Native American Hand Talkers Fight to Keep Sign Language Alive


Detail of portrait of Shoshoni Chief Tendoi Demonstrating Sign Language.
"In early September 1930, the Blackfeet Nation of Montana hosted a historic Indian Sign Language Grand Council, gathering leaders of a dozen North American Nations and language groups. The three-day council held was organized by Hugh L. Scott, a 77-year-old U.S. Army General who had spent a good portion of his career in the American West, where he observed and learned what users called Hand Talk, and what is today more broadly known as Plains Indian Sign Language (PISL). With $5,000 in federal funding, Scott filmed the proceedings and hoped to produce a film dictionary of more than 1,300 signs. He died before he could finish the project. Scott’s films disappeared into the National Archives. Recently rediscovered, they are an important resource for those looking to revitalize PISL. Among them is Ron Garritson, who identifies himself as being of Choctaw and European heritage. He was raised in Billings, Montana, near the Crow Nation. ..."
VOA (Video)
A Sign Language of the Plains Indians – Part 1
North American languages map before European contact
W - Plains Indian Sign Language
Fighting to Save Indigenous Sign Languages

2011 July: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Dee Brown, 2012 September: The Ghost Dance, 2016 September: A History and Future of Resistance, 2016 November: Dakota Access Pipeline protests, 2016 December: Police Violence Against Native Americans Goes Far Beyond Standing Rock, 2016 December: Dakota Protesters Say Belle Fourche Oil Spill 'Validates Struggle', 2017 January: A Murky Legal Mess at Standing Rock, 2017 January: Trump's Move On Keystone XL, Dakota Access Outrages Activists, 2017 February: Army veterans return to Standing Rock to form a human shield against police, 2017 February: Standing Rock is burning – but our resistance isn't over, 2017 March: Dakota Access pipeline could open next week after activists face final court loss, 2017 April: The Conflicts Along 1,172 Miles of the Dakota Access Pipeline, 2017 May: 'Those are our Eiffel Towers, our pyramids': Why Standing Rock is about much more than oil, 2017 June: Dakota pipeline protesters won a small victory in court. We must fight on, 2018 February: PHOTOS: Since Standing Rock, 56 Bills Have Been Introduced in 30 States to Restrict Protests, 2018 November: Dennis J. Banks, Naawakamig (1937-2017), 2018 April: The Next Standing Rock? A Pipeline Battle Looms in Oregon, 2018 October: Democrats, Don’t Take Native American Voters for Granted

'A pretence of justice': the global press on Trump's acquittal


"The international media were scathing in their verdict on Donald Trump’s acquittal in his Senate trial, portraying it as a bitter charade that would allow the president to continue his onslaught on American democracy – with potential global consequences. Germany’s Die Zeit said the outcome of the impeachment process was 'a triumph for Trump – not just over the Democrats, but over democracy'. The end of this 'historic yet absurd process' had made abundantly clear 'how seriously damaged the US political system now is', the paper said. ... France’s Libération said the curtain had fallen 'not before time' on a process that for the past fortnight had 'offered the American public, and the world, a desperate spectacle. A hollow pretence of justice, without testimony or an ounce of impartiality, it ended as expected – in the president’s acquittal.' ... In Australia, the Age warned of the wider consequences of the acquittal. 'Even taking into account Trump’s positives, his negatives – corruption, his reliance on lying, the numerous sexual assault allegations, his disregard for the spirit and letter of the law – are destructive for constitutional democracy,' it said. ... In the Netherlands, De Volkskrant’s Washington correspondent agreed, saying the outcome of the impeachment process was never in doubt: 'If it has made one thing very clear, it’s that he has the undivided support of his party – and that if he wins in November, he will be accountable only to himself.' ... Spain’s El País said this had been the most partisan impeachment process ever, with only a heroic Mitt Romney breaking party lines. ..."
Guardian
Guardian: Trump impeachment
NY Times: What Will Finally Defeat Donald Trump?
NY Times: In Private, Republicans Admit They Acquitted Trump Out of Fear
NY Times: Trump Impeachment Results: How Democrats and Republicans Voted (Video)

