The Guide to Getting Into Joni Mitchell, the Blueprint for Human Experience

"... It was an inauspicious but telling beginning for one of the most prolific musicians of the twentieth century. With 19 studio albums released since her 1968 debut Song to a Seagull, Mitchell—who turns 75 this week—never really stopped singing, with pain and hard circumstance catalyzing some of her most beloved output. The public would sit captivated as she forged an uncharted route through the folk scene of her youth, into pop mega-stardom, to avant-garde jazz, to an 80s rock incarnation for which she embraced the sound and technology of the era—all on her own, distinctly Joni Mitchell terms. In this way, Mitchell’s body of work manifests the progression of American music since the late 1960s. But hers is also a path that could never have been schemed up by the star-maker machinery Mitchell often lamented. ..."
VICE (Video/Audio)

2015 July: Blue (1970), 2015 Novemer: 40 Years On: Joni Mitchell's The Hissing Of Summer Lawns Revisited, 2016 August: On For the Roses (1972), 2016 November: Court and Spark (1974), 2017 February: Hejira (1976), 2017 August: Miles of Aisles (1974), 2017 October: Joni Mitchell: Fear of a Female Genius, 2018 March: Joni Mitchell: We look back over her extraordinary 50 year career, 2018 November: Free Man In Paris (1974), 2019 April: Mingus (1979)

Renoir: The Body, the Senses

Bathers Playing with a Crab, c. 1897
"‘Renoir: The Body, the Senses,' at the Clark Art Institute, is a hedonist’s dreamland—a glorious celebration of the nude. Until now, the only place to see a major grouping of Renoir’s miraculous late nudes, those paintings made between 1885 and his death, at age 78, in 1919, was at the Barnes Foundation. Albert C. Barnes, who acquired 181 Renoirs, appreciated the astonishing achievement of these late works. In these paradoxical paintings—in which the naked bodies are monumental, as solid as oaks, yet pearlescent, translucent and shimmering; in which form and color are brought to a fever pitch; and in which Neoclassicism and Impressionism come head-to-head—Renoir sought to secure his foothold as an artist. ..."
WSJ - ‘Renoir: The Body, the Senses’ Review: Celebrating the Nude
Renoir’s Controversial Second Act
The Clark: Renoir: The Body, the Senses

The Farm at Les Collettes, 1914

2010 February: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 2010 July: Late Renoir, 2012 February: Renoir, Impressionism, and Full-Length Painting, 2012 September: Renoir: Between Bohemia and Bourgeoisie, 2014 December: Dance at Le moulin de la Galette (1876), 2015 June: Dance at Bougival (1883), 2015 December: Luncheon of the Boating Party (1880-81), 2019 May: View at Guernsey (1883)

The Most Revealing Exchange of the Mueller Hearing

Illustration by Nicholas Konrad; Photographs by Doug Mills.
"There’s a logical disconnect in volume 2 of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report that is unmissable to any careful reader. As Mueller explains in the report, a charge of obstruction of justice requires three elements: an obstructive act, a nexus with an official proceeding, and corrupt intent. And in the report, Mueller’s team laid out several cases where President Donald Trump committed an obstructive act, in connection with an official proceeding, with what Mueller’s team concluded could be a corrupt intent. But because Mueller had decided at the outset of his report that he could not and would not charge the president with crimes, thanks to Justice Department guidance and in the interest of fairness, Mueller did not make the otherwise obvious jump from laying out the ways that Trump’s behavior met the three-prong test to actually stating that Trump obstructed justice. ..."
The Atlantic
NY Times: Mueller Warns of Russian Sabotage and Rejects Trump’s ‘Witch Hunt’ Claims (Audio)
NY Times: Opinion | ‘They’re Doing It as We Sit Here’
New Republic: The FBI’s Trump-Russia Investigation Continues
NY Times: Highlights of Robert Mueller’s Testimony to Congress (Video)
NY Times - Read the Mueller Report: Searchable Document and Index (April 18, 2019)

