How 2 Soviet Émigrés Fueled the Trump Impeachment Flames

"On a warm summer evening last year, Lev Parnas stepped aboard a private cruise around New York Harbor for a gathering of some of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s closest friends. The passengers sipped wine and cocktails while they sailed past the Statue of Liberty, singing along as another guest, the entertainer Joe Piscopo, belted out 'Theme from New York, New York.' Mr. Giuliani, a personal lawyer to President Trump, relaxed on the open deck in a bright blue polo shirt as the sun set over Lower Manhattan, a video of the event shows. The August 2018 cruise, which was won in a charity auction, came at a pivotal moment in Mr. Giuliani’s relationship with Mr. Parnas and his associate Igor Fruman, both Soviet-born businessmen from Florida who were among the newest entrants to his circle. Mr. Parnas had recently struck up a friendship with Mr. Giuliani while recruiting him for a business deal, but now the men were on the verge of something bigger: teaming up to unearth damaging information on Mr. Trump’s political rivals. ..."
NY Times
NY Times - How Not to Plot Secret Foreign Policy: On a Cellphone and WhatsApp

Lev Parnas, left, and Igor Fruman, who helped Rudolph W. Giuliani carry out shadow diplomacy in Ukraine, were arrested in October on campaign finance charges.

Ranking the Top 100 Websites in the World

"As a greater portion of the world begins to live more of their life online, the world’s top 100 websites continue to see explosive growth in their traffic numbers. To claim even the 100th spot in this ranking, your website would need around 350 million visits in a single month. Using data from SimilarWeb, we’ve visually mapped out the top 100 biggest websites on the internet. Examining the ranking reveals a lot about how people around the world search for information, which services they use, and how they spend time online. ... The 100 biggest websites generated a staggering 206 billion visits in June 2019. Google, YouTube, and Facebook took the top spots, followed by Baidu and Wikipedia. Below is the full ranking. ..."
Visual Capitalist
View the full-resolution version of this visualization

NORAD Tracks Santa

"NORAD Tracks Santa is an annual Christmas-themed program that occurs on December 24 and has existed since 1955. It is a community outreach function of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Every year on Christmas Eve, NORAD tracks Santa Claus leaving the North Pole as he journeys around the world on his mission to deliver presents to children. The program is in the tradition of the September 1897 editorial 'Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus' in the New York Sun. On December 24, 1948, the United States Air Force issued a communique claiming that an 'early warning radar net to the north' had detected 'one unidentified sleigh, powered by eight reindeer, at 14,000 feet [4,300 meters], heading 180 degrees.' ... It was the first time that the United States Armed Forces issued a statement about tracking Santa Claus's sleigh on Christmas Eve, although it was a one-time event, not repeated over the next several years. ..."
Wikipedia
NORAD Tracks Santa
YouTube: Follow Santa's sleigh with NORAD's Santa Tracker (LIVE)

Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes (2019)

"Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes, a stylish and engaging new documentary by Sophie Huber, opens in the recording studio, with a top-tier crew of modern jazz musicians going about their business. From his station behind a keyboard rig, Robert Glasper calls out ideas for an arrangement; Ambrose Akinmusire's trumpet, warming up, can be heard in the background. An establishing shot introduces Don Was, the musical polymath serving as Blue Note's president, as a hipster Buddha in the control booth. As Was explains to the camera, we're watching a session for the Blue Note All-Stars, a group with an obvious name and celebratory purpose, having originally been assembled in commemoration of the label's 75th anniversary. ..."
NPR: New Documentary 'Blue Note: Beyond The Notes' Surpasses Its Purpose (Video)
“Music Is A Portal”: Sophie Huber On Blue Note Documentary ‘Beyond The Notes’ (Video)
amazon

The lost images of anarchist Barcelona

Anarchists march on the streets of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War.
"It was a Barcelona where taxis were prohibited, waiters and shoe shiners did not accept tips, hats were frowned upon, and the notes of The International rang out from every corner. A city where approximately 70 percent of the businesses were collectivized, with their offices occupied by workers and militiamen. Anarchist Barcelona, a unique libertarian experiment in Europe which had its decisive moment between July 1936 and May 1937, has been the subject of various studies and textbooks. However, the studies and textbooks of this exceptional period have been lacking the graphic history which had been presumed lost. ..."
ROAR
Jacobin: Spain Through Orwell’s Eyes
New Republic: The Spain Orwell Never Saw
amazon: Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939

Two militia reading the anarchist newspaper “Solidaridad Obrera.”