The 50 Best Chess Singles Of All Time


"How can anyone select the Top 50 best Chess Records singles and not upset at least a few devotees? Eliminating singles from among hundreds of worthy candidates from the entire Chess roster is bound to draw fire from fans. Honestly, you could easily find 50 legitimate classics solely from among the company’s biggest stars – Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Etta James. But owners Leonard and Phil Chess always thought broadly and looked to widen their music’s appeal. That’s clear from their history, which began with a focus on blues and jazz, moved to rock’n’roll and then to soul music as they reacted to changing public tastes while simultaneously advancing those tastes with groundbreaking releases. ..."
udiscover (Video)

Local Hero - Bill Forsyth (1983)


"IMDb, the movie site, says nothing about blubbing. No warning to keep the tissues at the ready. In fact, Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero (1983) is often described as a comedy. Quirky, wry, gentle. Those are the other words most commonly used. Weepy, no. And the storyline does not hint at the emotional turbulence you might soon be experiencing. So maybe it’s just me being a big sissy. Wouldn’t be the first time I lost the plot. Crackpot Texan oil magnate Felix Happer (Burt Lancaster) gets the idea that a small Scottish fishing village would be a marvellous acquisition for his so-rich-it-makes-you-sick company, Knox Oil and Gas, so he sends an executive gopher named MacIntyre (because that sounds Scottish, yeah – played by Peter Riegert) to close the deal and get the pipeline pencilled in. ..."
Guardian - The film that makes me cry: Local Hero
W - Local Hero
NY Times (1983)
amazon
YouTube: A Film In Three Minutes, Happer is a Motherfucker, Moments from Local Hero: The Lab

2014 July: Sweet Smell of Success (1957), 2018 December: 1900 - Bernardo Bertolucci (1976), 2018 December: Atlantic City - Louis Malle (1980)

Public Parks, Private Gardens: Paris to Provence - 1


"Following in the footsteps of nineteenth-century artists who celebrated the out-of-doors as a place of leisure, renewal, and inspiration, this exhibition explores horticultural developments that reshaped the landscape of France and grounded innovative movements—artistic and green—in an era that gave rise to Naturalism, Impressionism, and Art Nouveau. As shiploads of exotic botanical specimens arrived from abroad and local nurserymen pursued hybridization, the availability and variety of plants and flowers grew exponentially, as did the interest in them. The opening up of formerly royal properties and the transformation of Paris during the Second Empire into a city of tree-lined boulevards and parks introduced public green spaces to be enjoyed as open-air salons, while suburbanites and country-house dwellers were prompted to cultivate their own flower gardens. ... The important role of parks and gardens in French life during this period is richly illustrated by paintings, drawings, photographs, prints, illustrated books, and objects in The Met collection by artists extending from Camille Corot to Henri Matisse, many of whom were gardeners themselves. ..."
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Exhibition Galleries
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Related Videos (Video)
Habitually Chic
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Public Parks, Private Gardens: Paris to Provence


Impressionism

Claude Monet, Impression, soleil levant, 1872
"Impressionism is a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles. Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s. The Impressionists faced harsh opposition from the conventional art community in France. The name of the style derives from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satirical review published in the Parisian newspaper Le Charivari. The development of Impressionism in the visual arts was soon followed by analogous styles in other media that became known as impressionist music and impressionist literature. ..."
Wikipedia

Luncheon at the Boating Lake, Renoir, 1880-1

The Barbizon School: French Painters of Nature

Léon Richet, Les Arbres à Barbizon
"In early nineteenth-century France, landscape painting was narrowly circumscribed by an aesthetic code upheld by the conservative French Academy. Painters and sculptors were rigorously trained in the Neoclassical tradition to emulate artists of the Renaissance and classical antiquity. In the hierarchy of historical subjects recognized by the Academy, pure landscape painting was not a privilege. At best, artists could hope to paint an idealized nature inspired by ancient poetry. The grand classicizing subjects of the seventeenth-century painters Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain presented other acceptable models."
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
W - Barbizon school
Barbizon School of Landscape Painting
YouTube: Barbizon: The Cradle of Impressionism

Charles-Francois Daubigny, Cottages at Barbizon: Evening 1817 - 1878

Les Nabis

Maurice Denis, September Evening (Women Sitting on the Terrace), 1891
"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).

Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity

Left. Albert Bartholomé. In the Conservatory, c. 1881. Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Right. Summer dress worn by Madame Bartholomé in the painting In the Conservatory, French, 1880. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
"Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity presents a revealing look at the role of fashion in the works of the Impressionists and their contemporaries. Some eighty major figure paintings, seen in concert with period costumes, accessories, fashion plates, photographs, and popular prints, highlight the vital relationship between fashion and art during the pivotal years, from the mid-1860s to the mid-1880s, when Paris emerged as the style capital of the world. With the rise of the department store, the advent of ready-made wear, and the proliferation of fashion magazines, those at the forefront of the avant-garde — from Manet, Monet, and Renoir to Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Zola — turned a fresh eye to contemporary dress, embracing la mode as the harbinger of la modernité."
Metropolitan Museum
amazon: Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity
NYT: The Cross-Dressing of Art and Couture
NYT: The Fashion Show From the Belle Époque
YouTube: The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity

Frédéric Bazille and the Birth of Impressionism

"A scion of a Protestant upper-middle-class family from Montpellier in southern France, Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870) seemed destined for a career in medicine. In 1862 he traveled to Paris, ostensibly to pursue his medical studies, though he also enrolled as a student in the studio of the painter Charles Gleyre. It was there that he met fellow artists Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley, even sharing studio space with both Monet and Renoir at times. He soon became part of a dynamic circle of avant-garde artists and writers that included Édouard Manet, Henri Fantin-Latour, Émile Zola, and Zacharie Astruc. Like his friends, Bazille created paintings inspired by contemporary life that challenged the aesthetic conventions of the day and helped to lay the groundwork of impressionism. Unfortunately, Bazille was killed in battle during the Franco-Prussian War, just prior to his 29th birthday, bringing his promising career to an abrupt and tragic end. ..."
NGA
NGA (Audio)
Chong reviews Frederic Bazille and the Birth of Impressionism
amazon

How ‘West Side Story’ Was Reborn


Yesenia Ayala as Anita, with members of the Sharks.
"The new 'West Side Story' begins with nothingness: a huge black brick wall rising behind a cavernous blank stage. A group of young people enter, walking slowly, surveying the territory. They form a line at the lip of the stage and stare at the audience. ... This new staging originated several years ago in the mind of the director Ivo van Hove, who runs a major theater in Amsterdam and who has become, in recent years, a Broadway brand name, known for his bloody, irreverent interpretations of classics: 'A View From the Bridge' and 'The Crucible.' ... These first three minutes announce that if you have any expectations for 'West Side Story,' they should immediately be discarded. In the original 1957 production, the choreographer Jerome Robbins, who first conceptualized the musical, created a revolutionary prologue. ... When they finally agreed, van Hove enlisted the Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker — a rigorous formalist who directs Rosas, a celebrated dance company, but had never made movement for musical theater. ..."
NY Times

In van Hove and De Keersmaeker's reimagining of the classic balcony scene, Tony and Maria are pulled apart.