Hannelore Baron: Collages and Box Constructions, 1969 to 1985

Untitled, 1981-1984.
"Leslie Feely Fine Art is proud to present Hannelore Baron: Collages and Box Constructions, 1969 to 1985. Hannelore Baron (1926 – 1987), a German-born artist who escaped from the Nazis and emigrated to New York City in 1941, conceived small-scale works of extraordinary impact. She used everyday materials to create delicate collages and mysterious box constructions that evoke both the fragility of life and the power of courage and endurance. These intimate compositions read as universal expressions of human emotion. Baron produced works of beautiful color with her very distinctive touch. Although Baron suffered from severe childhood trauma and debilitating anxiety as an adult, her work shows a joyful energy. Although deeply loved by people who know her work, she still remains an undiscovered treasure to others. ..."
Leslie Feely
W - Hannelore Baron
The Estate of Hannelore Baron
YouTube: Hannelore Baron: Collages and Box Constructions, 1969 to 1985

An Adirondack Wilderness All Your Own

Experiencing such remote corners of the Adirondacks wouldn’t have been possible without the use of a floatplane.
"Moments after parking our car and loading into a compact, one-propeller bush plane, my three friends and I were looking down at a lush boreal landscape, newly green after the long winter. The view of soft, wooded peaks interspersed with creeks and lakes extended as far as we could see, evoking the northern territories of Canada or Alaska. But what lay below us was closer to home: the heart of the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, its vast wooded expanse concealing the isolated campsite where we would ensconce ourselves. ... Some years later, we became aware of a new, more enticing approach. Away from Lake Placid, Lake George and other more crowded regional hubs, are several smaller hamlets that provide access to a handful of exceptionally remote lakeside campgrounds reachable only by pontooned floatplanes. With round-trip charters typically priced at $150 or less per person, some of the most secluded frontiers of the Adirondack Park are accessible even to travelers on a limited budget. ..."
NY Times
W - Adirondack Mountains
Adirondack Regional Tourism Council
Adirondack Mountain Club

Canoes are conveniently stashed at the various campsites.

2009 May: Long Lake, New York

Sammy Lewis With Willie Johnson ‎– So Long Baby Goodbye / I Feel So Worried (1955)

Wikipedia - "Willie Johnson (March 4, 1923 – February 26, 1995) was an American electric blues guitarist. ... As the guitarist in the first band led by Howlin' Wolf, he appeared on most of Wolf's recordings between 1951 and 1953. He provided the slightly jazzy yet raucous guitar sound that was the signature of all of Wolf's Memphis recordings. Johnson also performed and recorded with other blues artists in the Memphis area, including pianist Willie Love, Willie Nix, Junior Parker, Roscoe Gordon, Bobby 'Blue' Bland and others. When Wolf moved to Chicago in around 1953, he could not convince Johnson to join him. Johnson stayed on in Memphis for several years, playing on a number of sessions for Sun Records, including a 1955 collaboration with vocalist Sammy Lewis, 'I Feel So Worried', released under the name Sammy Lewis with Willie Johnson. ..."
Wikipedia
Discogs
YouTube: So Long Baby Goodbye, I Feel So Worried

"Baseball's Sad Lexicon"

Wikipedia - "'Baseball's Sad Lexicon,' also known as 'Tinker to Evers to Chance' after its refrain, is a 1910 baseball poem by Franklin Pierce Adams. The eight-line poem is presented as a single, rueful stanza from the point of view of a New York Giants fan watching the Chicago Cubs infield of shortstop Joe Tinker, second baseman Johnny Evers, and first baseman Frank Chance complete a double play. These three players helped the Cubs win four National League championships and two World Series from 1906 to 1910. 'Baseball's Sad Lexicon' became popular across the United States among sportswriters, who wrote their own verses along the same vein. The poem only enhanced the reputations of Tinker, Evers, and Chance over the succeeding decades as the phrase became a synonymous with a feat of smooth and ruthless efficiency. It has been credited with their elections to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946. ..."
Wikipedia
Hummers, knucklers, and slow curves: contemporary baseball poems
Baseball Poems, Baseball Poetry & Baseball Songs
Baseball Poems
Poetry - October 1955
Spitball Magazine
Poetry Matters: In Baseball, No Poet Has Yet to Do the Game Justice, Baseball and Writing - Marianne Moore
Line drives: 100 contemporary baseball poems
Reading: The Poetry of Baseball
W - Line-Up for Yesterday by Ogden Nash
Baseball Haiku: Shelf Awareness, amazon

Poet Marianne Moore, 81, threw out the first pitch at the opening of the 1968 baseball season at Yankee Stadium on April 10th, against the Los Angeles Angels.

