Hear Patti Smith Read 12 Poems From Seventh Heaven, Her First Collection (1972)

"So it’s National Poetry Month, and the Academy of American Poets recommends 30 Ways to Celebrate, including some old standbys like memorizing a poem, reading a poem a day, and attending a reading. All sensible, if somewhat staid, suggestions (I myself have been re-reading all of Wallace Stevens’ work—make of that what you will). Here’s a suggestion that didn’t make the list: spend some time digging the poetry of Patti Smith. A living breathing legend, Smith doesn’t appear in many academic anthologies, and that’s just fine. What she offers are bridges from the Beats to the sixties New York art scene to seventies punk poetry and beyond, with spandrels made from French surrealist leanings and rock and roll obsessions."
Open Culture (Video)
YouTube: Reading at St. Mark's Church, NYC (1972), St Marks - "Oath", "Oath" 1973 reading, Babelfield 1978, Feedback and Poetry, Interview, Stockholm October 1976, A Reading Of Virginia Woolf, Letter to Mapplethorpe

Richard Baker

Installation view, “Richard Baker: Holiday”
"For the past decade, Richard Baker has developed two distinct but related bodies of work, one in oil and the other in gouache: the oil paintings depict tabletops covered with all sorts of printed ephemera and bric-a-brac; the gouaches are of book covers and, more recently, record covers. In 2012, however, Baker began breaking down the neat division between the oil paintings and works on paper by making something silly — a Whoopee cushion — out of paper and painting it pink. At the same time, while a poetry book cover and a novelty store standby might not seem to have that much in common, it seems to me that they are or were a part of the artist’s life, and that he is unembarrassed about these details."
Richard Baker Kicks Out the Jams
Tibor de Nagy
artnet
RICHARD BAKER with JOHN YAU

The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie

"In the world of early-20th-century African-American music and people obsessed by it, who can appear from one angle like a clique of pale and misanthropic scholar-gatherers and from another like a sizable chunk of the human population, there exist no ghosts more vexing than a couple of women identified on three ultrarare records made in 1930 and ’31 as Elvie Thomas and Geeshie Wiley. There are musicians as obscure as Wiley and Thomas, and musicians as great, but in none does the Venn diagram of greatness and lostness reveal such vast and bewildering co-extent. ..."
NY Times (Video)

2013 July: Geeshie Wiley

Lost Kingdoms: Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture of Early Southeast Asia, 5th to 8th Century

"This is the first international loan exhibition to explore the sculptural art produced in the earliest kingdoms of Southeast Asia. From the first millennium onward, powerful kingdoms emerged in the region, embracing much of Indic culture to give political and religious expression to their identities. Early Hinduism (Brahmanism) and Buddhism arrived early, first witnessed by Sanskrit inscriptions, and shortly thereafter by a proliferation of large-scale religious imagery."
MetMuseum
MetMuseum: Exhibition Objects
NYT: Gathering of Gods From Places Long Forgotten
YouTube: Ancient Sculptures from Myanmar on Display in New York

Ludlow Massacre

Wikipedia - "The Ludlow Massacre was an attack by the Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel & Iron Company camp guards on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914. Some two dozen people, including women and children, were killed. The chief owner of the mine, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was widely criticized for the incident. The massacre, the culmination of a bloody widespread strike against Colorado coal mines, resulted in the violent deaths of between 19 and 26 people; reported death tolls vary but include two women and eleven children, asphyxiated and burned to death under a single tent. The deaths occurred after a daylong fight between militia and camp guards against striking workers. ..."
Wikipedia
Ludlow Massacre: A look back at Colorado's deadly coal war
Justice Story: Women, kids killed in bloody 1913 Ludlow Massacre during coal strike
YouTube: Howard Zin about Ludlow Massacre, Ludlow Massacre: The Bloody Debate Over Unions in Colorado. A documentary by Jackson Fields, Colorado Experience: Ludlow Massacre, "Ludlow Massacre" by Woody Gunthrie, April 20th 1914

