), 2015 December: Red Rackham's Treasure (1943), 2016 July: Captain Haddock, 2017 April: Cigars of the Pharaoh (1934), 2018 March: Destination Moon (1950), Explorers on the Moon (1954), 2018 July: The Calculus Affair (1956), 2018 October: Professor Calculus, 2019 March: Thomson and Thompson

Massacre – Killing Time (1981)

“Spittle Records present an expanded reissue of Massacre‘s Killing Time, originally released in 1981. Following the breakup of Cambridge’s avant-rock legends, Henry Cow, guitarist Fred Frith moved to NYC in 1979, and soon found himself deep in the heart of the city’s robust post-punk and free-jazz scenes. He performed with Bill Laswell and Fred Maher, from the group Material, as a power trio of sorts under the moniker of Massacre. The group quickly garnered a reputation around town, and around the world for that matter, as a heavy and heady band that experimented greatly with rhythm, time signatures, and tone. As Frith himself put it, ‘the group was a direct response to New York. It was a very aggressive group, kind of my reaction to the whole New York rock club scene.’ …”
Forced Exposure
W – Killing Time
YouTube:Killing Time [full album]

A Cultural History of the Potato as Earth Apple

October, by Jules Bastien-Lepage (1878).
"The etymology of the word ‘apple’ takes us back to the Early Middle Ages, when it appeared in various related forms across the Germanic languages: as ‘apful’/’aphul’ or ‘apfel’/’aphel’ in Old High German, ‘appel’ in Old Frisian, ‘appul’ in Old Saxon, ‘epli’ in Old Icelandic, ‘æplæ’ or ‘æpæl’ in Old Danish, and so on. At the time, the word referred sometimes to the fruit we call ‘apple’ today; occasionally to the pomegranate; but often it referred broadly to any round fruit which happened to grow on a tree. In Old High German, and on into Old English and Middle Dutch, the term ‘earth apple’ (‘erdaphul’, ‘eorðæpla’, ‘erdappel’) came to be used to refer – in addition to the mandrake and cyclamen plants – to types of cucumber and melon. ‘Eorðæpla’ appears in this context, for instance, in the Old English Hexateuch: the earliest English manuscript of the first six books of the Old Testament, which contains more than 400 illustrations, and dates from the middle of the 11th century. ..."
culturedarm
Smithsonian: How the Potato Changed the World
W - Potato

Still Life: Potatoes in a Yellow Dish, by Vincent van Gogh (1888).

Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? - Linda Nochlin (1971)

"'Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?' is a 1971 essay by American art historian Linda Nochlin. It is considered a pioneering essay for both feminist art history and feminist art theory. In this essay, Nochlin explores the institutional – as opposed to the individual – obstacles that have prevented women in the West from succeeding in the arts. She divides her argument into several sections, the first of which takes on the assumptions implicit in the essay's title, followed by 'The Question of the Nude,' 'The Lady's Accomplishment,' 'Successes,' and 'Rosa Bonheur.' In her introduction, she acknowledges "the recent upsurge of feminist activity" in America as a condition for her interrogation of the ideological foundations of art history, while also invoking John Stuart Mill's suggestion that 'we tend to accept whatever is as natural'. ..."
Wikipedia
Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? - Linda Nochlin (January 1971 issue of ARTnews)
An Illustrated Guide to Linda Nochlin’s “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”
Linda Nochlin Explores the Role of Women in the Arts in a Previously Unaired Interview
W - Linda Nochlin

At the Heart of France’s Long Strikes, a Fight Between the Haves and the Have-Nots

Protesters marching near the Gare de Lyon train station in Paris this week.

"PARIS — A bright red tapestry featuring the Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara over the words 'Onward toward victory!' exhorts strikers not to give up, in the union’s dingy local headquarters. Outside, the local’s boss shouted through a megaphone at the Gare de Lyon train station: 'The rich should never forget: There will always be the sweat of the poor on their money!' The transportation strike against the French government’s pension overhaul plan is already the longest in the country’s history. As it entered its sixth week on Thursday, thousands of protesters again took to the streets all over France. Who stands to gain and lose in the pensions overhaul demanded by President Emmanuel Macron is debated every day. Nobody agrees on the details. ..."

NY Times

Support for the strike, which was initially high, is waning.