2011 July: Spanish Civil War - 75 Year, 18 July, 2011 August: Down and Out in Paris and London, 2012 March: 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother), 2012 June: "The Spanish Earth", Written and Narrated by Ernest Hemingway, 2013 January: The Real George Orwell, 2015 August: Songs of the Spanish Civil War, 2016 September: George Orwell - Homage to Catalonia (1938), 2017 January: Guernica (2016), 2019 September: What Makes Guernica So Shocking? ...

John Fahey - America (1971)

"Listen to John Fahey's America and hear an honest-to-goodness pioneer of solo acoustic steel-string guitar. With a truly distinctive approach, Fahey creates dusty, sweetly evocative worlds of American folk and blues that make the soul throb. His fingerpicking on alternating and drone bass lines, coupled with chorded melodies, continues to provide inspiration to acoustic players. America opens with the bittersweet 'Jesus Is a Dying Bedmaker,' a spirited folk painting of elation dressed in suffering. Fahey's halting articulation at the outset of the tune eventually gives way to an uptempo gust of glad resolve. Here and elsewhere lies Fahey's remarkable talent for squeezing a wondrous amount of expressiveness out of simple musical materials. ..."
allmusic (Audio)
W - America
YouTube: America 1 / 13

2009 March: John Fahey, 2011 March: Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You (The Fonotone Years 1958-1965), 2012 September: Fare Forward Voyagers (Soldier's Choice), 2013 February: The Mill Pond, 2013 August: Railroad (1983), 2013 December: Dances of the Inhabitants of the Invisible City of Bladensburg (1973), 2016 January: The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death (1965), 2017 March: Days Have Gone By (1967)

The Ornament of the World

"The Ornament of the World tells a story from the past that’s especially timely today: the story of a remarkable time in history when Muslims, Christians and Jews forged a common cultural identity that frequently transcended their religious differences. Ornament will retrace a nearly 800-year period in medieval Spain, from the early 8th through late 15th centuries, during which the three groups, though they competed and sometimes fought, managed for the most part to sustain relationships that enabled them to coexist, collaborate and flourish. The film blends evocative location cinematography with dramatic and lifelike animation to take viewers on a fascinating journey through the cities at the center of the story: Cordoba, Seville, Toledo, and Granada. We will discover what made this rare and fruitful collaboration possible and what ultimately tore it apart. ..."
Kikim Media (Video)
PBS: The Ornament of the World (Video)
NY Times: A Golden Reign of Tolerance
amazon: The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain

Court of the Lions

Joris-Karl Huysmans Art Critic. From Degas to Grünewald, in the Eye of Francesco Vezzoli

Giovanni Boldini, Count Robert de Montesquiou
"A key writer of the late 19th century, Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907) was an art critic who is still little known or little understood by the general public. However, his contribution to the artistic press and the aesthetic debate was as decisive as the impact of his novel Against Nature. More passionate about Hals and Rembrandt until his discovery of Degas in 1876-1879, Huysmans admitted that this was a defining moment. And yet, his art criticism immediately accepted the possibility of a double modernity. The modernity of the painters of modern life and that of the explorers of dreams were not mutually exclusive. Here, Manet coexists with Rops and Redon. The desire Huysmans showed very early on to escape from the logic of church doctrine no doubt blurred the perception of his aesthetic choices. ..."
Musée d'Orsay (Video)
Musée d'Orsay: Huysmans from Degas to Grünewald
Sortir Paris