Sabrosa

"Sabrosa Son Sistema (as the name suggests), bring a sound system style of fun, tropical, afro-latin good times sounds for the dancefloor. Dedicated to the forgotten rhythms of a tropical revolution, taking an unchartered exploration into the gritty sand swept back streets of Africa, the Caribbean Islands and Latin America, alongside it’s strongly rooted African lineage. Your guides, PepeSol and Paprika…..dig deep into an afro latin soundscape of dusty grooves, tropical heat and a syncopated sound system culture. ..."
Sabrosa
Mixcloud (Video)
Soundcloud (Video)

Carla Fernández: The Barefoot Designer: A Passion for Radical Design and Community

"Carla Fernández: The Barefoot Designer: A Passion for Radical Design and Community will explore the traditions and techniques of indigenous Mexican artisans and how they can be applied to modern fashion and styles. Carla Fernández has gained international recognition for her extraordinary approach to documenting and preserving the rich textile heritage of Mexico's indigenous communities by transforming it into beautiful contemporary clothing, and proving tradition is anything but static. This first-ever fashion exhibition at the Gardner Museum explores the development of a new language in visual design that Fernández has built over two decades. She uses a method called 'the Square Root' based on the Mexican tradition of making clothing from squares and rectangles. This process emphasizes forms of fabric and delicate, thoughtful construction based on whole fabric, as opposed to cutting in curves and molding to the body."
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Carla Fernández: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
T Magazine - On View | Turning Ancient Craft Techniques into Modern Fashion

Revisited & Remixed 1970-1999 - Popol Vuh (2011)

"It’s being released on June 24 by SPV Records to mark the 10th anniversary of Vuh founder Florian Fricke’s death. The first disc sub-titled Planet Side, is essentially a ‘best of’, showcasing twelve classic tracks from the catalogue of the seminal band, whose singular and acutely spiritual music traversed classical minimalism, Eastern music, new age electronics, progressive rock and, in their latter years, ambient techno. The majority are taken from their soundtracks for Werner Herzog’s movies Nosferatu, Cobra Verde and Aguirre, but there are also selections from their debut Affenstunde and a clutch of more electronic-leaning pieces from the 1990s. It’s hardly the definitive compilation – there are no selections from the wonderful Hosianna Mantra, for example – but it serves as a fine introduction to the band for newcomers."
FACT
amazon
YouTube: Cosmic Side/ Remixed (Revisted and Remixed) 1:18:29

2008 August: Popol Vuh, 2010 December: Aguirre, the Wrath of God, 2011 May: Abschied (1972), 2013 May: Fitzcarraldo - Werner Herzog, 2913 September: Hosianna Mantra (1972).

A New Chapter

1938, Lower East Siders. Hester St. between Allen and Orchard Streets.
"For more than 25 years, the Tenement Museum has been telling the stories of 97 Orchard Street. And while 200,000 visitors a year can attest to its fascinating history, our beloved building does have one flaw: it closed in 1935, but the neighborhood kept evolving around it! That’s why we’re planning new exhibits exploring the stories of immigrants who settled on the Lower East Side in the mid to late 20th century. In the years following World War II, the Lower East Side became home to an increasing number of Chinese immigrants, Puerto Rican migrants, and Jewish Holocaust survivors. New foods, languages and customs came along with these residents, and the neighborhood reflected the change. At 103 Orchard Street – currently home to our visitor center – all three of these groups lived side by side, sharing struggles and aspirations despite their very different backgrounds."
Tenement Museum

2012 December: Lower East Side

"All Along the Watchtower" - Bob Dylan (1968)

Wikipedia - "'All Along the Watchtower' is a song written and recorded by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. The song initially appeared on his 1967 album John Wesley Harding, and it has been included on most of Dylan's subsequent greatest hits compilations. Since the late 1970s, he has performed it in concert more than any of his other songs. Different versions appear on four of Dylan's live albums. Covered by numerous artists in various genres, 'All Along the Watchtower' is strongly identified with the interpretation Jimi Hendrix recorded for Electric Ladyland with the Jimi Hendrix Experience."
Wikipedia
Reason to Rock
allmusic
YouTube: "All Along the Watchtower" - Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, Willie Nelson and Crazy Horse (Farm Aid - September 18, 1994), Richie Havens (Mountain Jam V - 5/31/09), Eric Johnson, Dave Mason

Gray's Anatomy - Spalding Gray (1996)

