The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum - Heinrich Böll (1974)

Wikipedia - "The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, or: How violence develops and where it can lead ... is a 1975 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Heinrich Böll, written for the screen by Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta. Schlöndorff and von Trotta wrote the script with an emphasis on the vindictive and harsh treatment of an innocent woman by the public, the police and the media. The film stars Angela Winkler as Blum, Mario Adorf as Kommissar Beizmenne, Dieter Laser as Tötges, and Jürgen Prochnow as Ludwig. Katharina Blum is an innocent woman who works as a housekeeper for a famous corporate lawyer, Hubert Blorna, and his wife Trude. Her life is ruined by an invasive tabloid reporter, Werner Tötges, who works for a tabloid simply known as The Paper. Katharina lands in the papers when the police begin to investigate her in connection with Ludwig Götten, a man she has just met and quickly fallen in with love, and who is accused of being an anarchist, a bank robber, and an alleged terrorist. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Heinrich Böll
amazon
MUBI: The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum
YouTube: The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum

Lee Morgan - Cornbread (1967)

“Philadelphia horn-blower Lee Morgan had been with Blue Note Records for almost nine years when he recorded Cornbread, his 12th album for the label, in a single session held on Saturday, 18 September 1965. Originally from Philadelphia, Morgan was a precociously-talented trumpet prodigy who made his debut recording at the tender age of 18 for Alfred Lion’s famous label, on 4 November 1956.  … Cornbread’s nine-minute-long title track was the first of four songs composed by the trumpeter on the album. It was driven by a boogaloo-style groove created by Ridley, Higgins and Hancock that had been the salient feature of ‘The Sidewinder’. Rendered in a finger-clicking soul-jazz vein, the tune also had a catchy harmonised horn line and featured some blazing trumpet improv from Morgan. Hank Mobley takes the second solo, Jackie McLean the third, followed by Herbie Hancock with an inventive passage of busy extemporisation. …”
‘Cornbread’: Lee Morgan’s Tasty Blue Note Classic (Video/Audio)
LondonJazzCollector (Audio)
W – Cornbread
Discogs (Video)
amazon

2018 January: I Called Him Morgan (2017), 2015 December: Art Blakey - Paris Jam Session (1959), 2019 May: "I Remember Clifford" - Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers (feat. Lee Morgan) (1958)

Habibi Funk, the label playing hide and seek in Medina

"In the alleyways of Casablanca, a man is walking around with a photo in his hand, questioning the locals sitting on cafe terraces, in the hope that one of them recognises the mysterious singer whom he discovered by chance on a ‘45 turntable, hidden behind broken electronic devices and stacked in a second-hand shop. This man is Jannis Stürtz. He is stomping through Medina in search of the foundations for what would eventually become Habibi Funk in 2015: ‘In the beginning, it was way more difficult. For example, trying to find Fadoul was like a one-year process. We found someone who recognised the photo and then we only knew where his family used to live ten years ago, and we just had the name of a neighbourhood in Casablanca, not the street name or anything.’ ..."
Pan African Music (Video)
YouTube: Jannis (Habibi Funk) • Vinyl Set • Le Mellotron

2017 June: Ahmed Malek and Other Treasures From Habibi Funk’s North African Crate - Digging Expeditions, 2017 July: Lebanon: Various artists - Jakarta Radio 010 Mix, 2017 December: From the Counter: Beirut, 2018 June: "Habibi Funk 001 Mix" by Jannis of Jakarta Records (Mix of Arabic 60s & 70s)

Why Can’t New York City Build More Gems Like This Queens Library?

"Against a phalanx of mostly dreary new apartment towers, the soon-to-open Hunters Point Community Library by Steven Holl Architects is a diva parading along the East River in Queens, south of the famous Pepsi sign. With its sculptured geometry — a playful advertisement for itself — it’s even a little like the Pepsi sign. Compact, at 22,000 square feet and 82 feet high, the library is among the finest and most uplifting public buildings New York has produced so far this century. It also cost something north of $40 million and took forever to complete. So it raises the question: Why can’t New York build more things like this, faster and cheaper? ..."
NY Times
Queens Public Library: Long-stalled Hunters Point library will finally open next week (Video)

Rooftop bleachers offer sweeping views of Manhattan and a place to stage events.

