Interview: Artist Spends 5 Years Drawing Giant Colored Pencil Map of North America

"Artist and cartographer Anton Thomas is making waves for his enormous, hand-drawn map of North America. Executed in pen and colored pencil over the course of nearly 5 years, he spent almost 4,000 hours creating this incredibly detailed view of the continent. It’s an ambitious project that required Thomas’ dedication and a lot of sacrifice; but in the end, he was rewarded both personally and professionally for his trouble. The 5′ x 4′ map sprawls across a single piece of paper and is a testament to Thomas’ tenacity. No ordinary map, North America: Portrait of a Continent is filled with Easter eggs waiting to be discovered. This includes 600 individual city skylines, as well as thousands of details that help tell the story of an individual place. ..."
My Modern Met

Queensborough Bridge, 1913 by Edward Hopper

"Queensborough Bridge, has nothing heroic about it despite its gigantic scale. Unlike many artists of the day, Hopper was never tempted to sing the praises of modern engineering. Even the ironic Marcel Duchamp, two years after arriving in New York in 1915, declared that 'The only works of art America has produced are its sanitary installations and its bridges.' This belief in progress, shared by many of Hopper's contemporaries and not foreign even to the Precisionists of the 1920s, ran counter to his skeptical nature. Queensborough Bridge shows no sign of an enthusiasm for technology. The bridge extending diagonally into the background provides Hopper with an opportunity to depict atmospheric phenomena, to let near objects merge gradually with more distant ones - just as Claude Monet did with such virtuosity in his series of Waterloo Bridge paintings around the turn of the century. ..."
Edward Hopper

2008 July: Edward Hopper, 2010 October: Finding Nighthawks, 2010 December: Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time, 2012 Wednesday: Through Edward Hopper's eyes: in search of an artist's seaside inspiration, 2013 July: Hopper Drawing, 2014 May: INTERVIEW: “An Interview with Edward Hopper, June 17, 1959″., 2014 September: How Edward Hopper “Storyboarded” His Iconic Painting Nighthawks, 2015 February: Edward Hopper's New York: A Walking Tour, 2015 September: Edward Hopper life and works, 2016 May: "Night Windows," 1928, 2016 July: Sunday (1926), 2016 September: Drug Store (1927), 2018 January: Seven A.M. (1948), 2018 February: Jo Hopper, Woman in the Sun, 2019 August: Pennsylvania Coal Town (1947)

Martin Luther King Jr. Day: 8 Places in New York to Remember His Legacy

"The Cathedral of St. John the Divine - King delivered a sermon titled 'The Death of Evil Upon the Seashore' in 1956 at this enormous Episcopalian house of worship in Morningside Heights, Manhattan. In his speech, he drew a connection between the escape of Jewish slaves from Egypt in the Book of Exodus and the fate of African-Americans fighting for equality. 'There is a Red Sea in history that ultimately comes to carry the forces of goodness to victory,' he said. To commemorate King’s courageous optimism, the cathedral will hold a service in his memory. Later in the afternoon, in the Chapel of St. James, the composer and conductor Alice Parker will lead an hour of communal singing to honor the civil rights leader. ..."
NY Times
Wikipedia
YouTube: Martin Luther King's Last Speech: I've Been to the Mountaintop

2008 January: Martin Luther King Jr., Martin Luther King Jr. - 1, 2013 August: The March at 50 , 2015 January: Freedom Journey 1965: Photographs of the Selma to Montgomery March by Stephen Somerstein, 2015 February: Spider Martin’s Photographs of the Selma March Get a Broader View, 2015 March: Revisiting Selma, 2015 December: Atlanta: Darker Than Blue, 2016 February: Unpublished Black History, 2018 January: The Evolution of Dr. King, 2018 January: Restoring King, 2018 April: Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘Letter From Birmingham Jail’

This Week’s Sky at a Glance, January 17 – 25

The anticenter of the Milky Way, the point opposite the galactic center in Sagittarius, lies at the junction of Taurus, Auriga and Gemini near El Nath (Beta Tauri). Face this point, and summery Sagittarius is directly behind your head.
"... Sunday, Jan. 19: Algol shines at its minimum brightness, magnitude 3.4 instead of its usual 2.1, for about two hours centered on 7:25 p.m. EST. Algol takes several additional hours to rebrighten. At any random time you glance up at Algol, you have only a 1-in-30 chance of catching it at least 1 magnitude fainter than normal. Just as dawn begins on Monday morning, about 90 minutes before your local sunrise, look low in the southeast for the waning crescent Moon with Mars and Antares hanging below it. Lesser, whiter stars of Scorpius are scattered around them and to their right. Monday, Jan. 20: Dimmed Betelgeuse. The red supergiant Betelgeuse marking Orion's shoulder has always been slightly variable, but lately it has been in an unusually low dip: As of January 16th it was around visual magnitude +1.5 instead of its more typical +0.5. Its fading seems to have stopped. It's clearly fainter than Aldebaran, magnitude +0.9, with which it's often compared. Go look! This is a sight you've probably never seen before and may never again. Read Bob King's What’s Up With Betelgeuse? ..."
Sky & Telescope
W - Betelgeuse
The Truth About Betelgeuse, The Red Supergiant Star That Will Explode As A Spectacular Supernova (Video)