Wanted: A Home for Three Million Records

A small selection of the massive analog holdings of the archive.
"In a part of Manhattan booming with trendy green high rises, renovated lofts and digital media companies, a hidden trove of musical relics has been growing for over 30 years. Housed in a nondescript building in TriBeCa is the Archive of Contemporary Music, a nonprofit founded in 1985. It is one of the world’s largest collections of popular music, with more than three million recordings, as well as music books, vintage memorabilia and press kits. For point of comparison, the Library of Congress estimates that it also holds nearly three million sound recordings. ..."
NY Times
W - B. George, W - ARChive of Contemporary Music
The ARChive of Contemporary Music
amazon: Volume: International Discography of the New Wave, International New Wave Discography (Volume-International Discography of the New Wave)

Ivan Turgenev - First Love (1860)

"Ivan Turgenev’s 1860 novella charts the course of a 16-year old boy’s infatuation with the princess next door in the summer of 1833, while on holiday at the family dacha just outside Moscow. What could have been trite, in Turgenev’s hands achieves universal significance as he depicts the powerful emotions experienced by someone who is leaving childhood behind and entering the world of adult relationships, with all their joys and heartbreaks. The title suggests a light summer romance of the ‘old enough to know better, young enough not to care’ variety, but Turgenev instead delivers a powerful dissection of the infatuations of youth. ..."
The Joy of Mere Words
W - First Love (novella), W - Ivan Turgenev
Genius

Light and Shadow: The Story of Hector Zazou

"It was September 8, 2008. Somewhere between the dying moments of the night and the early morning hours, Pierre Job, who most of his colleagues and friends called Hector Zazou, 'Zaz,' or 'Zazou,' passed away at the age of 60. He was a musician, producer, director, journalist and activist. Worldly, idealistic, intellectual and a dreamer. Autumnal, tormented, pragmatic... A father, friend and enemy, he was a man of elusive dualities. Given the quantity of undeveloped works he left behind him, he probably still had plenty to say. ... A mutant discography unlike any other, notable for its catalog of collaborators: Brian Eno, Harold Budd, Asia Argento, Fred Frith, Henry Kaiser, John Cale, Marc Hollander, Papa Wemba, Björk, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jon Hassell, Gerard Depardieu, Bill Laswell. ..."
Red Bull Music Academy (Video)

2008 September: Hector Zazou, 2011 December: Sahara Blue, 2015 November: Chansons des mers froides (1994)

Artist in Exile: The Visual Diary of Baroness Hyde de Neuville

“Corner of Greenwich Street” (1810)
"Self-taught and ahead of her time, Anne Marguérite Joséphine Henriette Rouillé de Marigny, Baroness Hyde de Neuville (1771–1849) was the first woman artist in America to leave a substantial body of work. Granted exile by Napoleon, she first made her mark in New York City and later Washington, D.C., and her art celebrates the people and scenes of the early American republic, documenting the young country’s history, culture, and diverse population. Neuville’s status as a woman and an outsider made her an astute observer of people from varied backgrounds, and her work documents such significant figures as one of the first visitors to America from China and the earliest accurate portrayals of Indigenous Americans. The first serious consideration of her life and art, this exhibition showcases 114 watercolors and drawings by Neuville, including many that were recently discovered. A scholarly catalogue accompanies the exhibition and is available for purchase in the NYHistory Store. ..."
New-York Historical Society
Woman of the World
W - Anne Marguerite Hyde de Neuville
amazon

Break’s Bridge, Palatine, New York, 1808.

How Qassim Suleimani Wielded His Enormous Power in Iraq

"In the four decades since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, few Iranian leaders have achieved the global profile attained by Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the military commander killed in an American airstrike on Thursday. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Suleimani emerged as the United States’s most capable adversary in that country. His American counterpart at a key point during the occupation, Gen. David Petraeus, described Suleimani as 'a truly evil figure' in a letter to Robert Gates, then the U.S. defense secretary. Over the years, Suleimani gained a reputation as a fearsome military leader who controlled a network of ideologically driven militia proxies across the Middle East. A more nuanced portrait of Suleimani emerges from a leaked archive of secret Iranian spy cables obtained by The Intercept_...."
The Intercept_

2019 March: ISIS Caliphate Crumbles as Last Village in Syria Falls ++, 2019 November: The Iran Cables, 2020 January: Iran Vows ‘Forceful Revenge’ After U.S. Kills General, 2020 January: Iran Loses Its Indispensable Man