Wikipedia - "Gray's Anatomy is an 80-minute film directed by Steven Soderbergh in 1996 involving a dramatized monologue by actor/writer Spalding Gray. The title is taken from the classic human anatomy textbook, Gray's Anatomy, originally written by Henry Gray in 1858. The monologist film is about Spalding Gray, the main character, who is diagnosed with a rare ocular condition called 'Macular pucker'. After hearing all of his options, such as Christian Science, Native American sweat lodges, and the 'Elvis Presley of psychic surgeons' to name a few, and the dangers of what surgery could bring, he decides to go through the other forms of medicine provided. This in turn takes him on a journey around the world and steers him away from surgery more so because of religious reasons, often in a dramatic and humorous fashion."
Wikipedia
Criterion: Gray’s Anatomy: The Eyes of the Beholder By Amy Taubin
YouTube: Gray's Anatomy - Trailer
YouTube: Gray's Anatomy (1996) Directed by Steven Soderbergh 1:19:14

2011 November: Spalding Gray, 2013 March: A Personal History of the American Theatre

Happy Motoring

"Rand McNally published its first road atlas on April 15, 1924. It was called—in a touching testament to the marketing of yore—the Rand McNally Auto Chum. Many hours of intrepid googling have failed to yield a photo of the Chum, but I did find a retrospective of atlas covers, and this commemorative press release, which catalogs some of the decidedly unchummy features of the 1924 atlas."
The Paris Review
Yale: Hitting the Road: The Art of the American Road Map

Hillsborough anniversary: You'll Never Walk Alone

"A service marking the 25th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster has ended with the crowd uniting to sing You'll Never Walk Alone. The song has long been associated with Liverpool Football Club and has also come to symbolise the families' campaign for justice. The tribute was led by singer Gerry Marsden, with 96 balloons released, one for each of the people who lost their lives."
YouTube: BBC - Hillsborough anniversary: You'll Never Walk Alone, Bells rung to mark anniversary
Guardian: Families and fans mark 25 years since the Hillsborough disaster (Video)
Independent: Hillsborough disaster anniversary: 25th anniversary of tragedy that claimed lives of 'The 96' marked as nearly 25,000 attend Anfield service (Video)
W - Hillsborough disaster
YouTube: HILLSBOROUGH DISASTER LIVE NEWS COVERAGE OF THE DAY 1989
YouTube: Hillsborough - Searching for the Truth (2012) | Part 1, Part 2
NYT: When a Game Turned Into a Disaster
ESPN: HILLSBOROUGH Directed by Daniel Gordon

Kevin O'Mara

Valence Cemetery, dating back to 1867
"What to say? You probably noticed that this isn't a portfolio site. The images aren't categorized or tagged or labeled or even titled. They're just pictures. I like the stream of consciousness effect that comes from clicking and viewing and clicking and viewing and never knowing what's coming next. I just want to give you something distracting (and hopefully interesting) to look at."
Kevin O'Mara
New Orleans

Michel Deguy

"... Michel Deguy is a nomad poet, traversing all spaces and times, and his poems act as a space to bring interaction, rather than a fusion of disparate things. If his early collections were occupied with his constant exploration of the space outside the periphery of Being, his succeeding works gave a central stage to the language and role of metaphor. Famous for a lively style bursting with neologisms, rare words and coinages, his late works show the poet as a traveler, lover and mass media consumer, with his poetry bearing the signs and discourses of the reality of the modern world. According to Michel Deguy, the essence of any relation to that world is to be found in the element of desire."
Michel Deguy - Professor of Poetry
Cerise Press
YouTube: The Artist in the Poet: Words, Language and Poetry 2004 1/9, 2/9, 3/9, 4/9, 5/9, 6/9, 7/9, 8/9, 9/9

Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas By Hunter Thompson | Nov 11, 1971

"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like 'I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive. ...' And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about 100 miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?' Then it was quiet again. My attorney had taken his shirt off and was pouring beer on his chest, to facilitate the tanning process. 'What the hell are you yelling about?' he muttered, staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and covered with wraparound Spanish sunglasses. 'Never mind,' I said. 'It's your turn to drive.' I hit the brakes and aimed the Great Red Shark toward the shoulder of the highway. No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough. ..."
Rolling Stone
W - Hunter S. Thompson
Free Online: Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
W - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (film)
PutLocker: Watch Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Version 1 (Video)

