​A photographer's journey across California's iconic Route 66

 
 The Globetrotter Lodge in Holbrook, Ariz.

“Route 66, also known as the Will Rogers Highway, is arguably the most famous original road in the entirety of the United States. Having been established all the way back in 1926, it ran from Santa Monica, California, to Chicago, Illinois. As time rolled on, the route was bypassed by the Interstate road system and was officially removed from the US highway system in 1985. Since then, however, the journey has taken on a whole new meaning.As a historic reminiscence, its remnants are now labelled as a scenic byway with ‘Historic Route 66’ signs. Many roadside reminiscences and curiosities are left reminding the traveller of the exciting past when the country was developed for long-distance car travels. ...”

 Little remains of the Tonto Drive-In Theater in Winslow, Ariz.

​Lionel Messi and Argentina Beat Brazil in Copa América Final

 
The Copa América victory was Lionel Messi’s first major title with Argentina’s senior team, and the team’s first since 1993.

“Lionel Messi finally ticked the last empty box in his glittering soccer career on Saturday night, leading Argentina past host Brazil, 1-0, in the final of the Copa América in Rio de Janeiro.The trophy was Messi’s first with Argentina after a string of painful, agonizing, maddening failures, including perhaps the most demoralizing defeat of his career — against Germany in the World Cup final — inside the same stadium, Rio’s hulking Maracanã, in 2014.When the whistle blew to end the final, Messi — his relief palpable — dropped to his knees and was immediately surrounded by his teammates. Moments later, they were lifting him above their shoulders and tossing him in the air. ...”

Eileen in Wonderland

 
Eileen Agar, Erotic Landscape, 1942, collage on paper

“In an undated note bequeathed to the Tate Archive in 1992, Eileen Agar (1899–1991) writes of her admiration for the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: ‘Lewis Carroll is a mysterious master of time and imagination, the Herald of Sur-Realism and freedom, a prophet of the Future and an uprooter of the Past, with a literary and visual sense of the Present.’ The same could be said of Agar, whose long career as an artist spanned most of the twentieth century and intersected with some of the prevailing movements of the time, including Cubism and surrealism. Her timeless work—including the oil painting Alice with Lewis Carroll—will be on view through August 29 at the Whitechapel Gallery’s ‘Eileen Agar: Angel of Anarchy,’ the largest exhibition yet of the sui generis artist’s oeuvre. A selection of images from the show appears below. ...”

 
Photograph of Agar wearing Ceremonial Hat for Eating Bouillabaisse, 1936

​Mapping the Field

 

“Yet another semester online, yet another group of 22 amazingly dedicated, creative, intellectually generous, mutually supportive students representing ten or so programs from across The New School! Rather than working around our geographically distributed, mediated condition, we sought to center it — to map and reflect on the social and technical and ecological networks that connect us. ... Our fabulous teaching assistant, Emily Bowe, led us through some fantastic mapping labs, and three thematic student groups designed a few of our sessions, complete with thoughtfully conceived mapping exercises. This was a difficult year. ...”

 
Ashley’s “Exploring Foodways + Infrastructures of East New York” 

​Inside Laraaji’s Beautiful Meditation Music

 
“This month, Numero Group reissued Vision Songs Vol. 1, a collection of 11 pieces culled from a self-released 1984 meditation tape by New Age music legend Laraaji. These ‘celestial sounds,’ as Laraaji calls them, were originally released as a short run of 60-minute cassettes designed to guide and soundtrack transcendental meditation. Constructed in the artist’s Manhattan studio, Laraaji used an MT-70 Casio synthesizer, drum machine, and his long-standing signature instrument, the zither, to create works of longform electronic ambience. Vision Songs Vol. 1 was one of over 20 Laraaji releases that, in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, were almost exclusively available in a constellation of New Age book shops in cities along the East Coast of the United States. ...”