John Coltrane’s Handwritten Outline for His Masterpiece A Love Supreme

"Today we present a rare document from the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History: Coltrane's handwritten outline of his groundbreaking jazz composition A Love Supreme. Recorded in December of 1964 and released in 1965, A Love Supreme is Coltrane's personal declaration of his faith in God and his awareness of being on a spiritual path. 'No road is an easy one,' writes Coltrane in a prayer at the bottom of his own liner notes for the album, 'but they all go back to God.' If you click the image above and examine a larger copy of the manuscript, you will notice that Coltrane has written the same sentiment at the bottom of the page. "All paths lead to God." The piece is made up of a progression of four suites. ..."
Open Culture (Audio)

2011 November: John Coltrane Quartet, Live at Jazz Casual, 1963, 2012 March: John Coltrane 1960 - 1965, 2012 September: "Naima" (1959), 2012 October: Blue Train (1957), 2013 April: The World According to John Coltrane, 2013 November: A Love Supreme (1965), 2014 July: New Photos of John Coltrane Rediscovered 50 Years After They Were Shot, 2014 November: Coltrane’s Free Jazz Wasn’t Just “A Lot of Noise”, 2015 February: Lush Life (1958), 2015 May: An Animated John Coltrane Explains His True Reason for Being: “I Want to Be a Force for Real Good”, 2015 July: Afro Blue Impressions (2013), 2015 September: Impressions of Coltrane, 2015 December: Giant Steps (1960), 2016 January: Crescent (1964), 2016 April: The Church of Saint John Coltrane, 2016 July: Soultrane (1958), 2016 December: Dakar (1957), 2017 July: The John Coltrane Record That Made Modern Music, 2017 October: Live at the Village Vanguard (1962), 2017 December: Interview: Archie Shepp on John Coltrane, the Blues and More, 2018 March: Cannonball Adderley Quintet in Chicago (1959), 2018 June: Lost John Coltrane Recording From 1963 Will Be Released at Last, 2018 July: Stream Online the Complete “Lost” John Coltrane Album, Both Directions at Once, 2018 November: Jazz Deconstructed: What Makes John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” So Groundbreaking and Radical?

Survey: Robert Crumb & 78 rpm records

"Cartoonist Robert Crumb is responsible for one of the greatest album covers of all time, Cheap Thrills, the debut album of 1960s musical icon Janis Joplin with her rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company. In 1967, Crumb founded the first successful underground comix publication, Zap Comix (which Janis Joplin herself was an avid reader of) in San Francisco, during the rise of the counterculture movement, the 'Summer of Love', and was considered a cult hero among the hippy community. Crumb himself actually had no interest in rock music at the time. His great love was towards music from the Jazz Age during the 1920s, including genres such as country, blues, jazz, jive, ragtime, and hillbilly. Crumb, who admired this style of music from a young age, is also known for being one of the world's leading collectors of 'SP records', which existed before the introduction of vinyl records (LP, EP). ..."
visvim
Red Bull Music Academy (Video)
Open Culture: R. Crumb’s Vibrant, Over-the-Top Album Covers (1968-2004)

2008 August: Robert Crumb, 2010 October: Comics No. 1, 2011 October: Pioneers of Country Music Trading Cards, 2012 August: R. Crumb: The Complete Record Cover Collection, 2015 May: R. Crumb Describes How He Dropped LSD in the 60s & Instantly Discovered His Artistic Style, 2015 June: Heroes of the Blues Boxed Trading Card Set by R. Crumb, 2018 March: Aline Kominsky-Crumb, 2019 March:R. Crumb’s Portraits of Aline and Others

How to Buy? Say You’ll Sell.

Erling Braut Haaland and Salzburg fans enjoyed a torrid, if brief, romance.
"Takumi Minamino was the first of Red Bull Salzburg’s prized assets to go, snaffled up by Liverpool almost as a souvenir of the European champion’s winter visit to Austria. Erling Braut Haaland took a little longer. According to his agent, a dozen clubs had been pursuing Haaland, the 19-year-old Norwegian striker. including Manchester United and Juventus. Haaland took time to consider each and every one before deciding, in those drifting, dozing days between Christmas and New Year’s Day, to join Borussia Dortmund. For Salzburg, the departures of Minamino and Haaland will be bittersweet. ..."
NY Times

An East Side apartment house’s Medieval touches

"If the Cloisters is your kind of art museum, then the eight-story building at 40 East 62nd Street is probably your kind of apartment house. Built in 1911—right about when this block between Park and Madison Avenues was transitioning from a stretch of single-family homes and horse stables—it takes its cues from a Medieval castle. 'Designed by Albert J. Bodker, it is a startling work, a Medieval-style tapestry of brick and glazed terra cotta, with an ebulliently ornamental parapet and vertical bays of windows to light the parlors,' wrote Christopher Gray in a 2006 New York Times piece. Fierce griffins, foliage, a pointed-arch entrance, battlements, and shields make the building seem like it belongs in Middle Ages, according to the Upper East Side Historic District Designation Report from 1981. ..."
Ephemeral New York