Symphony No. 3 - Henryk Górecki

Wikipedia - "The Symphony No. 3, Op. 36, also known as the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs ... is a symphony in three movements composed by Henryk Górecki in Katowice, Poland, between October and December 1976. The work is indicative of the transition between Górecki's dissonant earlier manner and his more tonal later style. It was premièred on 4 April 1977, at the Royan International Festival, with Stefania Woytowicz as soprano and Ernest Bour as conductor. A solo soprano sings a different Polish text in each of the three movements. The first is a 15th-century Polish lament of Mary, mother of Jesus, the second a message written on the wall of a Gestapo cell during World War II, and the third a Silesian folk song of a mother searching for her son killed by the Germans in the Silesian uprisings. The first and third movements are written from the perspective of a parent who has lost a child, and the second movement from that of a child separated from a parent. The dominant themes of the symphony are motherhood and separation through war."
Wikipedia
W - Henryk Górecki
NPR: Henryk Gorecki, Composer Of 'Symphony Of Sorrowful Songs,' Dies At Age 76 (Video)
YouTube: Symphony Nº 3, of "Sorrowful Songs" | Dawn Upshaw. London Sinfonietta, David Zinman

Introspective - Pet Shop Boys (1988)

"Featuring a mere six tracks, most of them well over six minutes in length, Introspective was a move back to the clubs for the Pet Shop Boys. Over the course of the album, they incorporated various dance techniques that were currently in vogue, including Latin rhythms and house textures. The title isn't entirely an arch joke, however. Like Actually, Introspective was an exploration of distant, disaffected yuppies, which naturally resulted in a good deal of self-analyzation. Melodically, the essential song structures were as strong and multi-layered as the previous album, yet that was hard to hear beneath the varying rhythmic textures that composed the bulk of each track."
allmusic
W - Introspective
YouTube: Left To My Own Devices, Domino Dancing, Domino Dancing - 1, I'm Not Scared, Always on my mind/In my House, It's all right, I Want A Dog ( First Version )
YouTube: Pet Shop Boys - Introspective (Whole Album HQ) - 1988

2008 September: Pet Shop Boys, 2010 November: Pet Shop Boys - 1985-1989, 2011 January: Behaviour, 2011 May: Very, 2011 December: Bilingual, 2012 March: "Always on My Mind", 2012 August: Nightlife, 2012 September: "Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can't Take My Eyes off You)", 2012 December: Release, 2013 March: Pandemonium Tour, 2013 November: Leaving.

Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties

"Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties offers a focused look at painting, sculpture, graphics, and photography from a decade defined by social protest and American race relations. In observance of the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, this exhibition considers how sixty-six of the decade’s artists, including African Americans and some of their white, Latino, Asian American, Native American, and Caribbean contemporaries, used wide-ranging aesthetic approaches to address the struggle for racial justice."
Brooklyn Museum
These Are The Artists Of The Civil Rights Movement
Voice: Beautiful and Violent Art from the Civil Rights Movement at New Brooklyn Museum Show Witness
NBC: Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties (Video)

The Delian Mode

"'A documentary on Delia Derbyshire who created the theme song for 'Doctor Who'. Musical pioneer Delia Derbyshire didn’t just create the Doctor Who theme music; she invented every sound it comprised. Her history, and the history of a BBC department that helped launch electronic music, is told in an innovative, idiosyncratic style.' —Telluride Film Festival"
Daily Motion: The Delian Mode (Kara Blake, 2009)
The Delian Mode
NOWNESS: Sounds From the Aether
frieze: Delia Derbyshire Day 2013