Charles-Marie Dulac (1866-1898), Paysage Mystique, 1894

This Week’s Sky at a Glance, December 20 – 28

"... Saturday, Dec. 21. The Christmas season is when M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, passes your zenith shortly after dark (if you live in the mid-northern latitudes). The exact time depends on your longitude. Binoculars will show M31 just off the knee of the Andromeda constellation's stick figure; see the big evening sky chart in the center of Sky & Telescope. This is the longest night of the year (in the Northern Hemisphere; the shortest night in the Southern Hemisphere). The solstice occurs at 11:19 p.m. EST (8:19 p.m. PST), marking the start of northern winter, when the Sun begins its six-month return northward in the sky of Earth. Sunday, Dec. 22. In early dawn on Monday the 23rd, look southeast for tiny Mars to the right or upper right of the crescent Moon, as shown above. Mars is faint now at magnitude +1.6, but it's on its way to a very favorable opposition next October — when it will shine 50 times brighter and appear a big 22 arcseconds wide. ..."
Sky & Telescope

Drones & Strings - RP Collier

"The sleepy drone that slowly pulses and frays throughout this RP Collier track, “We Fly in Blimps Now,” hovers like its title subject. What it hovers above provides quite a study in contrasts. The drone is all muffled noise, a crunchy sound yielding softness through filters and the semblance of stasis. Below the drone unfolds the slow progression of a melody, presumably played guitar: a lonesome presence in the shadow of fierce clouds. Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/rpcollier. More from RP Collier, who is based in Portland, Oregon, at youtube.com and rpcollier.bandcamp.com."
disquiet (Audio)
SoundClick: RP Collier Thumb Piano Project (Audio)
Bandcamp: Lamellaphone (Audio)
YouTube: RP Collier

The Village Voice Film Guide (50 Years of Movies from Classics to Cult Hits)

"And so it goes. Many of us saw it coming. But just wouldn’t, couldn’t believe it. But after Ridgeway and Schanberg and Christgau got the axe, a half dozen other senior editors were forced out, and the national syndicate of arts reviewers moved in, it was inevitable that longtime Village Voice film critic/editor Dennis Lim would be next on the chopping block of New Times management. As Lim leaves the Voice’s pages, so, too, do the auteurs he’s championed over the years, from Guy Maddin to Spike Jonze, Jia Zhang-Ke to David Lynch, Tsai Ming-liang to Hou Hsiao-hsien. Art-house lovers, we’re at the end of an era. Independent distributors IFC Films, Zeitgeist, ThinkFilm, Roadside, Palm, Koch Lorber, Kino, and First Run, if you think you had a friend at alternative weeklies across this country, you can think again. Film critics can also say goodbye to the Voice’s annual film poll — a yearly rite of passage for many critics, both aspiring and established — which I can’t imagine will be renewed under the new management. ..."
IndieWire
NY Times: David Lynch Returns: Expect Moody Conditions, With Surreal Gusts By Dennis Lim (Oct. 1, 2006)
amazon
[PDF] The Village Voice Film Guide (50 Years of Movies from Classics to Cult Hits)

Fire in my mouth - Julia Wolfe (2018)

"Fire in my mouth is an oratorio for girls' choir, women's choir, and orchestra by the American composer Julia Wolfe. The work was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Jaap van Zweden and was completed in August 2018. Its world premiere was given by the Philadelphia-based chamber choir The Crossing, the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, and the New York Philharmonic led by Jaap van Zweden at David Geffen Hall, New York City, on January 24, 2019. The piece was inspired by the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which claimed the lives of 146 New York City garment workers—most of whom were young immigrant women—in 1911, and the political unrest surrounding it. The title of the piece comes from a quote by the labor activist Clara Lemlich, who later reflected on her years of activism saying, 'Ah, then I had fire in my mouth.' ..."
Wikiedia
Fire in my mouth (Audio)
NPR: Tragic Fire Sparks Julia Wolfe's Latest Look At American Labor History (Audio)
NY Times: With Protest and Fire, an Oratorio Mourns a Tragedy (Video)
amazon
YouTube: Fire in my mouth (trailer), Fire in my mouth - I. Immigration, II. Factory