Fania Records: How A New York Label Took Salsa To The World

"Just as Chess Records is synonymous with the blues, Motown with soul and Blue Note with jazz, New York’s Fania Records is inextricably tied to the sound of Latin-American salsa music. The label was the brainchild of an unlikely partnership between an accomplished Caribbean musician from the Dominican Republic and a Brooklyn-born Italian-American who was a former police officer turned divorce lawyer. Johnny Pacheco and Gerald 'Jerry' Masucci met in 1962 when the latter became the former’s divorce attorney. But they also shared a mutual love of Latin music (Masucci had worked in Cuba at one time) and, in 1964, they decided to start a record label that began as a small-time operation on the Big Apple’s mean streets but which would eventually become a global brand that conquered the world. ..."
udiscover (Video/Audio)
Vinyl Me, Please Partnering With Fania On Three Reissues, Merch, And VMP Classics Record Of The Month (Video/Audio)

2014 October: Fania at Fifty

The Interior Decorators of Bloomsbury

Omega chairs in the Dining Room at Charleston.
"In the summer of 1913, at 33 Fitzroy Square in London, the ornate Georgian house where the Pre-Raphaelites once gathered became the venue for another visionary artistic enterprise. Founded by the Bloomsbury painter and art critic Roger Fry, the Omega Workshops Ltd. was an interior decor and furniture company that sought to provide struggling artists with a regular income. 'There is a certain social-class feeling, a vague idea that a man can still remain a gentleman if he paints bad pictures,' Fry observed, 'but must forfeit the conventional right to his Esquire, if he makes good pots or serviceable furniture.' At the Omega, the distinction between fine and applied arts was dismissed. In the upstairs studio, fine artists designed colorful and original furniture, ceramics, textiles, and rugs, while downstairs two showrooms were open to the public, who could browse and purchase the wares. Fry, who coined the term post-Impressionism, wanted to energize fusty British homes with the French art movement’s vibrancy and brio. ..."
The Paris Review
Post-Impressionist Living: The Omega Workshops (Video)
A Five-Step Guide to Bloomsbury Interiors

Plate with overglaze painted sailing boat design, Duncan Grant, 1913-14.

2019 April: Bloomsbury Group

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

Leonard Ragaglia Jr., as a child, with his firefighter father who died on Sept. 11, 2001.
"They were just children when their fathers ran toward the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001. They grew up revering parents — firefighters and police officers — who were killed that day, or died years later from the toxic dust. When a reporter starts to ask them 'How old?' — wanting to know their current age — many reflexively answer '7' or '5' or '10,' their age when their families were upended by a terrorist attack that remains painfully etched in the city’s collective memory. On Tuesday, a record number of these children of slain rescuers will take an oath, like their fathers did, to serve New York City. ..."
NY Times

Mike Florio, 24. Son of John J. Florio from Engine 214, Brooklyn.

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

Black Friday (1869)

Photograph of the blackboard in the New York Gold Room, September 24, 1869, showing the collapse of the price of gold. Handwritten caption by James A. Garfield indicates it was used as evidence before the Committee of Banking & Currency during hearings in 1870.
Wikipedia - "The Black Friday gold panic of September 24, 1869 was caused by the efforts of two investors, Jay Gould and his partner James Fisk, also called the Gold Ring, to corner the gold market on the New York Gold Exchange. The scandal took place during the Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, whose policy was to sell Treasury gold at weekly intervals to pay off the national debt, stabilize the dollar, and boost the economy. The country had gone through tremendous upheaval during the Civil War and was not yet fully restored. This period, known as the Gilded Age, was a time of great industrial growth which invited much investment and speculation. Abel Corbin, a small time speculator, married Virginia Grant, the younger sister of President Grant. ... A panic on Wall Street ensued and the country went through a few months of economic turmoil. Thanks to Grant's efforts, as well as of his administration, a national depression was averted. Gould and Fisk hired the best defense available. Favored by Tweed Ring judges, the conspiratorial partners escaped prosecution. An 1870 government investigation, headed by James A. Garfield, exonerated Grant of any illicit involvement in the conspiracy. ..."
Wikipedia
PBS: Black Friday, September 24, 1869
NY Times: October 16, 1869, Harper's Weekly

Panic in Gold room on Black Friday

The Byrds w/Gram Parsons - Mr. Spaceman (1968)