2014 February: Women And Their Machines: A Think-piece About Female Pioneerism in Electronic Music

Nancy Holt

Pine Barrens: Trees, 1975
Wikipedia - "Nancy Holt (April 5, 1938 – February 8, 2014) was an American artist most known for her public sculpture, installation art and land art. Throughout her career, Holt also produced works in other mediums, including film, photography, and writing artist’s books. ... Holt began her artistic career as a photographer and as a video artist. In 1974, she collaborated with fellow artist Richard Serra on Boomerang, in which he videotaped her listening to her own voice echoing back into a pair of headphones after a time lag, as she described the disorienting experience. Her involvement with photography and camera optics are thought to have influenced her later earthworks, which are 'literally seeing devices, fixed points for tracking the positions of the sun, earth and stars.' Today Holt is most widely known for her large-scale environmental works, Sun Tunnels and Dark Star Park. However, she created site and time-specific environmental works in public places all over the world. Holt contributed to various publications, which have featured both her written articles and photographs."
W - Nancy Holt
Port Magazine
this is tomorrow
NYT: Nancy Holt, Outdoor Artist, Dies at 75
ARTFORUM: Sun Tunnels
vimeo: Nancy Holt: Photoworks
YouTube: Sun Tunnels, Serra Richard Boomerang 1974 (with Nancy Holt), View to UP AND UNDER by Nancy Holt (1998), Robert Smithson & Nancy Holt - Swamp

Robert Fripp ~ The New World 1986 (Frippertronics)

"Electric-guitar based ambient music created in the moment by Robert Fripp is what you’ll hear on this New Sounds. Best known as the founder and leader of King Crimson, he developed a tape-looping technique eventually dubbed 'Frippertronics,' which he used when he worked with Brian Eno in the mid 1970’s. (Fripp also formed an acoustic steel string performance-ensemble - the League of Crafty Guitarists in the mid-80’s - which has influenced countless guitarists.) Frippertronics has become Soundscapes, where he creates loops in real time, creating multiple layers, and then improvises solos on top of all of it."
WNYC: Robert Fripp’s Soundscapes, Live 2010 (Video)
YouTube: The New World 1986 (Frippertronics)

2010 April: Robert Fripp, 2011 September: Frippertronics.

Dexter Gordon - Night in Tunisia, Whats new, Blues Walk (Holland, 1964)

"This is one of these amazing clips found in the archives of the Dutch Broadcasting Company and indeed brought out on TV a few years ago. Here in 1964 we see well dressed and good looking tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon at the height of his creative career playing for a Dutch TV program. The setting is done in Restaurant 'De Poort Wal' in the city of Amersfoort. Dexter walks off the street, into the pub, gives his coat and hat to the bartender, walks on the set, gets his unpacked saxophone from under the piano and introduces the next tune. Backed by a Swiss trio lead by pianist George Gruntz Dexter plays Nights of Tunisia. Listen to this man's power, tone and of course original ideas. A big bravo for the Dutch researchers who were able to bring back these musical bebop treasures."
YouTube: Night in Tunisia, Whats new, Blues Walk

Glenwood Power Plant

"Between the Glenwood Metro North station and the Hudson River lies the abandoned Yonkers Power Station of the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, a massive building which was constructed between 1904 and 1906 to hold electrical generators to provide power for the electrfication of the railroad nearby. The plant ran into the early 1950s but was gradually backed down as newer, larger power stations plants were built and finally Glenwood was shutdown for good after sitting idle for years. After a failed attempt to sell the structure and the property to the City of Yonkers, ConEd abandoned it completely, removing its steam turbines and machinery from the pit. The property is under private ownership and currently for sale. Highlights of the visit were crawling to the smokestack, contemplate the enormity of the turbine hall, play with the control panels and inhale some sweet asbestos fibers."
Stéphane Missier

Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963–2010

Jeux d’enfants (1988)
Wikipedia -"Sigmar Polke (13 February 1941 – 10 June 2010) was a German painter and photographer. Polke experimented with a wide range of styles, subject matters and materials. In the 1970s, he concentrated on photography, returning to paint in the 1980s, when he produced abstract works created by chance through chemical reactions between paint and other products. In the last 20 years of his life, he produced paintings focused on historical events and perceptions of them."
Wikipedia
MoMA
MoMA: Films
Connecting Polke’s Dots: MoMA Decodes the Work of a Tricky Postwar Master
YouTube: Sigmar Polke

The Dark Galleries: A Museum Guide to Painted Portraits in Film Noir Gothic Melodramas and Ghost Stories of the 1940s and 1950s