2013 March: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire

Trump Impeached for Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress

"The House of Representatives on Wednesday impeached President Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, making him the third president in history to be charged with committing high crimes and misdemeanors and face removal by the Senate. On a day of constitutional consequence and raging partisan tension, the votes on the two articles of impeachment fell largely along party lines, after a bitter debate that stretched into the evening and reflected the deep polarization gripping American politics in the Trump era. ... The impeachment votes set the stage for a historic trial beginning early next year in the Senate, which will have final say — 10 months before Mr. Trump faces re-election — on whether to acquit the 45th president or convict and remove him from office. The timing was uncertain, after Ms. Pelosi suggested late Wednesday that she might wait to send the articles to the Senate, holding them out as leverage in a negotiation on the terms of a trial. ..."
NY Times ((Video/Audio)
NY Times: Opinion - Trump Has Been Impeached. Republicans Are Following Him Down.
W - Impeachment of Donald Trump
Vanity Fair: Democrats Charge Trump With Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress
*****NY Times: After Impeachment, an Angry Trump Looks to Vindication in November
*****NY Times: Evangelical Magazine Christianity Today Calls for Trump’s Removal

2019 December: Panel Approves Impeachment Articles and Sends Charges for a House Vote, 2019 December: House Democrats Unveil Articles of Impeachment Against Trump

Ricardo Levins Morales Art Studio Online Store: Drawing the Line for Social Justice

"This site features artwork I’ve created over years to encourage the laughter, hope, love and anger that move us toward a better world. Many were made for and within the labor and social justice movements of our time. They can be gifts, educational materials, morale boosters, appreciation awards, organizing tools, courtship displays and many other communication purposes. Most posters are 11″x17″ but some are larger format. Many pieces are on button pins or note cards too. ..."
Ricardo Levins Morales: Art Studio

Vibrant Aerial Embroidery Captures the Beauty of English Farmlands From Above

"Inspired by traditional embroidery techniques, more and more contemporary textile artists are pushing the boundaries of the craft to create elaborate textile art. One of those artists is 21-year-old Victoria Rose Richards. She uses a range of embroidery stitches to craft illustrative landscape scenes that are bursting with color and texture. Richards is based in rural Plymouth, England, where’s she’s surrounded by the natural beauty that inspires her. Farmers’ fields, countryside roads, and river streams feature throughout the 'needle painter’s' work, all of which are meticulously rendered in colorful thread. Long, straight satin stitches depict patchworks of fields, while clusters of French knots look like trees and foliage from an aerial view. ..."
My Modern Met
W - Embroidery

Cosimo Recording Studios

"The golden age of New Orleans R&B is synonymous with the Cosimo Recording Studios, owned and operated by sound engineer Cosimo Matassa. Located in the heart of the French Quarter in a former wholesale grocery warehouse at 521-23-25 Governor Nicholls St., the facility was opened in spring 1956 after Matassa had made his mark at J&M Recording Studios on Rampart and Dumaine in the preceding decade. At Cosimo’s, which like J&M was the only significant recording studio in the city at the time, the sound of New Orleans R&B came alive as it spread throughout the world. The primary artist recorded at Cosimo studios was Fats Domino, who in 1956 was at the peak of his popularity as an unlikely rock ‘n’ roll star. Through the early 1960s, he recorded hit after hit here under the production genius of Dave Bartholomew for Lew Chudd’s Imperial Records of Los Angeles. ..."
Cosimo Recording Studios
Cosimo Matassa
J&M Recording Studio
W - Cosimo Matassa

Cosimo Matassa

127 years after his death, letters of love and angst still come to Rimbaud’s grave.

"I’ve always loved the tradition of trekking to a beloved author’s grave and leaving gifts for them (and future visitors) to find. Attention has recently turned to the resting place of Arthur Rimbaud, that scraggly-haired tempestuous poet, in the Charleville-Mézières cemetery in northern France. Bernard Colin has been the sexton of Charleville-Mézières for the last 37 years (coincidentally, Rimbaud was 37 when he died prematurely of bone cancer). Colin regularly receives two or three weekly mail drops in a yellow postbox outside the cemetery and stores the many letters addressed to the poet in shoeboxes. Some of these bemoan fading youth, while others wish Rimbaud well. ..."
LitHub
Letters to Rimbaud, 127 years after his death

A mailbox dedicated to Arthur Rimbaud at the west cemetery of Charleville-Mezieres

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), 2019 September: A Rebel French Poet Draws New Followers to the Hometown

Various ‎– Ethiopiques Box.7"