"The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo, released 50 years ago this week, is one of the foundational documents of country rock. But it could’ve been a much different album. 'My original idea for Sweetheart of the Rodeo was to do a double album, a chronological album starting out with old-timey music, not bluegrass, but pre-bluegrass,' Roger McGuinn, the band’s leader, told Rolling Stone in 1970. 'And then get into like the 1930s advanced version of it, move it up to modern country, the ’40s and ’50s with steel guitar and pedal steel guitar—kind of do an article on the evolution of that type of music. Then cut it there and kind of bring it up into electronic music and a kind of space music and going into futuristic music.' The man largely responsible for bringing McGuinn’s ambitious vision back to earth was Gram Parsons, a mostly unknown 22-year-old Harvard drop-out from Florida armed with a sizable trust fund and a sweet Southern accent. ..."
Pitchfork: Gram Parsons’ Cosmic American Trip (Video)
YouTube: The Byrds w/Gram Parsons - Mr. Spaceman

2008 March: Gram Parsons, 2011 March: Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris. Liberty Hall, Texas, 1973, 2012 May: Sweetheart of the Rodeo, 2013 January: Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel, 2013 September: Flying Burrito Brothers - Live At The Avalon Ballroom 1969, 2014 February: The Gilded Palace of Sin - The Flying Burrito Brothers (1969), 2014 March: Burrito Deluxe - The Flying Burrito Brothers (1970), 2014 May: GP (1973), 2014 September: Grievous Angel (1974), 2015 October: Top 10 Gram Parsons Songs, 2016 November: Death of Gram Parsons, 2017 March: Sleepless Nights (1976), 2017 April: The Complete Reprise Sessions (2006)

The fantasy of window shopping in New York City

"When Ashcan artist Everett Shinn painted this woman seemingly spellbound by the stylish mannequins behind a department store window, the concept of “window shopping” was a relatively new phenomenon. Shinn completed the painting, simply titled 'Window Shopping,' in 1903. It perfectly captures the consumerism ushered in by the rise of the Gilded Age city’s magnificent emporiums, where the latest fashions were on display on the Flatiron and Chelsea streets that once made up Ladies Mile. 'Shinn may have appreciated the way shop windows, like the vaudeville stage, created a fantasy space that functioned also as a site of cultural exchange,' art consultant Janay Wong explained on a Sotheby’s page focusing on the painting. ..."
Ephemeral New York

Gregory Isaacs & U Brown - The Border (1978)

"I don’t want summer to end so I’m going to post one of my all time favorite reggae songs, Gregory Isaacs 1978 classic 'The Border.' This one has everything: a great rhythm, the Cool Ruler’s smooth vocals, lyrics with a message, and U-Brown’s great toasting at the end. My perfect reggae song!"
Song of the Day: Gregory Isaacs & U Brown “The Border” (Video)
YouTube: Gregory Isaacs & U-Brown - The Border 12", Gregory Isaacs & U-Brown - The Border + GG AllStars-Dub Part Two

Hainbach - Gestures (2019)

"... Gestures is an album of disappearing and acceptance. The sense of loss is lifted by interweaving piano phrases, harmonized by fragile oscillators. Gentle movements above radio antennas guided the recording process, adding an incorporeal, dreamlike feel. Wonderfully executed, incredibly unique and entirely Hainbach. ..."
Bandcamp (Audio)
YouTube: Gestures (full album) 34:32

2018 October: Distressed Tape, 2019 February: Sandpaper Is a Form of Change, 2019 February: Hainbach - Gear Top 7: My Personal Favorites In 2018, 2019 May: The Sound of Architecture and Design | Bauhaus, Piezo Microphones and FX, 2019 June: Make Noise Morphage - My "Film Noir" Reel, 2019 August: The Sands Take You | tape loop, OP-1 (2019)

Les Nabis

Pierre Bonnard, Dining Room in the Country, 1913.
Wikipedia - "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).

Soccer at the Edge of the World

During the week of the Greenland national soccer tournament, the astroturf soccer field in Sisimiut was in near constant use.
"SISIMIUT, Greenland — The boat journey along Greenland’s wild, rocky coast lasted three days. It was long and slow, calling in at what felt like every village on the way to pick up passengers and drop off supplies. The scenery was spectacular: sheer, snow-capped mountains rising from the sea, fjords cutting into untouched wilderness. After a while, though, Inuk Mathaussen found even that started to pall. It was, as he remembers it, pretty 'boring.' All that time at sea was not Mathaussen’s only sacrifice. He had left his partner and their 1-year-old at home for a couple of weeks. He had cashed in valuable vacation time. He had spent hundreds of dollars, too: for transportation and accommodations, for equipment and membership fees. In return, once the boat reached its destination, he would have the dubious pleasure of spending seven nights on a mattress in a school gymnasium, struggling to sleep in a room filled with a few dozen friends and strangers. ..."
NY Times
W - Greenland national football team
Guardian: The unlikely success story of football on the massive island of Greenland

The fog rolls into Sisimiut every few days, blanketing the town with a low-slung, white cloud.