2009 July: Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, 2012 December: Rosas Danst Rosas (1983), 2013 September: Re : Rosas!, 2014 March: Maison Martin Margiela with H&M (2012), 2016 October: Vortex Temporum, 2017 March: Counter Phrases (2000), 2019 October: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker: Work/Travail/Arbeid

Andy Gill: Gang of Four's genius guitarist who burned a route out of punk


"Britain’s late 70s provincial punk scenes were seldom places for the faint-hearted, but few were as starkly polarised as that in Leeds. At one extreme, the city had a large National Front presence: Leeds has the dubious distinction of the giving the world its first openly Nazi punk bands, the Dentists and the Ventz. At the other, there were the bands spawned by the city’s university and the radical leftwing theory popular in its fine art department: the Mekons, Delta 5 and Gang of Four. The result was frequently chaos, “terrible violence”, as Gang of Four guitarist Andy Gill put it. There were pitched battles on the university campus and at the F Club, the city’s main punk venue. It’s tempting to say you could hear the tension in the way Gill played guitar. ..."
Guardian (Video)
Guardian - Damaged gods: Why Gang of Four were not the band I expected
Guardian - Andy Gill, influential guitarist with Gang of Four, dies aged 64 (Video)
NY Times: Andy Gill, Radical Guitarist With Gang of Four, Dies at 64
W - Andy Gill
YouTube: To Hell With Poverty (Live), He'd Send In The Army (Live), Damaged Goods (Live on Rockpalast, 1983), I Love A Man In Uniform (Live), Anthrax (Live 2-24-1979), Call Me Up - Live 1982, Paralyzed (Live on Rockpalast, 1983)

Strange Music Of Silence: Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet


"If the Portugese writer, Fernando Pessoa, would not have existed, he would have created himself, if only to negate and deconstruct the existence of a writer named Fernando Pessoa. As an invisible spokesperson for identity crisis, and forger of multiplicities, Pessoa had up to 136 alter-egos, what he called his 'heteronyms,' about which he said, 'They are beings with a sort-of-life-of-their-own, with feelings I do not have, and opinions I do not accept. While their writings are not mine, they do also happen to be mine.' These heteronyms existed in a Pessoa-spawned universe in which their lives sometimes overlapped, i.e., the criticism and translation of one-another’s work, and it wasn’t until 1982 that the bible of that universe, The Book of Disquiet, was first published. Originating as a fragmentary series of impressions, speculations, reveries, distillations and dream-speak, Pessoa’s unending work-in-progress was unified into the book he one day hoped it would become…forty-seven years after his death. ..."
Riot Material
Fernando Pessoa: A Freelancer in an Overcoat
W - Café A Brasileira
Tag Archives: Fernando Pessoa

Coffee house "A Brasileira", established in 1905, the year Pessoa returned to Lisbon.

2008 March: Fernando Pessoa, 2012 October: The Book of Disquiet, 2012 November: Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems, 2014 May: Aspects by Fernando Pessoa, 2016 March: Passoa's Trunk - 13+ ways of looking at a poem, 2017 September: Fernando Pessoa’s Disappearing Act

A Dishonorable Senate


"Alas, no one ever lost money betting on the cynicism of today’s congressional Republicans. On Friday evening, Republican senators voted in near lock step to block testimony from any new witnesses or the production of any new documents, a vote that was tantamount to an acquittal of the impeachment charges against President Trump. The move can only embolden the president to cheat in the 2020 election. The vote also brings the nation face to face with the reality that the Senate has become nothing more than an arena for the most base and brutal — and stupid — power politics. Faced with credible evidence that a president was abusing his powers, it would not muster the institutional self-respect to even investigate. ..."
NY Times
***NY Times: While Stained in History, Trump Will Emerge From Trial Triumphant and Unshackled
NY Times: Alexander Says Convicting Trump Would ‘Pour Gasoline on Cultural Fires’
W - Impeachment trial of Donald Trump, W - Impeachment of Donald Trump
It’s the Truth…
New Republic: The U.S. Senate Embraces Trumpian Nihilism
New Republic: The Panic of the Never Trumpers