Connections With Strangers: A Photo Series Offers a Window Onto the World

Gloucester Street, Gloucester, Massachusetts, 2010; from the ‘Hopper Redux’ series
"When Gail Albert Halaban’s daughter turned one, she received balloons, flowers and a note from some neighbours she had never met. ... The scene is staged – Halaban is in constant conversation with the subject – and deliberately lit to make it clear that they know she is photographing them. She doesn’t shoot with a telephoto lens, instead wishing to see the scene – always quotidian actions like making coffee – from the perspective of the watcher. The resulting pictures are Hopper-esque, revealing at once the isolation and humanity of connecting with someone unknown. ..."
culture trip

Berfin, İstiklal Cad, Beyoğlu, Istanbul, Turkey, 2015; from the ‘Out My Window’ series

Left of the Dial: The Evolution of Punk, New Wave and Indie on American Radio

"Rock and roll was born to give offense, and radio has long served as the music industry’s primary gatekeeper. AM, FM, free-form, Top 40, AOR, left of the dial (was there ever a right of the dial?) – the programmers who pick which songs get on the air (whether based on gut feeling, label entreaties, payola, peer pressure, or audience testing) live and die by the records they choose. These firing-line calls can seem bizarre in retrospect: radio, and its audiences, has often latched on to (or flatly rejected) the most unpredictable songs. Even bands headed for the cultural pantheon have struck radio as ones to avoid. The Clash, Ramones, Sex Pistols, Stooges, Patti Smith – all of them are in the pantheon, but none of them had more than a song or two (if that) in serious rotation. ..."
Red Bull Music Academy Daily (Video)

The gods of good health on a Fifth Avenue facade

"You could spend hours taking in the visual feast that is the New York Academy of Medicine building on Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street. Completed in 1926, it’s a blend of Romanesque and Byzantine styles with an exterior complete with Latin quotes, figures of gods and goddesses, and some impressive gargoyles and bas reliefs—all apparently relating to health and medicine. ..."
Ephemeral New York

Asclepius and Hygeia (top image) are carved into the grand entrance on 103rd Street.

Collected Fictions - Jorge Luis Borges (1999)

"The story 'Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth,' roughly in the middle of this marvelous new collection of stories by Jorge Luis Borges, is as good a place as any to start an appreciation of one of the most remarkable writers of our century. A king flees the ghost of his vizier, whom he has killed, taking refuge in a labyrinth he builds on the moors of Cornwall. But the ghost, or what seems to be a ghost, catches up with him, and the king is murdered within his own hiding place. It is not one of Borges's greatest stories, but many of the familiar elements of his work are here: arcane knowledge, characters that emerge from some combination of mythology and scholarship, images of labyrinths, a lightly satirical Homeric tone, blood and vengeance, the blending of murder and metaphysics, and an interplay of appearances and apparitions in which reality and illusion are almost indistinguishable. ..."
NY Times: Savoring a Borges Blend of Imaginings
complete review
amazon: Collected Fictions
Open Culture: An Animated Introduction to the Magical Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges (Video)

2009 August: Jorge Luis Borges, 2013 May: Jorge Luis Borges - 1, 2013 October: Borges: Profile of a Writer Presents the Life and Writings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges, 2016 May: Borges and $: The Parable of the Literary Master and the Coin,2016 October: The Library of Babel (1941)

Never A Dull Moment - Rod Stewart (1972)

"The ironic album portrait may have suggested otherwise, but life was anything but boring for Rod Stewart in 1972. After endless toil, he had made it big beyond his wildest imaginings the year before, both as a solo artist and with his beloved Faces. Now, after the spectacular breakthrough of Rod’s Every Picture Tells A Story album and ‘Maggie May’ single, came further new glory. The follow-up album may have featured more than a little help from his mates, but it was again entirely self-produced. When it was released, on 21 July, Never A Dull Moment was an apt title. ..."
‘Never A Dull Moment’: How Rod Stewart Kicked His Career Into High Gear (Video/Audio)
Graded on a Curve: Rod Stewart, Never a Dull Moment
W - Never A Dull Moment
amazon
YouTube: Never A Dull Moment (Full Album) 9 videos

2016 November: Gasoline Alley (1970), 2017 May: Every Picture Tells a Story (1971)

Burning Bush - Agnieszka Holland (2013)