Jane Bowles

Wikipedia - "Jane Bowles (February 22, 1917 – May 4, 1973) was an American writer and playwright. Born into a Jewish family in New York City on February 22, 1917, to Sydney Auer (father) and Claire Stajer (mother), Jane Bowles spent her childhood in Woodmere, New York, on Long Island. She developed tuberculous arthritis of the knee as a teenager, and her mother took her to Switzerland for treatment, where she attended boarding school. At this point in her life, she developed a passion for literature coupled with insecurities. As a teenager she returned to New York, where she gravitated to the intellectual bohemia of Greenwich Village. She married composer and writer Paul Bowles in 1938. The location of the honeymoon inspired the setting for her novel Two Serious Ladies. Bowles had a rich love life. In 1937, she met Paul Bowles and in following year (1938), they were married and went to a honeymoon in Central America. She visited lesbian bars while they traveled together in Paris. ... Bowles, who was an alcoholic, suffered a stroke in 1957 at age 40. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times - The Extravagant Jane Bowles: Always on the Edge of Something
The Best Book of 1943: Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
Millicent Dillon: “the originality and emotional power” of Jane Bowles

Jane Bowles and Paul Bowles

2007 November: The Authorized Paul Bowles Web Site, 2010 February: Paul Bowles (1910-1999), 2011: January: Halfmoon (1996), 2013 July: Tellus #23 - The Voices of Paul Bowles, 2014 January: Let It Come Down: the Life of Paul Bowles (1998), 2014 March: The Sheltering Sky (1949), 2015 January: Things Gone & Things Still Here, 2015 October: The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles – a cautionary tale for tourists, 2015 November: The Rolling Stone Interview (May 23, 1974), 2016 June: Let It Come Down (1952), 2016 December: Paul Bowles & the Music of Morocco, 2017 July: Night Waltz: The Music of Paul Bowles, 2018 July: The Sheltering Sound

Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash Session Unearthed for Bootleg Series

"A session Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash recorded in Nashville in 1969, much of it never bootlegged, is finally set for release in the 15th installment of Dylan’s Bootleg Series, Rolling Stone reports. The 3xCD set compiles their session—where they laid down 'Girl From the North Country,' jammed with Carl Perkins, covered 'Mystery Train,' and wrote Cash’s 'Wanted Man'—with largely unheard and sought-after outtakes from John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline, and more. Bob Dylan (featuring Johnny Cash)’s Travelin’ Thru, 1967 – 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 15 is out November 1 (via Columbia/Legacy). ..."
Pitchfork (Video)
Bob Dylan (Featuring Johnny Cash) – Travelin’ Thru, 1967 – 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 15 out on Nov. 1

The Crisis for Birds Is a Crisis for Us All

A male Baltimore Oriole.
"Nearly one-third of the wild birds in the United States and Canada have vanished since 1970, a staggering loss that suggests the very fabric of North America’s ecosystem is unraveling. The disappearance of 2.9 billion birds over the past nearly 50 years was reported today in the journal Science, a result of a comprehensive study by a team of scientists from seven research institutions in the United States and Canada. As ornithologists and the directors of two major research institutes that directed this study, even we were shocked by the results. We knew of well-documented losses among shorebirds and songbirds. But the magnitude of losses among 300 bird species was much larger than we had expected and alarmingly widespread across the continent. ..."
NY Times
Ny Times: Birds Are Vanishing From North America
Cornell: Nearly 30% of birds in U.S., Canada have vanished since 1970 (Video)
Cornell: Seven Simple Actions to Help Birds

Debatable: Should the presidency have an age limit?