Alfred Jarry: The Carnival of Being



"The subversive works and personality of the French writer Alfred Jarry (1873–1907) played a crucial role in the transition from the nineteenth-century avant-garde to the emergent modernist movements of the early twentieth century. An inspiration for Dada and Surrealism and a touchstone for the Theatre of the Absurd, Jarry is most renowned for his play Ubu roi and the legend of its sensational premiere in 1896. To his contemporaries, however—figures such as Paul Gauguin, Henri Rousseau, Oscar Wilde, and Guillaume Apollinaire—Jarry’s prestige extended beyond theater. He applied his genius to poetry, the novel, and operettas; he was a graphic artist, an actor, a puppeteer, a critic, and the inventor of an imaginary science called pataphysics. For Jarry, engagements with technology, popular imagery, and the performance of everyday life could constitute works of art. ..."
The Morgan Library & Museum
Alfred Jarry: The Carnival of Being
The Paris Review: Playwright, Puppeteer, Artist, Cyclist

Les minutes de sable mémorial (Paris: Mercure de France, 1894).

2011 April: The Insolent Eye: Jarry in Art, 2013 August: The Banquet Years of Apollinaire, Alfred Jarry, Henri Rousseau, and Erik Satie - Roger Shattuck, 2015 September: An Inglorious Slop-pail of a Play, 2019 November: Merrrrdrrrre!: Alfred Jarry and Père Ubu

Fantasy Island: Colonialism, Exploitation, and the Betrayal of Puerto Rico - Ed Morales (2019)


"Next week marks the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Maria ripping Puerto Rico apart, killing an estimated 3,000 people and wracking nearly $100 billion in damages on an island already suffering a deep financial crisis. ... [Governor Ricardo] Rosselló’s resignation and the massive protests surrounding it brought the bright spotlight of international media for a few weeks, before attention inevitably turned away. It was a familiar dynamic to freelance journalist and educator Ed Morales, who, in his new book Fantasy Island: Colonialism, Exploitation, and the Betrayal of Puerto Rico, explains how the island’s colonial status and the ways its economy was set up as a captive market for US corporations led to its modern day debt crisis and the neoliberal austerity measures that have followed. ..."
Mother Jones: How American Colonialism Put Puerto Rico in Crisis
NY Times - ‘It’s Not Full Citizenship’: What It Means to Be Puerto Rican Post-María
Latino Rebels: Welcome to Fantasy Island (Audio)
amazon
Voice: A Cartoon History of Colonialism in Puerto Rico

Voice: A Cartoon History of Colonialism in Puerto Rico

2017 December: Puerto Rico Sketchbook: The Artists with the Shovels, 2017 June: Rhythm & Power: Salsa in New York, 2018 January: Nuyorican, 2018 January: Meet the Puerto Ricans Who Fled to New York After Maria

The Latest on Betelgeuse, Plus a Bright Supernova and New Comet Iwamoto


Although Virgo is replete with galaxies, NGC 4636 will only take a little effort to find. It's located 5° NNE of Gamma () Virginis.
"The sky provides. This winter, the fading of Betelgeuse caught us all by surprise. Now, as January wraps up, we can add a new comet discovery and a supernova bright enough to see in a 6-inch telescope to an ever-growing list of seasonal sky wonders. As astronomers turned their spectrographs toward Betelgeuse, skywatchers from beginners to seasoned amateurs thrilled to see the red supergiant fade before their eyes. With a little help from Aldebaran and Bellatrix, which served as comparison stars, Betelgeuse made hundreds if not thousands of new variable star observers. ..."
Sky & Telescope

What a spectacle! Comet PanSTARRS passes through the outskirts of the Perseus Double Cluster on January 27th and remains near the starry duo all week.