From Ritual to Romance - Jessie L Weston (1920)

 
From Ritual to Romance, published in 1920, is perhaps most well known today for being the first work T S Eliot lists in his ‘Notes on The Waste Land’, where he says that Weston’s book suggested ‘Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism’ of his poem. Eliot, of course, later said these notes were a publisher’s requirement to bulk out the book publication of The Waste Land, which has led some to dismiss them entirely, or to see them as one more layer of obfuscation around the poem, and Eliot himself later said he regretted sending so many readers ‘on a wild goose chase after Tarot cards and the Holy Grail’. But From Ritual to Romance, which aims to trace a link between medieval Holy Grail romances and the earliest fertility rituals, certainly had its influence on what the poem says and how it says it. ...”

10 of the best Latin American novels – that will take you there

 

"A sense of place often has a political edge in Latin American writing. Even magic realism – which takes fantastic liberties with the contours of cities and pueblos, jungles and rivers – is rooted in the living, breathing, dying and warring world of its characters. Over five centuries, Hispanic authors have loaned from and contested European ideas about their world, adapting imported traditions (from naturalism to crime fiction to stream-of-consciousness) and reworking them to bring to life the vibrancy and vicissitudes of their youthful continent. The best novels are as alluring and stimulating as the most atmospheric places. To choose just 10 was only possible by imagining I was packing for a long road trip with limited baggage. I would take these, a comfortable hammock and a sturdy pillow. ...”

 
Pelourinho, the historic centre of Salvador. Captains of the Sands by Jorge Amado

​The Sharp Game

 
(after Marcel Duchamp)

“I was down on my knees before the chess set. Not out of deference, though I did feel a bit of that. I knelt because Irving Finkel, a board game expert and a curator at the British Museum, which displayed these chess pieces among its extensive collection, suggested that patrons view it that way. ‘When you look at them, kneel down or crouch in such a way that you can look through the glass straight into their faces and look them in the eye. You will see human beings across the passage of time. They have a remarkable quality. They speak to you.’ These were the Lewis Chessmen, and they composed perhaps the most important chess set in the world. They’re a centerpiece of the British Museum. ...”

Mulatu Astatke & The Black Jesus Experience – To Know Without Knowing (2019)

“... The Black Jesus Experience are a truly cosmopolitan group of musicians based in Melbourne: a city that can lay claim to being one of the most vibrant in the world, and certainly the Antipodes, for contemporary jazz. The group’s primary musical influence is Ethio-Jazz, so Mulatu Astatke is their ideal collaborator, but the music has a more extensive range of influences that includes hip-hop and funk. The lead saxophonist and co-founder of the eight-piece band is Peter Harper who was introduced to Ethiopian music by his father, a music teacher for the Ethiopian Navy band in the 1960s. ...”

Brian Eno - Reflection (2016)

Reflection is the twenty-sixth studio album by English musician Brian Eno, released on 1 January 2017 on Warp Records. It is a piece of generative ambient music produced by Eno, which plays indefinitely via an app, modulating its output at different times of the day. A pre-recorded version of the album is available on CD and vinyl, which runs for 54 minutes. Digital streaming versions of the album update on a seasonal basis. ... Reflection was released as part of Eno's series of ambient albums. Its structure is similar to that of Thursday Afternoon (1985), an earlier album of his that consists of a single track that runs for 60 minutes in length. ...”

Memory of Fire: Genesis - Eduardo Galeano (1985)

 
“In the South-American jungle, as history opens, jaguars teach men to build fires and hunt with bows. Columbus wades ashore in the Bahamas, asking the natives (in Hebrew, Chaldean and Arabic) if they can lead him to the Great Khan. The Virgin Mary appears at Guadelupe, Mex., olive-skinned and speaking in Nahuatl. ‘I am not a historian,’ Eduardo Galeano explains of the scenes he sketches. ‘I am a writer who would like to contribute to the rescue of the kidnapped memory of all America, but above all of Latin America.’ Galeano is overly modest. He may not be a trained historian, but Memory of Fire: Genesis is a book as fascinating as the history it relates. Memory of Fire: Genesis is composed of 308 vignettes--scenes from the history of the Americas. ...”