"Imagine a museum in which the portrait of Carlotta Valdes, an important prop in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, hangs on a wall next to the painted portrait of the title character of Otto Preminger’s Laura and opposite the uncanny portraits of the desired or murdered women in Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street, George Cukor’s Gaslight, and Nicholas Ray’s Born to Be Bad. In an adjacent gallery, the visitor of this imaginary museum can contemplate the portraits of patriarchs that feature in films such as House of Strangers, Suspicion, Gilda, and Strangers on a Train. This is precisely the concept of this book. Dark Galleries deals with American (and some British) films of the 1940s and 1950s, in which a painted portrait plays an important part in the plot or the mise-en-scène."
MER. Paper Kunsthalle
[PDF] The Dark Galleries
Enter The Dark Galleries, for a Look at the Power of Portraits in Film Noir
amazon

Gravity (2013)

Wikipedia - "Gravity is a 2013 British 3D science fiction thriller and space drama film. It was directed, co-written, co-produced and co-edited by Alfonso Cuarón, and stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as astronauts involved in the mid-orbit destruction of a space shuttle and their attempt to return to Earth. ... The film is set during fictitious space shuttle mission STS-157. Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a medical engineer on her first space shuttle mission aboard the space shuttle Explorer. She is accompanied by veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), who is commanding his final expedition. During a spacewalk to service the Hubble Space Telescope, Mission Control in Houston warns the team about a Russian missile strike on a defunct satellite, which has caused a chain reaction forming a cloud of debris in space. Mission Control orders that the mission be aborted and the shuttle begin re-entry immediately. Communication with Mission Control is lost shortly after."
Wikipedia
Slate
Roger Ebert
New Yorker
YouTube: Gravity

Patti Smith - Gone Again

"After years of silence, Gone Again returned to music with a series of concerts in late 1995. It had been years since she had performed live -- for most of the '80s and '90s, she concentrated on domestic life. Following the death of her husband, Fred 'Sonic' Smith, in early 1995, Smith began playing music in public again and those concerts eventually led to the triumphant comeback Gone Again. Her husband wasn't the only loved one Smith lost between 1988's Dream of Life and 1996's Gone Again -- her brother and her close friend Robert Mapplethorpe both died.  ... Appropriately, grief and loss hang over Gone Again, but the overall effect is not one of indulgent melancholy. Smith sounds more mature than her earlier records -- there are only a handful of out-and-out rockers, and most of the album is subtle and folky -- which gives the album extra weight. Gone Again is more than a comeback, it's a revitalization -- Patti Smith simply hasn't sound so engaged and provocative since Easter."
allmusic
W - Gone Again
YouTube: Gone Again + People Have the Power, About a Boy (1997/09/27), Beneath the Southern Cross (1997/09/27) , Ravens, Farewell Reel

Liana Finck

"... You have probably heard of 'A Bintel Brief,' the famous Yiddish advice column that ran in Der Forvertz, guiding several generations of newly arrived Jewish immigrants through the confusions of the new world. Penned by editor Abraham Cahan, the column, which has been anthologized, makes for evocative reading. It’s often heartbreaking and sometimes funny; the tersely definitive responses are compassionate and generally wise. It was with great pleasure, then, that I came upon a copy of Liana Finck’s new graphic novel, A Bintel Brief: Love and Longing in Old New York. Finck illustrates a number of the 'Bintel Brief' letters—from an educated young woman engaged to an old-world greenhorn; from a poor mother whose watch has been stolen by an even poorer friend; from a cuckolded husband—but she does more than that."
The Paris Review: In Brief
Liana Finck
Liana Finck: Yiddish Graphic Novelist

Night Walk in Marseille

"Google has experimented quite a bit with ways to make Maps more immersive, but no attempt yet may be as successful as its latest: Night Walk, a loosely guided tour through the streets of Marseille on one vibrant and beautiful evening. Night Walk starts you out in a small alley in the neighborhood Cours Julien and works a lot like Street View — you can look around in every direction and click wherever you want to zoom in or move ahead. In this case, a tour guide will introduce you to the city as you move along, directing you to look at art, landmarks, and gorgeous views, among much more."
The Verge
Night Walk in Marseille (Video)