"Many of the tracks were later included on the iconic Ethiopiques series of albums and compilations, which brought the treasures of the Ethiopian music scene of the ’60s and ’70s to a wider audience. The original 7″s are almost impossible to track down these days and sell individually for jaw-dropping amounts online! With original artwork featuring all the great Ethiopian artists – Mulatu Astatke, Girma Beyene, Mahmoud Hamed, Getatchew Mekuria, and Tlahoun Gessesse. Boxset comes with a booklet with liner notes by Francis Falceto (Ethiopiques series founder)."
Music Is My Sanctuary (Audio)
bandcamp (Audio)
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: ETHIOPIQUES BOX7" [Full Album] 49:14

Kalifornienträumen: Bertolt Brecht’s Los Angeles Poems and Other Sunstruck Germanic Specters

Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler, 1950.
"Los Angeles has long been an urban dialectic par excellence, with its discordant melodies and apparent contradictions; its extreme polarities of nature, of culture, of economics, of politics. The metaphors come easily—the tropical flower abloom in a desert basin, the city of illusions, etc.—and Bertolt Brecht employed them acidly and exactingly in the poems he wrote during his LA exile in the 1940s. Indeed, at no time, perhaps, was the city’s surreal admixture of improbable light and equally improbable darkness (sunshine and noir, in other words) more startling than during that very time, the thirties and forties, when hundreds, perhaps thousands of Weimar-era German-speaking exiles (Brecht, Theodor Adorno, Alfred Döblin, Fritz Lang, Peter Lorre, brothers Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Arnold Schoenberg and Salka Viertel, among them) fled the killing fields of World War II Europe and found themselves in a city of angels nestled along the cerulean pool of the Pacific. ..."
east of borneo
Translator’s Note: “Hollywood Elegies” by Bertolt Brecht
NY Times: When Weimar Luminaries Went West Coast

Arnold Schoenberg's Los Angeles

2009 December: Kurt Weill & Bertolt Brecht, 2011 August: W - Communards’ Wall 1871, 2012 March: The Threepenny Opera - Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, 2012 July: Supply and Demand: Songs by Brecht / Weill & Eisler - Dagmar Krause, 2013 March: Pina Bausch - "The Seven Deadly Sins", 2015 February: The Partnership: Brecht, Weill, Three Women, and Germany on the Brink, 2016 October: Lotte Lenya Sings Kurt Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins & Berlin Theater Songs (1997)

Long-lost New Deal-era fresco at SF Art Institute to be brought to light

The partly revealed work of “Marble Workers” (1935) by Frederick Olmsted Jr.
"When the New Deal muralists painted the interior of Coit Tower in the early 1930s, Frederick Olmsted Jr. was a student assistant who was given one tiny square above the front door for his own statement, an image of a fist in a piece titled 'Power,' to give rise to the proletariat. But Olmsted had much more to say and ended up saying it in a 10-by-9-foot fresco mural titled 'Marble Workers,' completed in 1935 at the San Francisco Art Institute. Possibly because it was just 'student art,' Olmsted’s depiction of tradesmen at work in a waterfront tile shop was whitewashed over and then painted over 10 more times. Now all of those layers are coming off by Q-tip and solvent, and by the end of October, “Marble Workers” will be revealed for the first time in 75 years. ..."
DATABOOK
1930s-Era Murals Found Under Painted Hallways at SF Art Institute (Video)
W - Frederick Olmsted

A worker smokes a Chesterfield cigarette in the newly uncovered mural by Frederick Olmsted Jr. inside the San Francisco Arts Institute.

Cold War - Paweł Pawlikowski (2018)

"... Paweł Pawlikowski won the best director award at Cannes in May for this sweepingly intimate love story about a star-crossed couple falling together and apart, through the iron curtain of postwar Europe. ... Yet while screen lovers Wiktor and Zula share names and character traits with the film-maker’s mother and father, their individual narratives are fictional and allusive, taking us from the countryside of Poland to the streets of East Berlin, from Paris to Yugoslavia, over 15 turbulent years – crossing boundaries that are musical, geographical, political and ultimately existential. The result is a swooning, searing Polish-British-French co-production that unexpectedly put me in mind of Casablanca or La La Land as reimagined by Andrzej Wajda or Agnieszka Holland – a reminder of the fundamental things that apply, as time goes by. ..."
Guardian: Cold War review – love in a communist climate (Video)
NY Times - ‘Cold War’ Review: Love Without Borders (Video)
The Atlantic: Cold War Meditates on Exile, Nationalism, and Love
W - Cold War
YouTube: Cold War - Official Trailer, Cold War - The Power of the Leitmotif