Cézanne Drawing - Paul Cézanne

 
Still Life with Cut Watermelon (1900), pencil and watercolor on paper

Best known as a painter, Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) produced some of his most radically original works on paper. Cézanne Drawing brings together more than 250 rarely shown works in pencil and kaleidoscopic watercolor from across the artist’s career, along with key paintings, that together reveal how drawing shaped Cézanne’s transformative modern vision. Drawing almost daily on individual sheets and across the pages of sketchbooks, Cézanne made his process visible, from searching lines that repeat and transform to layered washes of watercolor that explore translucency and luminosity. ...”

​Noctilucent Cloud Show, a Mercurial Nova, and More

 
Resembling a sprawling nebula viewed through a telescope, noctilucent clouds blanket the lower third of the west-northwest sky an hour after sunset on June 27, 2021.

“Since mid-June I've been on a vigil. Every clear night at 9:55 p.m. I drive to a nearby location with an unobstructed view of the northern sky hoping to see noctilucent clouds. Half terrestrial and half celestial, these night-shining clouds form around 80 kilometers up in the mesosphere, far above the feathery cirrus and cauliflower cumulus of a summer's day. Lower clouds literally appear out of thin air when water vapor condenses on specks of dirt, salt, and industrial pollutants. Noctilucent clouds (NLCs) instead use soot shed by incoming meteoroids and, in some cases, sulfur-rich volcanic gases for that purpose. ...”

How Often Do Air Conditioners Fall Out of NYC Windows and Kill People?

 
Hot town, summer in the city – only the bobbleheads are keeping cool.

“Ah, New York City in the summer! Generally, we really do love it, despite the on-the-way-to-work sweatiness and fish-in-an-old-sweat-sock smells. But with summer comes air conditioners, and with air conditioners come inept installations into apartment windows, and with inept installations come the occasional, every so often, reports that an air conditioner has fallen from the sky and bashed someone in the head. Which would be awful. Truly, truly awful. So, how much should we worry about this, really? We took to the Internet, place of great knowledge, to find out. ...”

​The Unheralded Music of Detroit’s Strata Records

 
“In the late 1960s, Detroit was a simmering cauldron of frustration and righteous outrage. ... Detroit’s Black community fought back against brutal police repression and struggled under the weight of a sharp economic downturn. Even the optimistic glow of Motown’s ecstatic Black pop romanticism was fading and within three years the company would relocate to Los Angeles. It was against this dynamic and volatile socio-political backdrop that Detroit-born composer and pianist Kenny Cox founded Strata Records in 1969. An emerging pianist with an imaginative playing style and tasteful compositions, Cox had played with the likes of Jackie McLean, Philly Joe Jones, Rahsaan Rolan Kirk, and Wes Montgomery. Cox also gained some notoriety playing with his own group, the Contemporary Jazz Quintet. ...”

Divine Decks: A Visual History of Tarot: The First Comprehensive Survey of Tarot Gets Published by Taschen

 
“The cards of the tarot, first created for play around 600 years ago and used in recent centuries for occult divination of truths about life, the universe, and everything, should by all rights be nothing more than a historical curiosity today. Yet something about the tarot still compels, even to many of us in the ever more digital, ever more data-driven 21st century. Taschen, publisher of lavish art and photo books, know this: hence, as we featured last year here on Open Culture, products like their box-set reissue of the tarot deck designed by Salvador Dalí. ...”

Day of Rage: An In-Depth Look at How a Mob Stormed the Capitol

 
“A six-month Times investigation has synchronized and mapped out thousands of videos and police radio communications from the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, providing the most complete picture to date of what happened — and why.“

​How Sun Ra Taught Us to Believe in the Impossible

 
“... This instruction guided Ra for the rest of his life as a musician and a thinker. By the fifties, the signs of hopelessness were everywhere: racism, the threat of nuclear war, social movements that sought political freedom but not cosmic enlightenment. In response, during the next four decades—until his death, in 1993—Ra released more than a hundred albums of visionary jazz. Some consisted of anarchic, noisy ‘space music.’ Others featured lush, whimsical takes on Gershwin or Disney classics. All were intended as dance music, even if few people knew the steps. Ra was born Herman Poole Blount in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1914, to a supportive, religious family. He was named after Black Herman, a magician who claimed to be from the ‘dark jungles of Africa’ and who infused his death-defying escape acts with hoodoo mysticism. ...”