When Pina Bausch Made Tanz Into Tanztheater


Marion Cito, left, with Jan Minarik, the original Bluebeard.
"WUPPERTAL, Germany — The dancers lay in darkness on the floor of a studio here. Although a video was playing, they closed their eyes and focused on listening: to the fervent, intense voices of Bartok’s opera 'Bluebeard’s Castle,' and to sounds of breathing, screaming, silence, laughter, sobbing and the sibilance of rustling leaves. They were listening to a performance of Pina Bausch’s 'Bluebeard. While Listening to a Tape Recording of Bela Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle,’ created in 1977 and not performed since 1994. For most of the dancers, almost half of whom joined the Wuppertal Tanztheater after Bausch’s death in 2009, these were the sounds of the past. They evoke a world of brutality and tenderness, irrationality and sadness, familiar to anyone who has seen Bausch’s powerfully dramatic, dreamlike works, which have come to define the genre of tanztheater, or dance theater, over the last 40 years. ..."
NY Times
Bluebeard. While Listening to a Tape Recording of Béla Bartók´s opera “Duke Bluebeard´s Castle” - A Piece by Pina Bausch (Video)
How choreographer Pina Bausch revolutionised modern dance
“Does it stop being a real thing?”: Tanztheater Wuppertal and life after Pina Bausch

Beatrice Libonati as Judith in “Bluebeard” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1984.

2015 Pina Bausch: Year - Title (1972 - 1988), Year - Title (1989 - 2009), Costumes (1940-2009), Video, Sourcebook | Etc.

William Gottlieb


"William Paul Gottlieb (January 28, 1917 – April 23, 2006) was an American photographer and newspaper columnist who is best known for his classic photographs of the leading performers of the 'Golden Age' of American jazz in the 1930s and 1940s. Gottlieb's photographs are among the best known and widely reproduced images of this era of jazz. During the course of his career, Gottlieb took portraits of hundreds of prominent jazz musicians and personalities, typically while they were playing or singing at well-known New York City jazz clubs. Well-known musicians Gottlieb photographed included Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Hines, Jo Stafford, Thelonious Monk, Stan Kenton, Ray McKinley, Benny Goodman, Coleman Hawkins, Louis Jordan, Ella Fitzgerald, Toots Thielemans, and Benny Carter. ..."
Wikipedia
William Gottlieb: The World’s Greatest Jazz Photographer?
The Jazz Photography of Bill Gottlieb
LOC: William P. Gottlieb Collection
YouTube: The Hippest Cat in New York: William Paul Gottlieb Jazz Photographer

Dizzy Gillespie And His Orchestra circa 1947, New York

The Saudi Connection: Inside the 9/11 Case That Divided the F.B.I.


The Sept. 11 attacks, and U.S. visas for Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.
"On the morning of Sept. 11 last year, about two dozen family members of those killed in the terror attacks filed into the White House to visit with President Trump. It was a choreographed, somewhat stiff encounter, in which each family walked to the center of the Blue Room to share a moment of conversation with Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, before having a photograph taken with the first couple. Still, it was an opportunity the visitors were determined not to squander. One after another, the families asked Trump to release documents from the F.B.I.’s investigation into the 9/11 plot, documents that the Justice Department has long fought to keep secret. After so many years they needed closure, they said. They needed to know the truth. Some of the relatives reminded Trump that Presidents Bush and Obama blocked them from seeing the files, as did some of the F.B.I. bureaucrats the president so reviled. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: The Lessons of Anwar al-Awlaki (Video Aug. 27, 2015)
NY Times: Alka Pradhan v. Gitmo (Dec. 19, 2017)
ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine

The King Fahad Mosque in Culver City, Calif.

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, 2019 September: Children of 9/11, Following Their Fathers’ Last Footsteps

Synth Hero: The DNA of Electronic Music


ARP 2600
"The first Synth Hero of the new decade is Scanner aka British artist Robin Rimbaud. Since 1991 he has been intensely active in sonic art, producing concerts, installations and recordings, the albums Mass Observation (1994), Delivery (1997), and The Garden is Full of Metal (1998) hailed by critics as innovative and inspirational works of contemporary electronic music. To date he has scored 75 contemporary dance productions, including works for the London Royal Ballet and Merce Cunningham. In 2016 he installed his Water Drops sound work in Rijeka Airport in Croatia, Ghosts at Cliveden National Trust UK, and scored the world’s first ever Virtual Reality ballet, Nightfall. ..."
Synth Hero (Audio/Video)

Roland Juno 106

The Juniper Tree - Nietzchka Keene (1990)