Cosmic Slop - Funkadelic (1973)

"And in the year of our lord 1973, the people did reject the funk. Or, at least, they took a break from it. Despite a strong start to their career on the charts, Funkadelic fell into a slump with Cosmic Slop, a commercial flop. With the political landscape looking increasingly Nixonian, Vietnam still raging and the most space-aged album of the year, Dark Side of the Moon, exploring the surreal with a decidedly somber bent, maybe the United States of Groove just wasn’t feeling it. Unfortunate, as not only is Cosmic Slop another stellar entry in a blazing opening run from George Clinton’s mad crew, but also a much more accessible album than the spiraling guitar jams and otherworldly funk that surrounded it. Don’t worry, it’s still plenty whacky but there aren’t any ten-minute guitar solos. ..."
Spectrum Culture (Video)
W - Cosmic Slop
Discogs (Video)
amazon
YouTube: Parliament Funkadelic - Cosmic Slop - Houston 1976
YouTube: Cosmic Slop 1973 (full album)

2009 January: George Clinton, 2010 December: Mothership Connection - Houston 1976, 2011 October: Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove, 2011 October: "Do Fries Go With That Shake?", 2012 August: Tales Of Dr. Funkenstein – The Story Of George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic, 2015 July: Playing The (Baker's) Dozens: George Clinton's Favourite Albums, 2015 August: Chocolate City (1975), 2016 February: Maggot Brain - Funkadelic (1971), 2016 June: P-Funk All Stars - Urban Dancefloor Guerillas (1983), 2017 March: Up for the Down Stroke - Parliament (1974), 2017 May: P-Funk mythology, 2019 September: Tear the Roof Off the Sucker: An Introduction to Parliament Funkadelic

Across the Country, Minor League Towns Face Major League Threat

The Lexington Legends playing a road game against the Hagerstown Suns in Maryland in 2011. Under M.L.B.’s proposal, both teams could lose their major league affiliations.
"... But this opportunity of basic American fandom may soon vanish from dozens of communities across the country. M.L.B. is proposing to sever its parent-club ties with the Legends and 41 other minor league teams — from the Blue Jays of Bluefield, W.V., to the PaddleHeads of Missoula, Mont. It is all part of M.L.B.’s desire to overhaul the lower minor leagues and the way that promising ballplayers are developed. Under the proposal, the 42 newly independent teams would be welcome to join a lower-quality Dream League populated largely by undrafted and released players, a plan one minor league official called a 'death sentence' for the clubs. Loss of major-league affiliation would significantly diminish a team’s cachet and market value — a prospect so devastating that some affected team owners have been reluctant even to inform their employees. ..."
NY Times
A Major Overhaul - See the list of teams that would lose ties to their big-league parent clubs under M.L.B.’s proposal.
NY Times: M.L.B. Said to Be Pushing for Overhaul of Minor Leagues
SI: MLB Faces Tough Legal Road to Restructure Minor League Baseball

Centennial Field in Burlington, Vt., opened in 1906 and is home to the Vermont Lake Monsters, a team on the so-called Hit List.

Panel Approves Impeachment Articles and Sends Charges for a House Vote

"A fiercely divided House Judiciary Committee pushed President Trump to the brink of impeachment on Friday, voting along party lines to approve charges that he abused the power of his office and obstructed Congress. After a fractious two-day debate steeped in the Constitution and shaped by the realities of a hyperpartisan era in American politics, the Democratic-controlled committee recommended that the House ratify two articles of impeachment against the 45th president. In back-to-back morning votes, they adopted each charge against Mr. Trump by a margin of 23 to 17 over howls of Republican protest. ..."
NY Times (Video)
******NY Times: Impeach. By The Editorial Board
NY Times - ‘No Choice’ or ‘a Sham’: Where Every House Member Stands on Impeachment
NY Times - An Inside Look at the Impeachment Case’s Most Intriguing Moments