"Life has seven stages, Shakespeare wrote, ending in oblivion, but he might have forgotten an eighth: running for president. Jimmy Carter, the country’s longest-living former chief executive, seemed to express concern on Tuesday that all three Democratic presidential front-runners are septuagenarians. ... The debate: The age minimum for the presidency is 35. Should there be a maximum, too? The average age of American presidents at swearing-in is 55, but recent decades have seen many outliers. At 70, President Trump was the oldest to take office, beating a record set by Ronald Reagan, who still remains the oldest person ever to leave it, at 77. Well before the end of Mr. Reagan’s second term, in 1989, speculation abounded about his mental decline; he would be found to have Alzheimer’s disease five years later. ..."
NY Times
10 reasons there should be a maximum age limit to run for president

The Portable Beat Reader - Ann Charters

"Cutting through bohemian posturing and excess, Charters here reprints much of the most vital, readable and relevant material produced by the Beat generation, primarily in the 1950s and '60s, with some selections from the '70s and '80s. The novels of such leading figures as Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs lend themselves well to excerpting, giving this volume creditable ballast. Representative works of Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gary Snyder are included along with those of lesser-known Beats (e.g., John Clellon Holmes), fellow travelers like Frank O'Hara and Amiri Baraka, and wives and girlfriends often overlooked at the time, including Hettie Jones, Carolyn Cassady and Joyce Johnson. Charters (Kerouac) offers a broad perspective on this seminal literary movement: she links East Coast Beats to the San Francisco Renaissance poets; pays attention to such latter-day Beats as Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg; and explains the position of non-Beat but related writers--Alan Watts, Anne Waldman, Diane DiPrima and the young Norman Mailer--in her helpful introductory essay and notes preceeding each entry. Her energizing, liberating anthology makes it clear that such Beat preoccupations as the bomb, the meaninglessness of modern existence and ecological destruction remain current."
Publishers Weekly
[PDF] Introduction - The Beat Half-Century
amazon

Working Families Party

"At a recent private dinner in Manhattan, a small group of leftists plotted to take over America. The group, a dozen community organizers and activists from all over the country, had convened at a sushi restaurant in the Flatiron District with the leaders of the New York-based Working Families Party. They were heads of organizations from Boston to Albuquerque, with names like National People’s Action and Washington Community Action Network. And they were there to hear why their states should form their own chapters of the insurgent party, in order to capitalize on the country’s rising liberal tide and push the national conversation leftward. ..."
The Atlantic: The Pugnacious, Relentless Progressive Party That Wants to Remake America
W - Working Families Party
Working Families Party
Jacobin: The Working Families Party Has Written Itself Out of History
NY Times: Working Families Party Endorses Elizabeth Warren. Here’s Why It Matters.

Artist of Industry - Richard Sexton

"Richard Sexton’s forthcoming book Enigmatic Stream: Industrial Landscapes of the Lower Mississippi River documents, in close to one hundred images spanning nearly twenty years of work, the role of industry along the riverbank. “I am drawn to environments that are not destined to last, and whose final chapter may be soon written,” says Sexton, who shot the series in black and white 'to evoke the technological era,' a time when these industrial sites 'were celebrated and romanticized as the feats of human ingenuity they genuinely are.' Juxtaposing the hulking silhouettes of these places against their adjacent surroundings—residential areas, agricultural pastures, and seemingly undisturbed wetlands—Sexton poses the question of how to facilitate economic development in the region while maintaining the health of the nearby ecosystem. ..."
Oxford American
W - Richard Sexton
amazon: Enigmatic Stream: Industrial Landscapes of the Lower Mississippi River

MADONJAZZ #163 by Spiritmuse Records: Deep World Sounds

"MADONJAZZ #163 by Spiritmuse Records: Deep World Sounds. A 1hr set from Mark Gallagher of deep, spiritual jazz and psych folk sounds from around the globe. Also includes music from Moondog, Sun Ra, the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, Don Cherry, The Art Ensemble of Chicago and many more! All Vinyl. Enjoy 🎶 Spiritmuse Records is a new independent record label based in London, UK, dedicated in unearthing hidden gems from past and future, music for both mind and spirit. ..."
MixCloud (Audio)

A Rebel French Poet Draws New Followers to the Hometown

A mural with Arthur Rimbaud’s poem “Ophelia” in the poet’s hometown, Charleville-Mézières, France.

"CHARLEVILLE-MÉZIÈRES, France — When Bernard Colin took over as caretaker of this city’s cemetery 27 years ago, his predecessor gave him some remarkably non-prescient advice: 'Don’t worry, you won’t be bothered by the grave of Arthur Rimbaud — no one visits it.' Now 60, Mr. Colin collects a few letters every week, from as far away as South Korea and Japan, addressed to Rimbaud, the poet who wrote classics like 'The Drunken Boat' and 'A Season in Hell,' and died in 1891. They are left on his grave in Charleville-Mézières, Rimbaud’s hometown — along with poems and train tickets. The caretaker has also caught couples getting overly friendly at the site, conveniently shaded by the thick, verdant foliage of a couple of conifers. ..."