Store Front - The Disappearing Face of New York

"When photographers James and Karla Murray began working on their book, Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York, they were simply attempting to show photos of the last family-owned businesses remaining in New York City. However, they quickly realized that as soon they were photographing these shops, they were shutting down, only to be replaced by corporate businesses or simply left to fall apart. Ten years after the initial photos for the book were taken, the Murrays returned to many of these locations to photograph what is in place today, revealing an intriguing and sometimes depressing picture of an ever-changing city…"
22 Words
James and Karla Murray
amazon

Genesis and History of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra

"Simon Jeffes was born in Sussex. After spending some of his early childhood in Canada, he returned to England. He started to play the guitar at the age of thirteen and subsequently studied classical guitar, piano and music theory and attended the music department of Chiswick Polytechnic with the intention of going on to music college. However finding that academic studying did not suit him, he embarked on a series of experiments. He did not find any of these areas particularly satisfying and eventually formed the Penguin Cafe Orchestra in order to develop his work as a composer. He describes its genesis thus..."
Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Origins
YouTube: Preluds and Yodel, Whistle Test, Paul's Dance, Giles Farnaby's Dream, Air á Danser, Numbers1-4, Salty Bean Fumble, Perpetuum Mobile, Oscar Tango, Music For A Found Harmonium

2012 February: Penguin Cafe Orchestra

Fairport Convention - What We Did on Our Holidays (1969)

"Sandy Denny's haunting, ethereal vocals gave Fairport a big boost on her debut with the group. A more folk-based album than their initial effort, What We Did on Our Holidays was divided between original material and a few well-chosen covers. This contains several of their greatest moments: Denny's 'Fotheringay,' Richard Thompson's 'Meet on the Ledge,' the obscure Joni Mitchell composition 'Eastern Rain,' the traditional 'She Moves Through the Fair,' and their version of Bob Dylan's 'I'll Keep It With Mine.' And more than simply being a collection of good songs (with one or two pedestrian ones), it allowed Fairport to achieve its greatest internal balance, and indeed one of the finest balances of any major folk-rock group. ..."
allmusic
W - What We Did on Our Holidays
Pitchfork
YouTube: Fotheringay, Meet on the Ledge, Eastern Rain, She moves through the fair, I'll Keep It With Mine
YouTube: What We Did on Our Holidays [FULL]

2011 April: Fairport Convention - Maidstone 1970, 2012 August: F is for Fairport Convention, 2013 January: A Sailor’s Life.

12 Years a Slave

Wikipedia - "12 Years a Slave is a 2013 British-American historical drama film and an adaptation of the 1853 memoir Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup, a New York State-born free African American man who was kidnapped in Washington, D.C., in 1841 and sold into slavery. Northup worked on plantations in the state of Louisiana for twelve years before his release. The first scholarly edition of Northup's memoir, co-edited in 1968 by Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon, carefully retraced and validated the account and concluded it to be accurate. This is the third feature film directed by Steve McQueen. ... Principal photography took place in New Orleans, Louisiana, from June 27 to August 13, 2012. The locations used were four historic antebellum plantations: Felicity, Magnolia, Bocage, and Destrehan. Of the four, Magnolia is nearest to the actual plantation where Northup was held."
Wikipedia
NYT: The Blood and Tears, Not the Magnolias (Video)
Twelve Years a Slave - Documenting the American South
Grantland: The Song of Solomon
Vanity Fair: “What’ll Become of Me?” Finding the Real Patsey of 12 Years a Slave
YouTube: 12 Years a Slave - Official Trailer, 12 Years A Slave Featurette - Solomon Northup (2013)

Vivian Maier

Wikipedia - "Vivian Dorothea Maier (February 1, 1926 – April 21, 2009) was an American street photographer, who was born in New York City and spent much of her childhood in France. After returning to the United States, she worked for approximately forty years as a nanny in Chicago, Illinois. During those years, she took more than 100,000 photographs, primarily of people and cityscapes in Chicago, although she traveled and photographed worldwide. Her photographs remained unknown and mostly undeveloped until they were discovered by a local Chicago historian and collector, John Maloof, in 2007. Following Maier's death, her work began to receive critical acclaim."
Wikipedia
Vivian Maier (Video)
Finding Vivian Maier (Video)
YouTube: Vivian Maier slideshow, Vivian Maier