​Why Getty Keeps Some Photographs in the Fridge

 
Pearblossom Hwy., 11–18th April 1986, #2, 1986, David Hockney.

“Photography has undergone a dramatic evolution over the last 200 years. What was once a laborious process requiring metal plates and special chemicals is now just a button you push on a smartphone. Getty’s vast collection of photographs spans the entirety of that history. So, we invited our social media followers to ask the curators in the Getty Museum’s Department of Photographs—Paul Martineau, Carolyn Peter, and Karen Hellman—their burning questions about Getty’s vast collection of photographs. Have more questions about art? Join us on Facebook or Instagram to catch the next Q&A with Getty’s curators. ...”

​Lee Scratch Perry & The Upsetters - Upsetters 14 Dub Blackboard Jungle

 
Black Board Jungle, often called Blackboard Jungle Dub, is a studio album by The Upsetters. The album, originally released in 1973 under artist name ‘Upsetters 14 Dub’, was pressed in only 300 copies and issued only in Jamaica. According to Pauline Morrison, this was the first ever dub album that came out, although there is a lot of speculation on the subject. Nevertheless, this was the first stereo dub album, as well as the first to include reverb. Later pressings released as Blackboard Jungle Dub have a different track listing. The album was re-issued as a 3x 10" colored vinyl box set as part of Record Store Day in April, 2012. ...”

Flashback: Good Humor delighted generations with its curbside delivery of ice cream bars — and not even the mob could stop it

 
Al Cooney loads ice cream into his Good Humor truck at the start of the season at the Good Humor offices at 4825 W. Arthington St. on April 1, 1965, in Chicago.

“For Chicagoans of a certain age, the sound of bells on a hot summer evening is a hallowed childhood memory. It called a timeout to schoolyard softball games. Ball players would scramble to line up at one of the Good Humor trucks or three-wheelers, 150 in all, that roamed city and suburban streets in the 1960s. Their ting-a-ling-a-ling may have woken up older folks dozing on front porches, but their arrival solved a dilemma for kids with a few coins to spend on a treat. ...”

 
A group of boys crowds around a Good Humor ice cream truck in the 1940s.

2021 Tour de France

 
“The 2021 Tour de France is the 108th edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's three grand tours. Originally planned for the Danish capital of Copenhagen, the start of the 2021 Tour (known as the Grand Départ) was transferred to Brest due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, with Copenhagen hosting four matches in the UEFA Euro 2020 and that event also being rescheduled to 2021 due to the pandemic. Originally scheduled for 2 to 25 July 2021, the Tour was moved to 26 June to 18 July 2021 to avoid the rescheduled 2020 Summer Olympics. ... In the lead up to the 2021 Tour de France, Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) and Primož Roglič (Team Jumbo–Visma) were seen by many pundits as the top pre-race favourites for the general classification. Their closest rivals were considered to be Ineos Grenadiers trio Geraint Thomas, Richard Carapaz and Richie Porte. ...”
2008 July: Tour de France 2008, 2009 July: Tour de France 2009, 2010 July: Tour de France 2010,  2011 July: Tour de France 2011, 2012 July: 2012 Tour de France, 2015 July: 2015 Tour de France, 2015 July: Tour de France 2015: Team Time Trial Win Bolsters American’s Shot at Podium, 2015 July: Tour de France: Chris Froome completes historic British win, 2016 July: 2016 Tour de France, 2017 July: 2017 Tour de France, 2018 May: 2018 Giro d'Italia, 2019 July: 2018 Tour de France, 2019 July: Tour de France 2019