Wikipedia - "Burning Bush (Czech: Hořící keř) is a 2013 three-part miniseries created for HBO by Polish director Agnieszka Holland. Based on real characters and events, this haunting drama focuses on the personal sacrifice of a Prague history student, Jan Palach, who set himself on fire in 1969 in protest against the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in the previous year. Dagmar Burešová, a young female lawyer, became part of his legacy by defending Palach's family in a trial against the communist government, a regime which tried to dishonour Palach’s sacrifice, a heroic action for the freedom of Czechoslovakia. The fight for freedom, for moral principles, self-sacrifice and protest in those desperate times led to the moral unification of a repressed nation, which twenty years later defeated the totalitarian regime. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times: Czech Pawns In a System That Stifled by A.C. Scott
Burning Bush – Agnieszka Holland
BetaCinema
YouTube: Burning Bush - Official Trailer (Dir. Agniezska Holland)

Redux: The Rapturous Monotony of Metal, Water, Stone

"In honor of Bastille Day this past Sunday, The Paris Review is returning to its expatriate roots by highlighting some of the many French authors whose work resides within the archive. Read on for Simone de Beauvoir’s Art of Fiction interview, as well as Baudelaire’s poem 'Parisian Dream' and Andre de Mandiargues’s brief story 'The Bath of Madame Mauriac.' If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to read the entire archive? You’ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. ..."
The Paris Review

Time After Time: The Lasting Legacy Of Chet Baker

"When the body of Chet Baker was found, crumpled and bloodied, on an Amsterdam pavement on Friday, 13 May 1988, beneath the third-floor window of the hotel where he was staying, at first no one recognised him. Years of drugs and alcohol abuse had rendered the 58-year-old unrecognisable from the clean-cut young man who, in the early 50s, with his chiselled good looks, was perceived as the iconic poster boy for West Coast cool jazz. Though Baker’s death was officially deemed to have been a tragic accident that resulted from him falling from his hotel window, the singing trumpeter’s demise was an ignominious one for a jazz musician whose career had begun so spectacularly. ..."
uDiscoverMusic (Audio/Video)

2018 September: Gerry Mulligan Quartet - Pacific Jazz Records (1952), 2019 May: Italian Movies (2014), 2019 June: Let's Get Lost - Bruce Weber (1988)

Ethiopian Modern Instrumentals Hits = ሙዚቃ ሕይወቴ (1972)

"The Ethiopian saxophonist Tèsfa-Maryam Kidané was one of the most remarkable stylists of his generation and between 1965 and 1972 emerged as a brilliant, inspired player. Tesfa Mariam got his start with the Police Orchestra in Asmara. After his stints with the second Ras Band & The All Star Band. He left Ethiopia to study at Berkelee College of Music in ’72 and he stayed and settled in United States. Bass – Haylu «Zihon» Kèbbèdè, Ivo. Drums – Girma Zèmaryam, Tesfayé «Hodo» Mèkonnen. Electric Piano [Fender Rhodes], Organ, Percussion – Mulatu Astatqé. Guitar – Tèklè «Hukèt» Adhanom. Tenor Saxophone – Fekade Amde Maskal. Tenor Saxophone [First] – Tesfa-Maryam Kidané. Transferred By, Engineer [Restauration] – Wilfrid Harpaillé. Upright Piano – Girma Bèyènè/
YouTube: Tesfa Maryam Kidane - Heywete
Bandcamp: Ethiopian Modern Instrumentals Hits (Audio)
Discogs (Video)

Trump Sets the 2020 Tone: Like 2016, Only This Time ‘the Squad’ Is Here

During a news conference on Monday, Representatives Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez denounced Mr. Trump’s comments.
"With three days of attacks on four liberal, minority first-term congresswomen, President Trump and the Republicans have sent the clearest signal yet that their approach to 2020 will be a racially divisive reprise of the strategy that helped Mr. Trump narrowly capture the White House in 2016. It is the kind of fight that the president relishes. He has told aides, in fact, that he is pleased with the Democratic reaction to his attacks, boasting that he is 'marrying' the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party to the four congresswomen known as 'the squad.' His efforts to stoke similar cultural and racial resentments during the 2018 midterm elections with fears of marauding immigrant caravans backfired as his party lost control of the House. But he is undeterred heading into his re-election campaign, betting that he can cast the entire Democratic Party as radical and un-American. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: House Condemns Trump’s Attack on Four Congresswomen as Racist (Video)