Iran Loses Its Indispensable Man

Protesters in Seattle on Saturday after the airstrike on Friday that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani of Iran.
"The United States has killed Major General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s Quds Force. The United States is now in a hot war with Iran after having waged war via proxies for the past several decades. This doesn’t mean war, it will not lead to war, and it doesn’t risk war. None of that. It is war. I don’t claim to be an expert on Iran—when I served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Middle East policy, I used to remind my Iran team at the Pentagon that my regional expertise ended at the Shatt al-Arab waterway that divides Iraq and Iran, and with them, the Arabic- and Farsi-speaking regions of the Middle East. ..."
The Atlantic
NY Times: Opinion - Congress, Stop President Trump’s Rush to War With Iran
The Nation: Who Will Stop Trump’s War on Iran?
The Atlantic: The Embassy Attack Revealed Trump’s Weakness

Persian Love - Holger Czukay (1979)

"In 1977 Holger Czukay left Can, the band he was part of since its inception in 1968. After acting as the bass player for the band on the classic albums they released in the beginning of the 70s, he moved to a role similar to Brian Eno’s on Roxy Music’s first albums, manipulating tapes and producing sounds via short wave radios and other sources. In 1978 he labored on an album that immediately upon its release in 1979 became a hugely influential recording for many artists due to its unique use of sampling. The art of sampling in musical recordings existed long before Holger Czukay recorded the album Movies, on which the addictive Persian Love appears. ..."
The Music Aficionado (Video)
Granta
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Persian love, Cool In The Pool

2011 September: Can, 2011 February: Plight & Premonition, 2013 October: Flux + Mutability - David Sylvian and Holger Czukay (1989) , 2014 June: Holger Czukay - Der Osten Ist Rot, Rome Remains Rome (1984/7), 2016 March: Invaders Of The Heart - Jah Wobble (1982), 2017 April: Jah Wobble, The Edge, Holger Czukay - Snake Charmer (1983), 2017 June: The Legend Lives On… Jah Wobble In Betrayal (1980), 2017 July: Can - The Singles (2017), 2017 September: Holger Czukay (1938-2017), 2019 September: Cinema (2018)

Iran Vows ‘Forceful Revenge’ After U.S. Kills General

President Trump authorized the attack early Friday at Baghdad International Airport that killed Iran’s top security and intelligence commander, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.
"Around the time that an overnight airstrike killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, a deployment of the elite Army Rangers based in the United States boarded transport aircraft bound for the Middle East on Thursday night, a Pentagon official said. This week, the Defense Department readied 4,000 paratroopers based at Fort Bragg, N.C., for a similar security mission to Kuwait, 750 of which have already deployed. General Suleimani, a powerful strategist who represented Iran’s influence across the region, was killed by an American drone at Baghdad’s airport, in an attack that had been authorized by President Trump and that ratcheted up tensions between Washington and Tehran. Iran’s leaders quickly promised retaliation for the general’s killing. Iraq’s Parliament planned to hold an emergency session over the weekend to address the airstrike, which Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi called 'a brazen violation of Iraq’s sovereignty and a blatant attack on the nation’s dignity.' ..."
NY Times (Video)
NY Times: Qassim Suleimani, Master of Iran’s Intrigue, Built a Shiite Axis of Power in Mideast (Video)
NY Times - Maps: How the Confrontation Between the U.S. and Iran Escalated
BBC - Qasem Soleimani: Iran vows 'severe revenge' for top general's death (Video)
CBS: Iran vows revenge for U.S. killing of top commander Qassem Soleimani (Video)
Telegraph - Iran vows 'severe vengeance' after US takes out top general Qassim Soleimani in Baghdad airstrike (Video)
W - Qassim Suleimani

Snow at Argenteuil - Claude Monet (1874–1875)