"The Juniper Tree is a 1990 Icelandic black-and-white medieval fantasy drama film directed and written by Nietzchka Keene. Based on the fairy tale 'The Juniper Tree' collected by the Brothers Grimm, it stars a small cast of five actors: Björk, Bryndis Petra Bragadóttir, Guðrún Gísladóttir, Valdimar Örn Flygenring and Geirlaug Sunna Þormar. The Juniper Tree is set in Iceland and portrays the story of two sisters, Margit (Björk Guðmundsdóttir) and her elder sister Katla (Bryndis Petra Bragadóttir), who escape their home after their mother (Guðrún Gísladóttir) is stoned and burned for witchcraft. They go where no one knows them, and find Jóhann (Valdimar Örn Flygenring), a young widower who has a son called Jónas (Geirlaug Sunna Þormar). Katla uses magical powers to seduce Jóhann and they start living together. Margit and Jónas become friends. However, Jónas does not accept Katla as his stepmother and tries to convince his father to leave her. ..."
Wikipedia
W - The Juniper Tree (fairy tale)
W - Nietzchka Keene
NY Times - ‘The Juniper Tree’ Review: A Young Björk Enchants in Her Film Acting Debut (Video)
The Juniper Tree - Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
YouTube: The Juniper Tree | Trailer, Interview with Nietzchka Keene the writer-director of "The Juniper Tree"

JU HEARD: Jaylen 'JuJu' Murray Runs New York City


"This isn’t about rankings. This isn’t about stats. This isn’t about no type of analytics or advanced scouting. Just watch Jaylen 'JuJu' Murray play ball and it’s clear that JuJu Murray plays ball. It’s crystal-damn-clear that he’s the definition of a hooper. And if you get the chance to see him play outdoors in New York City, it’s even more claro that no per-game averages can quantify his impact on the community. JuJu has spent the past few years making NY proud, taking on any challenger who has enough cojones to step up, whether national or local, with a game that was built on the blacktop. No matter where he goes in New York, a hero’s welcome waits for him. He doesn’t have just one playground. The whole city is his playground. ..."
Slam (Video)
Slam: JuJu Murray (Video)

Joseph Mitchell - "The Mohawks in High Steel" (1949)


"The Wigwam (75 Nevin, Brooklyn), opened in the 1950s-60s by a Spanish immigrant and Mohawk woman, was the epicenter of Mohawk skywalkers who helped build much of the New York City skyline. It had been a bar from the late 1800s. In 1949, it was still called by its 2nd name, Nevins Street Bar & Grill, mentioned by Joseph Mitchell in 'The Mohawks in High Steel,' serving beer from Montreal. At Wigwam, Mohawk women tended bar like Verlain White, who arrived at 19 in 1959, when it was rare for women to work as bartenders. The bar had a portrait of Jim Thorpe, the Olympics gold medalist from Sac and Fox Nation. The door had a sign that read: 'The Greatest Iron Workers in the World Pass Thru These Doors.' ..."
facebook
Joseph Mitchell - The Mohawks in High Steel (1949)
Men of steel: How Brooklyn’s Native American ironworkers built New York
Brooklyn Rail: Little Caughnawaga
The Mohawk skywalkers who shaped New York City
W - Mohawk people
YouTube: Mohawk Ironworkers, Sky Walking: A Mohawk Ironworker Keeps Tradition Alive

2014 August: Joseph Mitchell, 2015 May: Man in Profile: Joseph Mitchell of The New Yorker by Thomas Kunkel, 2015 December: Up in the Old Hotel (1992)

Sidney Bechet...French Movies (2015)