The Epic

"Surveying the scene at the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York’s Greenwich Village last August, it was clear that something remarkable was afoot. The 200-seat capacity venue was completely sold out for a series of concerts by Los Angeles saxophonist Kamasi Washington and the West Coast Get Down, and the atmosphere thrummed with anticipation. Inside, the club was totally overstuffed, while outside on the street was even more chaotic, with hopeful standing-room purchasers lined up down West 3rd all the way to Sixth Avenue. This was the kind of reception more befitting an established jazz legend making a rare appearance after several decades away, not a young musician in his first ever New York City gigs as a bandleader. Packed houses also greeted Washington when he returned to the city for his BRIC JazzFest and Le Poisson Rouge sets that October, and at a February show at Webster Hall, over 1600 concertgoers responded to his performance with rapturous delight. ..."
Red Bull Music Academy Daily
Red Bull Music Academy Daily - Interview: Kamasi Washington

2015 December: The Epic - Kamasi Washington (2015), 2016 December: Throttle Elevator Music featuring Kamasi Washington (2016), 2017 April: Harmony of Difference (EP - 2017), 2017 June: "The Rhythm Changes", 2017 August: What's in my Bag?, 2017 August: Harmony of Difference EP (2017), 2018 July: Heaven and Earth (2018), 2019 March: Kamasi Washington’s Giant Step

Notre-Dame came far closer to collapsing than people knew. This is how it was saved.

"PARIS — The employee monitoring the smoke alarm panel at Notre-Dame cathedral was just three days on the job when the red warning light flashed on the evening of April 15: 'Feu.' Fire. It was 6:18 on a Monday, the week before Easter. The Rev. Jean-Pierre Caveau was celebrating Mass before hundreds of worshipers and visitors, and the employee radioed a church guard who was standing just a few feet from the altar. Go check for fire, the guard was told. He did and found nothing. It took nearly 30 minutes before they realized their mistake: The guard had gone to the wrong building. The fire was in the attic of the cathedral, the famed latticework of ancient timbers known as 'the forest.' ..."
NY Times
NY Times - How Notre-Dame Was Saved: 5 Things We Know

2019 April: A France in Turmoil Weeps for a Symbol of Paris’s Enduring Identity

Just how big is the Andromeda galaxy?

This image of the Andromeda galaxy, captured by NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer, shows the ultraviolet side of our familiar galactic neighbor.
"Both the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy (M31) are giant spiral galaxies in our local universe. And in about 4 billion years, the Milky Way and Andromeda will collide in a gravitational sumo match that will ultimately bind them forever. Because astronomers previously thought that Andromeda was up to three times as massive as the Milky Way, they expected that our galaxy would be easily overpowered and absorbed into our larger neighbor. But now, new research suggests we’ve overestimated our opponent. ..."
Astronomy (Video)
Space (Video)
W - Andromeda Galaxy

The Andromeda Galaxy, also known as Messier 31 (or M31), is one of the most distant objects visible to unaided human eyes. ..."

Sudan’s street protests have inspired another revolution—in art

“We are the revolution. And the revolution continues.”
"Galal Yousif sat hunched in a quiet studio at the Kuona art center west of Nairobi, his fingers moving deftly over a new sketchbook. The work in progress comprised elongated human faces crowded in tight formation, their fierce eyes searching the horizon. The drawing depicted a story of unease, especially by the way some of the profiles grimaced and furrowed their brows. But if the sketch was sharply incongruous with the tranquility of where it was being drawn, it was only because it reflected the reality of millions of people from Galal’s home country: Sudan. What began as spontaneous protests last December due to sluggish economic growth turned into a massive peaceful uprising that ended with the removal in April of one of Africa’s longest-serving dictators, Omar al-Bashir. ..."
Quartz Africa

Brian Cassidy, Bookseller

"Based in the Washington D.C. area, Brian Cassidy Bookseller deals broadly in 20th century popular culture and avant garde print materials: books, posters, manuscripts, ephemera, and the like. Specialties include artists' books, literature and poetry, little magazine and the mimeo revolution, punk, outsider and vernacular books, photography, and archival materials. We actively buy books, from single titles to entire libraries. ..."
Brian Cassidy, Bookseller
YouTube: Brian Cassidy, Bookseller