Steve Martin on How to Look at Abstract Art

"The standard 'anyone could do that' response to abstract art generally falls apart when the person who says it tries their hand at making something like a Kandinsky or Miró. Not only were these artists highly trained in techniques and materials, but both possessed their own specific theories of abstract art—the role of line, color, shape, negative space, etc., along with grander ideas about the role of art itself. Few of us walk around with such considered opinions and the ability to turn them into artworks. The abstraction begins in the mind before it reaches the canvas...."
Open Culture (Video)
Guardian: The history of art … according to Steve Martin
W - Jason Moran
W - John Waters

Geminids and the Moon Duke it Out

As the Earth cuts through the stream of debris deposited by 3200 Phaethon, material strikes our planet's atmosphere, creating the annual Geminid meteor shower. This visualization depicts Earth's encounter with the densest part of that stream on the night of December 13-14, 2019.
"The annual Geminid meteor shower peaks on Friday night, December 13–14, when upwards of 100 meteors per hour are typically seen from a pristine site under moonless conditions. But this year, there's one little problem: the sky won't be moonless. A fat, waning gibbous sits smack in the middle of Gemini, not far from the shower's radiant. Bad news, right? Yes and no. If we assume the Moon will pare down the display by two-thirds, that still leaves 20-30 meteors per hour. To put those numbers in context, the diminished Geminids still equal or better the well-known Leonid, Orionid, and Lyrid showers viewed under ideal conditions. It doesn't hurt that the Geminids are also known for producing lots of fireballs — exceptionally luminous streaks that flare to magnitude –4 or brighter. Bottom line: I'll be watching, and hope you will too. ..."
Sky & Telescope
W - Geminids

#10: Culture - Natty Never Get Weary + Natty Dub (1978)

"... Over the years Culture has experimented with varying sound formations, including the addition and absence of harmony singing, horns and acoustic sounds. Whatever the sound though, the outcome is always the same: music that reaches straight to the soul and not only powers the feet to dancing, but creates the impulse to get up and make lasting change within the world. Culture's initial impact on the world came about with the formation of the Soul Defenders, one of the finest backing groups to ever come out of Jamaica. The Soul Defenders were comprised of several talented musicians from the Linstead, Jamaica area and formed around 1968. Joseph Hill, or ‘Culture' as he was known, served as the band's sometime lead vocalist, frequent backing vocalist, percussionist and songwriter. The group came to Coxsone Dodd's famed Studio One institution in 1971 and immediately began recording and backing the finest of Jamaican singers, among them Dennis Brown, Burning Spear, Alton Ellis, Freddy McKay, The Heptones and The Abyssinians. ..."
PERFECT SOUND FOREVER - Joseph Hill And Culture: An Inimitable Career, Growing Ever Stronger, YouTube: Culture - Natty Never Get Weary + Natty Dub
TRINITY - Three Piece Suit - JA Joe Gibbs 1975
Creation Rebel ‎- Beware
ERNEST WILSON - I Know Myself [1978]
DENNIS BROWN - Revolution [1983]
Delton Screechie ‎- Jah Is My Light
Chester Coke & Spaner ‎- African Race
Shelton Walks - Trouble In The Ghetto + Ghetto Dub
12'' Everal Cooper - Help Out This Nation
CARL MALCOLM + BIG YOUTH - No jestering + knotty no jester + version (1974 impact)

Icebound: The climate-change secrets of 19th century ship's logs

One of the ships tracked by Old Weather is the Jeannette, whose epic story is one of bravery and doom. This engraving shows the Jeannette sinking in June 1881 after nearly two years trapped in the ice.
"On November 14, 1881, an American called George Melville limped across a frozen delta in Siberia and pulled a pole from the snow with his frost-bitten hands. Exhausted and half-starving, Melville was scouring the wasteland for fellow survivors of the most famous ship in the world. The USS Jeannette had set sail from San Francisco to conquer the North Pole. Instead, it quickly got trapped in ice and spent nearly two years drifting across the Arctic Ocean, lost to the rest of humanity. When it was finally crushed by the ice, the Jeannette’s 33 crew members set out across the frozen sea. A storm separated them, and Melville mustered a team of locals in the desolate Lena Delta to find his missing shipmates. He braved the wilderness as the days grew shorter, his legs so swollen and blistered from exposure that he vomited with the pain. First he found the pole. ..."
Reuters