"In 1955 Sidney Bechet was at the peak of his popularity. His concerts were sell-outs and his numerous records for Vogue were selling in quantities previously unheard of in the Jazz field. It was thus logical that the cinema should begin to show an interest in the great man, all the more since Sidney had until now made only a token screen appearances. The collection features songs from all 3 of his movies, 'Serie Noire' a Pierre Gaspard-Huit melodrama directed by Pierre Foucaud, 'Blues' where Bechet plays a leading role and 'Ah Quelle Equipe!' where he features prominently as a Jazz musician. ..."
moochin about (Audio)
CD REVIEW: Sidney Bechet – French Movies
allmusic (Video)
W - Sidney Bechet
amazon: Jazz on Film: French Movies
YouTube: Sidney Bechet, Vic Dickenson, Teddy Buckner, Sammy Price - Cannes 1958: Once In A While, Sidney Bechet + Louis Armstrong + Django Reinhardt 1952, La Route Du Bonheur (excerpt), Sidney Bechet & Claude Luter 1952 - Les Oignons, « I've Found a New Baby » par Sidney Bechet (1958)

Rock Bottom - Robert Wyatt (1972)


"Very few artists, musicians in particular, can recover from an accident that leaves them paralyzed from the waist down. If said artist is a drummer, a skill that requires one’s lower limbs in equal measure to the upper ones, then that drummer has already seen the better part of his career. However if you are Robert Wyatt, one of Canterbury scene’s most prominent musicians, who at the age of 28 dropped from a 4th floor bathroom window after imbibing large quantities of alcohol, you use this horrific event as a turning point, embark on a new career and release an album for the ages. This is the story of that album, Rock Bottom. The tale of Rock Bottom starts in Venice, Italy, during the winter of 1972. Wyatt was spending time with his then-girlfriend Alfreda Benge, whom he met at his band Matching Mole’s debut gig in London, January 1972. ..."
The Music Aficionado (Video)
W - Rock Bottom (album)
amazon
YouTube: Rock Bottom (Full Album 1974)

2010 November: Robert Wyatt, 2012 October: Comicopera, 2013 March: The Last Nightingale, 2013 September: Solar Flares Burn for You (2003), 2014 March: Cuckooland (2003), 2014 October: Robert Wyatt Story (BBC Four, 2001), 2014 December: Different Every Time (2014), 2016 March: Interviews (2014), 2016 June: Dondestan (Revisited)(1998), 2016 September: Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard (1975), 2017 January: '68 (2013), 2017 May: Shleep (1997)

The Democrats' Best Choices for President


"American voters must choose between three sharply divergent visions of the future. The incumbent president, Donald Trump, is clear about where he is guiding the Republican Party — white nativism at home and America First unilateralism abroad, brazen corruption, escalating culture wars, a judiciary stacked with ideologues and the veneration of a mythological past where the hierarchy in American society was defined and unchallenged. On the Democratic side, an essential debate is underway between two visions that may define the future of the party and perhaps the nation. Some in the party view President Trump as an aberration and believe that a return to a more sensible America is possible. Then there are those who believe that President Trump was the product of political and economic systems so rotten that they must be replaced. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: New York Times Editorial Board Endorses Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren

Art and Literature - John Ashbery, Anne Dunn, Rodrigo Moynihan, and Sonia Orwell. Paris (1964–67)


"On Monday, November 5th, I attended the John Ashbery reading at the Folger Library in Washington DC. I found out about it at the last minute and assumed that it would be sold out (like a Ferlinghetti reading years before) but tickets were still available on Friday afternoon. I was surprised, but apparently a lot of people have never heard of the man considered by many to be 'the greatest living American poet.' And of those who have, quite a few have not read his work. Ashbery is like Pynchon, a name to be thrown around and discussed at a certain kind of dinner party to demonstrate your wide reading even if you have not done the heavy lifting of actually turning the pages. In the case of Pynchon’s Against the Day that is a lot of pages. As I have written in the Bunker, Ashbery’s and Burroughs’ literary concerns and personal lives seem to circle around each other without actually meeting. ..."
RealityStudio: John Ashbery at the Folger Library
From a Secret Location: Art and Literature - John Ashbery, Anne Dunn, Rodrigo Moynihan, and Sonia Orwell. Paris (1964–67)
BOMB: John Ashbery by Adam Fitzgerald