JUNO-60

 
“The Roland Juno-60 is a programmable 6-voice polyphonic analog synthesizer manufactured by Roland Corporation from 1982 to 1984. It followed the Juno-6, an almost identical synthesizer received months earlier. The synthesizers introduced Roland's digitally controlled oscillators, allowing for greatly improved tuning stability. It was widely used in 1980s pop, house, and 1990s techno music. The late 1970s and 1980s saw the introduction of the first digital synthesizers, such as the Fairlight CMI and Synclavier. Roland president Ikutaro Kakehashi recognized that the synthesizer market was moving away from analog synthesis, but Roland had no commercially viable digital technology. ...”

One summer night on a New York tenement roof

 
“Saul Kovner was a Russia-born artist who came to New York City in the 1920s. After attending the National Academy of Design and setting up a studio on Central Park West, he worked for the WPA in the 1930s and 1940s. Kovner captured gentle yet honest scenes in all seasons of urban life, particularly of working class and poor New Yorkers. In 1946, he completed ‘One Summer Night,’ a richly detailed depiction of tenement dwellers seeking refuge from the heat in a pre- air conditioned city. ... Here’s how John Sloan, Everett Shinn, and some wonderful unidentified illustrators captured the ‘fiery furnace’ of a New York heat wave. ...”

Cinema of Cuba

 
Cine Praga in Pinar del Rio, Cuba

“Cinema arrived in Cuba at the beginning of the 20th century. Before the Cuban Revolution of 1959, about 80 full-length films were produced in Cuba. Most of these films were melodramas. Following the revolution, Cuba entered what is considered the ‘Golden age’ of Cuban cinema. … Before the Cuban Revolution of 1959 the total film production was around 80 full-length movies. Some films are worth mentioning, such as La Virgen de la Caridad starring Miguel Santos and Romance del Palmar by Ramón Peón. ...”

The Case for a 32-Team Euros

 
Portugal found a way through to the round of 16.

“Thomas Vermaelen’s header hit the ground first and then rose before colliding with the post near the corner where it meets the crossbar. As the ball spun out, sideways toward the middle of the goal, Lukas Hradecky, the Finland goalkeeper, was still turning around. It was all happening in the blink of an eye. Instinctively, Hradecky reached out a hand to try to swat the ball away. In that instant, on his fingertips, a substantial portion of Euro 2020 hung. Had Hradecky been able to claw the ball away from his goal, away from danger, Finland might have been able to hang on, to keep a vaguely interested Belgium at bay, to qualify for the knockout stages of the first major tournament it has ever reached. Denmark, playing simultaneously in Copenhagen, might have been sent home. …”

Radio Territories

 
Radio Territories is an ambitious collection of essays, writings, and audio files—probing histories, cultures, geographies, economies, communities, logics, ontologies, technologies, aesthetics, and politics—that examines  the performative potential of radio to create, erase, dislodge, and remake spaces. Yet its ambition is steadfastly grounded: each contributor is firmly located in concrete practices, i.e., sonic territories. The contributors are a mix of sound artists, journalists, theorists, and teachers. The contributions range from multimodal essays to performance scripts to radio/sound artists examining implications of their practices to historical examinations of key moments of radio culture. Through all of this seemingly discordant work, the theme of radio art as public praxis emerges as a zero-point of orientation, highlighting both performance and place, and delivering on the promise of the title. ...”

​The Port of Missing Women

“For some time, I’ve imagined writing a novel titled The Port of Missing Women, a term I came across while doing research for my biography of Raymond Chandler, The Long Embrace. It refers to the many young women in Los Angeles who were suddenly going missing—and often turning up murdered in grisly ways. Coincidentally or not, many of these murders occurred in the years right after World War II, when a large number of servicemen were returning from overseas through the port of Los Angeles and finding, no doubt, that in many cases the women they had left behind were not the same as those they encountered when they returned. The war years had given women new freedoms in the way they acted and dressed and socialized, in part through jobs outside the home in the defense industry and other sectors of the labor force. ...”