"Snow at Argenteuil (French: Rue sous la neige, Argenteuil) is an oil-on-canvas landscape painting from the Impressionist artist Claude Monet. It is the largest of no fewer than eighteen works Monet painted of his home commune of Argenteuil while it was under a blanket of snow during the winter of 1874–1875. This painting—number 352 in Wildenstein’s catalogue of the works of Monet—is the largest of the eighteen. The attention to detail evident in the smaller paintings is less evident in this larger picture. Instead, Monet has rendered large areas of the canvas in closely like tones and colours of blue and grey. The application of smaller strokes of greens, yellows, reds and darker blues breaks up these large expanses, and the almost choreographed dispersal of these various colours helps bind the picture together. Paint at the depicted road surface is thicker than elsewhere in the painting, and impasto is suggestive of the feel of disturbed snow. ..."
Wikipedia
The National Gallery

Feminism in Latin America

Ecuador, supporters of a proposed reform to the country’s abortion laws rallied around the slogan “niñas no madres” (girls not mothers).
"Feminism in Latin America is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and achieving equal political, economic, cultural, personal, and social rights for Latin American women. This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment. Those who practice feminism by advocating or supporting the rights and equality of women are called feminists. Latin American Feminism exists in the context of centuries of colonialism, the transportation and subjugation of slaves from Africa, and mistreatment of native people. The origins of Latin American Feminism can be traced back to the 1960s and 1970s social movements where it encompasses the women’s liberation movement, but prior feminist ideas have expanded before there were written records. With various regions in Latin America and the Caribbean, the definition of feminism varies across different groups where there has been cultural, political, and social involvement. The emergence of Latin American feminism movement is contributed to five key factors. ..."
Wikipedia
The Nation: This Was the Decade of Feminist Uprisings in Latin America
5 Feminist Murals From Across Latin America

This mural adds a pop of Latina sentiment to traditional feminist iconography.

The (Quiet) Death of a Legendary Parisian Bookstore

"When it was announced that the legendary bookshop Le Pont Traversé would definitely close down on the 31st of December in Paris, many French TV stations put in phone calls and tried to convince Josée Comte-Béalu to do a filmed interview. She refused every single one of them.'They are like vultures,' she said on a recent afternoon, while Paris was paralyzed by an unrelenting general strike and suspended public transportation. Her carefully cluttered bookshop was unusually calm, and Josée took advantage of the quiet moment to attach a price tag to her opaline glass chandelier—a rare early 20th century piece, now for sale along with the rest of her 11,000 books. ..."
LitHub
The Old Butcher’s Bookshop, Paris

Hemingway Triumphant: Portrait of the Artist as a Great Man by Mario Vargas Llosa

"March, 1986. When Borges wrote that the novelists of the United States had made a literary virtue of brutality, he no doubt had Hemingway in mind. Not only because there is so much violence in Hem­ingway’s novels but because in perhaps no other modern writer do physical prowess, courage, brute force, and the spirit of destruction achieve the same dignity. In Hemingway, to suffer or to cause suffering is not an unfortunate fatality of the human condition: It is the test through which man transcends his miserable circum­stances and wins moral greatness. He was, unquestionably, a great writer. The proof is that he is still alive as a novelist even though his values have been discredited. There is an instructive paradox in this. ..."
Voice

2012 June: "The Spanish Earth", Written and Narrated by Ernest Hemingway, 2014 November: Lost Generation, 2015 September: Ernest Hemingway: Between Two Wars, 2017 February: In Our Time (1925), 2018 May: The Greatest Refreshment By Janet Flanner, 2019 February: 10 Books That Capture Paris In The 1920s

War of the League of Cambrai

Northern Italy in 1494; by the start of the war in 1508, Louis XII had expelled the Sforza from the Duchy of Milan and added its territory to France.
"The War of the League of Cambrai, sometimes known as the War of the Holy League and by several other names, was a major conflict in the Italian Wars of 1494–1559. The main participants of the war, fought from 1508 to 1516, were France, the Papal States and the Republic of Venice, joined at various times by nearly every significant power in Western Europe, including Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, England, the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of Florence, the Duchy of Ferrara and Swiss mercenaries. ... Under the leadership of Francis I, who had succeeded Louis on the throne of France, the French and Venetians would, through victory at Marignano in 1515, regain the territory they had lost; the treaties of Noyon and Brussels, which ended the war the next year, would essentially return the map of Italy to the status quo of 1508. ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: The 15th Century - Prelude to the Italian Wars 1., The Kingdom of Naples - Prelude to the Italian Wars 2., The Battle of Fornovo 1495 - The Italian Wars 3., The Battle of Cerignola 1503 & The Battle of Garigliano - The Italian Wars 4., The Battle of Agnadello 1509 - War of the League of Cambrai - The Italian Wars 5., The Battle of Ravenna 1512 - The Italian Wars 6, Battle of Novara 1513 and Battle of Marignano 1515 - Italian Wars 7., Battle of Bicocca 1522 and Battle of Sesia 1524 - The Italian Wars 8., The Battle of Pavia 1525 - The Italian Wars 9.