Yes We Can—Football and Nationalism

"The African Cup of Nations (Afcon), hosted by Egypt this year, is in its decisive stages. For football fans, this is an opportunity to watch the game together, to sing the anthem of their country together, to conspire against your opponent and insult the referee who is always too hard on our team and too tolerant of the opposition. The atmosphere requires the antagonism of 'us' versus 'them.' It’s all part of the game and the show. Nothing bad in itself because it starts from a very good feeling. For Moroccan fans everyday life seems more or less to stop on match day. The Afcon reveals, beyond the symbolic stakes, the fundamental characteristics of our society: the merit of certain players to be on the field, the construction and representation of collective identities, socialization, solidarity between Moroccans and the projection of the socio-economic structuring of a large part of society onto the players. ..."
Africa is a Country (Video)
YouTube: Morocco v Benin Highlights - Total AFCON 2019 - R1, Egypt v Zimbabwe Highlights - Total AFCON 2019 - Match 1

Roy Brooks - The Free Slave (1971)

"Roy Brooks The Free Slave may be one of his best though it is not well known outside of collectors of soul jazz. Brooks is credited playing with a lot of famous names, but he leads on The Free Slave, accompanied Cecil McBee, Hugh Lawson, Woody Shaw and George Coleman, in a live session recorded in 1970. We were at the cusp of jazz falling off the mainstream playlists as it became even more inventive (cause and effect? If not on a major label attempting to appeal to a broad audience, the artists had more freedom to experiment). This record, though, is not cacophonous. Just the opposite. The players are all-stars and the compositions sit somewhere between avant-garde and more soulful, lyrical jazz. In the center sits Roy Brooks, as leader and composer with lots of history as a sideman, and a reputation for being more than a little eccentric; Brooks was known for experimenting with novel ways to get his drums to sound different. ..."
The Vinyl Press
allmusic (Audio)
W - The Free Slave
amazon
YouTube: The Free Slave 46:05

The Virtue of Virtual Cables - Andrew Belt

"Over the past two years, a remarkable piece of free software has helped make modular synthesis widely available. The software is called Rack, from the company VCV, which like many small software firms is essentially a single person serving and benefiting from the efforts of a far-flung constellation of developers. Andrew Belt, who develops VCV Rack, this past week visited the San Francisco Bay Area from Tennessee, where he lives and works, to give talks and demonstrations. I caught his presentation at the Stanford University’s CCRMA department this past Wednesday, July 3. It was a great evening. ..."
disquiet
Open Source Synthesis: Behind The Scenes With VCV Rack Creator Andrew Belt (Audio)
VCV Rack - Switched On Rack Vol. 2 (Audio)
vimeo: VCV Scalar demo

Scalar is a quantizer with up to four IN 1V/oct pitch signals (suitable for polyphony) and sends the signal to the QN quantized outputs. Each input is normalized to the previous one, so for example, a single pitch patched into IN 1 will generate quantized values on all four QN outputs.

War & Peace (TV 2016)

"War & Peace is a historical period drama television serial first broadcast on BBC One on 3 January 2016, produced by BBC Cymru Wales, in association with The Weinstein Company, Lookout Point and BBC Worldwide. It is a six-part adaptation of the novel War and Peace by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, written by Andrew Davies and directed by Tom Harper. War & Peace aired on A&E, Lifetime and History Channel in the United States as four two-hour episodes, beginning on 18 January 2016. ... The saga begins in the Russian Empire in 1805. When Pierre (Paul Dano), Natasha (Lily James) and Andrei (James Norton) are first introduced to viewers, their youthful ambition, despite their privileged circumstances, is to find meaning in their lives. Kind-hearted but awkward Pierre, the illegitimate son of Russia's richest man, wants to change the world for the better. The spirited Natasha is searching for true love, while handsome and gallant Andrei, frustrated with the superficiality of society, seeks a higher purpose. At the same time, the French army under Napoleon edges ever closer to Russia's borders. ..."
Wikipedia
Guardian - Clive James: how did the BBC’s War And Peace measure up? (Video)
Top 5 Costume Inaccuracies – and Accuracies – in War & Peace
BBC: Ten Things You Need to Know About War And Peace
amazon
YouTube: War & Peace: Trailer - BBC One