NY Times

“Arthur, it has been so difficult to come here, but at least here I am,” wrote a pilgrim from Italy named Silvia.

2008 May: Arthur Rimbaud, 2010 November: Arthur Rimbaud - 1, 2012 October: Patti Smith: Poem about Arthur Rimbaud (Subtitulado), 2012 December: Writers’ Houses Gives You a Virtual Tour of Famous Authors’ Homes, 2013 August: Arthur Rimbaud Documentary, 2013 November: julian peters comics - The Drunken Boat by Arthur Rimbaud, 2014 June: In Which We Begin To Roar With Laughter At Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, 2015 May: Illuminations - Arthur Rimbaud (John Ashbery - 1875), 2016 March: Rimbaud in New York, 2016 December: The Photography of Poet Arthur Rimbaud (1883), A Season in Hell - Arthur Rimbaud (Robert Wyatt, Carl Prekopp, Elizabeth Purnell, 2009)

G.M. Strike: 50,000 Union Workers Walk Out Over Wages and Idled Plants

"The United Automobile Workers union went on strike at General Motors, sending nearly 50,000 members at factories across the Midwest and South to picket lines on Monday morning. With the two sides far apart, U.A.W. regional leaders in Detroit voted unanimously on Sunday morning to authorize the strike, the union’s first such walkout since 2007. It began at midnight, after the union’s current bargaining agreement expired on Saturday. ... The U.A.W. is pushing G.M. to improve wages, reopen idled plants, add jobs at others and close or narrow the difference between pay rates for new hires and veteran workers. G.M. wants employees to pay a greater portion of their health care costs, and to increase work force productivity and flexibility in factories. ..."
NY Times (Video)

Battle of Lake George

Benjamin West's depiction of William Johnson sparing Baron Dieskau's life after the battle
Wikipedia - "The Battle of Lake George was fought on 8 September 1755, in the north of the Province of New York. The battle was part of a campaign by the British to expel the French from North America, in the French and Indian War. On one side were 1,500 French, Canadian, and Indian troops under the command of the Baron de Dieskau. On the other side were 1,500 colonial troops under William Johnson and 200 Mohawks led by noted war chief Hendrick Theyanoguin. The battle consisted of three separate phases and ended in victory for the British and their allies. After the battle, Johnson decided to build Fort William Henry in order to consolidate his gains. William Johnson, who had recently been named the British agent to the Iroquois, arrived at the southern end of Lac du Saint Sacrement on 28 August 1755, and renamed it 'Lake George' in honor of his sovereign, George II. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Fort William Henry
French and Indian War: Battle of Lake George (Video)
French and Indian War: Siege of Fort William Henry

Location of Fort William Henry at the southern end of Lake George

2015 October: History of the Acadians, 2016 October: French and Indian War

A last remnant of the Duane Street shoe district

"New York is a necropolis of defunct businesses. But every so often an old sign from one of these dead and gone businesses reappears like a ghost, reminding us that at another time in another New York, they were part of the cityscape. One of these long-gone stores recently revealed itself at 114 Chambers Street in Tribeca. 'Craig’s Shoes' it reads, looking strangely British and very old-fashioned. Tribeca Citizen also noticed the back-in-view sign earlier this summer. Reader comments explain that Craig’s had been in business since 1949, ending its run in 2006 at a second store site on 132 Chambers Street, which was to be demolished and replaced by the AKA Tribeca Hotel. Interestingly, Craig’s wasn’t just a one-off shoe store in a neighborhood once known for its light industry and food provisions businesses. ..."
Ephemeral New York

Sierra Club

Wikipedia - "The Sierra Club is an environmental organization in the United States. It was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by the Scottish-American preservationist John Muir, who became its first president. ... Traditionally associated with the progressive movement, the club was one of the first large-scale environmental preservation organizations in the world, and currently engages in lobbying politicians to promote environmentalist policies. Recent focuses of the club include promoting sustainable energy, mitigating global warming, and opposing the use of coal. The club is known for its political endorsements, which are often sought after by candidates in local elections; it generally supports liberal and progressive candidates in elections. ..."
Wikipedia
W - John Muir
Sierra Club
Ready For 100 | Sierra Club (Video)

John Muir