In 1515, the Franco-Venetian alliance decisively defeated the Holy League at the Battle of Marignano.

Times Square Ball

Technicians eye the new improved New Years ball, with halogen lamps for greater visibility, in New York City in 1978.
"The Times Square Ball is a time ball located in New York City's Times Square. Located on the roof of One Times Square, the ball is a prominent part of a New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square commonly referred to as the ball drop, where the ball descends down a specially designed flagpole, beginning at 11:59:00 p.m. ET, and resting at midnight to signal the start of the new year. In recent years, the festivities have been preceded by live entertainment, including performances by musicians. ... The prevalence of the Times Square ball drop has inspired similar 'drops' at other local New Year's Eve events across the country; while some use balls, some instead drop objects that represent local culture or history. ..."
Wikipedia
Forbes - Countdown To 2020: How Waterford Crystal Designs The Iconic Ball For The Times Square New Year’s Eve Celebration
The Times Square Ball Drop is Epic. This is the Family Behind the New Year’s Tradition.
YouTube: New Year’s Eve 2020: Times Square Ball Is Ready for its Big Night | NBC New York

The giant numbers use a total of 618 9-watt energy-efficient LED bulbs, according to the Times Square Alliance.

What to See with Your New Telescope

See if you can identify these noteworthy features around the time of full Moon. Some of the most prominent craters display bright rays: splashes of impact debris.
"Maybe you just got a shiny new telescope to call your own. Congratulations — you could be on your way to discovering many amazing, far, deep things in the night sky. Although most of them are so far and faint that just locating and detecting them is the challenge! Whether your new scope is a long, sleek tube or a compact marvel of computerized wizardry, surely you're itching to try it out. 'Here are three crucial tips for getting started,' advises Alan MacRobert, a senior editor at Sky & Telescope magazine. ..."
Sky & Telescope
Sky & Telescope - Observing the Great Orion Nebula
Sky & Telescope - Binoculars for Astronomy: Ultimate Guide to Selecting and Buying
Sky & Telescope - Observing
***Sky & Telescope - The Best Meteor Showers in 2020

This chart shows where to find the Orion Nebula, in Orion's Sword below the trio of stars forming Orion's Belt. Only the brightest stars (the largest dots) on this chart are readily visible to the unaided eye.

The Musical Legacy of Amiri Baraka

It’s Nation Time - African Visionary Music (1972
"January 2017 marked the third anniversary of the death of poet, activist, playwright and music historian Amiri Baraka, formerly known as LeRoi Jones. For nearly five decades, Baraka stood as a critical figure in black art and literature, helping to lay the groundwork for a radical black aesthetic whose influence has seeped into hip-hop, black theater and spoken word. The central thesis in Baraka’s work was the idea that the history of the black experience in America could be traced through the changes and new developments in black music. In an interview with late NAACP chairman Julian Bond, Baraka laid out his belief that 'Where the music goes, that’s where the people go. The music reflects the people.' ..."
Red Bull Music Academy (Video)
W - Amiri Baraka

Eliane Radigue ‎– Songs Of Milarepa (1992)

"Performed (Arp synthesizer) and recorded by Eliane Radigue; Robert Ashley, English voice; Lama Kunga Rinpoche, Tibetan voice. Double CD of all 5 of Radigue's songs in tribute to the Tibetan saint and poet from the eleventh century. Two of the tracks date from an 1983 LP (Radigue's first release), two are previously unreleased and the final 62-minute track was previously issued as a sole CD in 1987. The material is performed by Radigue (synthesizer and recording), Robert Ashley (English voice) and Lama Kunga Rinpoche (Tibetan voice). Radigue was born in France and has studied under Pierre Shaeffer and Pierre Henry; her musical has an extremely organic and mystical electronics vibe, and has been previously documented on Phill Niblock's XI label, as well as Metamkine and Lovely. Milarepa is a great saint and poet of Tibet who lived in the 11th Century. ..."
Lovely
Lovely: Album Notes
Discogs (Video)
amazon
vimeo: Songs of Mirapela

2018 May: Trilogie de la Mort (1988-1993), 2018 October: The Deeply Meditative Electronic Music of Avant-Garde Composer Eliane Radigue, 2019 February: Adnos I-III, 2019 May: Occam Ocean, Vol. 1 (2017)