"War and Peace (pre-reform Russian: Война и миръ; post-reform Russian: Война и мир, romanized) is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy. It is regarded as a central work of world literature and one of Tolstoy's finest literary achievements. The novel chronicles the history of the French invasion of Russia and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society through the stories of five Russian aristocratic families. ..."
W - War & Peace Leo Tolstoy
W - French invasion of Russia, W - Fire of Moscow (1812)

Napoleon watching the fire of Moscow in September 1812

Sam Shepard Saw It All Coming

"Last August, the actor Randy Quaid tweeted a photo of himself, stripped to his bike shorts and pretending to be passed out next to a body of water, probably in his adopted home state of Vermont. Quaid had not worked regularly since an apparent psychotic break in 2010, when he announced, looking agitated at a press conference in Vancouver, that a conspiracy of assassins called the “Star Whackers” intended to murder him and his wife, Evi. ... Next to him was a computer tablet, a big knife, a bottle of Perrier, and—splayed out on the sun-warmed stone, like Quaid himself—a copy of Seven Plays, by Sam Shepard. The book appeared to be open to True West, the play in which he and his real-life younger brother, Dennis, starred as the quarreling brothers Lee and Austin off-Broadway 35 years ago. Many of Shepard’s plays feel like journeys into psychosis, so it seems appropriate that Quaid would reach for Shepard as a guide to his own crack-up. That Shepard is starting to feel like a guide for the rest of us is more surprising. ..."
The Atlantic
Sam Shepard: Mystery and Magic, Freedom and Fire
The Paris Review: Sam Shepard, The Art of Theater No. 12
PERFECT SOUND FOREVER: Sam Shepard

2017 August: Sam Shepard (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017)

Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby - Geoffrey Wolff (1976)

"In the 1920's, some people, especially his wife Caresse, thought Harry Crosby a poet, but now 'The Oxford Companion to American Literature' knows as little of him as 'A Literary History of the ‘United. States.' What fame he has achieved he earned largely through his final act. Keats once said that he was half in love with easeful death. Harry Crosby was wholly in love with it and he consummated his affair with it in 1929 when at the age of 31 he calmly Shot his married girlfriend and then himself in a ninth‐floor apartment of the Hotel des Artistes on West 67th Street in New York. For once the tabloid headlines got it right: 'Tragedy and Disgrace.' What brought this rich, brave, drunken, self‐centered neurotic to this pass and what it all as to do with literature is the burden of Geoffrey Wolff's fascinating biography. ..."
NY Times: Black Sun (Aug. 22, 1976)
Studs Terkel (Audio)
amazon

2009 January: Harry Crosby, 2012 June: Transit of Venus

The Frick Collection

"Welcome to The Frick Collection. Internationally recognized as a premier museum and research center, the Frick is known for its distinguished Old Master paintings and outstanding examples of European sculpture and decorative arts. The collection was assembled by the Pittsburgh industrialist Henry Clay Frick (1849–1919) and is housed in his former residence on Fifth Avenue. One of New York City’s few remaining Gilded Age mansions, it provides a tranquil environment for visitors to experience masterpieces by artists such as Bellini, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Gainsborough, Goya, and Whistler. The museum opened in 1935 and has continued to acquire works of art since Mr. Frick’s death. ..."
The Frick Collection: About
The Frick Collection (Tiepolo in Milan: The Lost Frescoes of Palazzo Archinto - Video)
W - The Frick Collection
The Controversial Origins of New York City's Frick Collection
Thirteen: The Frick Collection (Video)

Suzanne Ciani: a masterclass in modular synthesis

"'Here I am, forty years later, playing the Buchla again. It’s like riding a bicycle for me,' Suzanne Ciani muses, standing in the pulpit of a 15th century church in the Swiss mountain village of Lauenen. Her Buchla 200e synthesiser is set up to address a small congregation as part of Elevation 1049 festival, and there’s a sense of her work coming full circle. As a classically trained musician, Ciani is no stranger to sacred music, but it was in the visionary work of instrument builder Don Buchla that she found the true object of her devotion. After graduating with a master’s degree in composition at University of California, Berkeley, she joined Buchla to work on his nascent machines in both a practical and an artistic capacity. As she told the NY Times in 1974, Ciani 'sat and soldered joints and drilled holes for three dollars an hour,' saving enough money to purchase her own. ..."
The Vinyl Factory (Video)
W - Suzanne Ciani
Suzanne Ciani
Discogs
Soundcloud (Audio)