My Journey to Scotland's Most Remote Pub

The walk-in across the Knoydart peninsula
"For decades, the Old Forge was the holy grail of the British outdoors community. The UK's remotest pub, it could only be reached via boat or a three-day walk through one of Britain's last true wildernesses, the Knoydart peninsula in Scotland. A dispute between some locals and a new owner threatened the legend—until they decided to open up a pub of their own. ..."
Outside

The Glenfinnan Viaduct, in Inverness-shire, Scotland

Habibi Funk to release infectious Libyan reggae project by Ahmed Ben Ali

"Ahmed Ben Ali was born in 1971 in Benghazi. He went to boarding to school in Canada for 8 years, and returned to Libya. For a couple of years he also worked in the UK. While going to school and also living in the UK he was always playing music and playing in bands. This culminated in recording his first album, which he released in 2003. Since then he recorded maybe 40 tracks and released two more albums. He also started playing gigs in Libya with his own band. Contextualizing his own style Ben Ali pointed out that 'The Libyan folkloric rhythm is very similar to the reggae rhythm. So if Libyan people listen to reggae it’s easy for them to relate because it sounds familiar. This is the main reason why reggae became so popular here. […]We played the reggae Libyan style, it’s not the same as in Jamaica. We added our oriental notes to it and if you mix both it becomes something great.' ..."
Pan African Music (Video)
Habibi Funk to release Ahmed Ben Ali’s Libyan reggae 12”, Subhana (Audio)
Habibi Funk 012: Subhana by Ahmed Ben Ali (Audio)
YouTube: حبيبي فنك : Ahmed Ben Ali - Subhana (Libyan Reggae, 2008)

Hear Christopher Tolkien (RIP) Read the Work of His Father J.R.R. Tolkien, Which He Tirelessly Worked to Preserve

"J.R.R. Tolkien is responsible for the existence of Middle-earth, the richly realized fictional setting of the Lord of the Rings novels. But he also did his bit for the existence of the much less fictional Christopher Tolkien, his third son as well as, in J.R.R.'s own words, his 'chief critic and collaborator.' Christopher spent much of his life returning the favor, dedicating himself to the organization, preservation, and publication of his father's notes on Middle-earth's elaborate geography, history, and mythology until his own death this past Wednesday at the age of 95. Most fans of Tolkien père came to know the work of Tolkien fils through The Silmarillion, the collection of the former's previously unpublished mythopoeic writings on Middle-Earth and the universe that contains it. ..."
Open Cuture (Video)
W - The Silmarillion, amazon
W - Christopher Tolkien

2010 January: The Lord of the Rings, 2018 January: An Atlas of Literary Maps Created by Great Authors: J.R.R Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island & More, 2019 January: The Largest J.R.R. Tolkien Exhibit in Generations Is Coming to the U.S.: Original Drawings, Manuscripts, Maps & More

Waiting for Dessert by Vladimir Estragon (1982)

"Chirruping chronicles of domesticity are not exactly the stock-in-trade of New York's Village Voice. But week after week a number of Voice readers turn straight to the autobiographical/gastronomical jottings of someone who calls himself Estragon. There is ordinarily a meal being cooked or eaten somewhere in the column, and usually things are polished off with a recipe. ... The Beckett moniker notwithstanding, Estragon mostly suggests an amalgam of Doonesbury, Julia Child, and Erma Bombeck (or maybe Laurence Sterne). Messy noses and vegetable-garden gluts, broken toasters and slaughter-your-own-pig roasts, imitation eclairs and echt spring asparagus bobble about in a soup of beamish associations. ... Unlike some collections of newspaper columns, this is at least as pleasant between the covers of a book as squashed in among the weekly mishaps. ..."
Kirkus Reviews
Outside Counsel
British Food in America - Roast beef salad.
W - Geoffrey Stokes
amazon

Robert Christgau (left) with longtime 'Voice' contributor Geoffrey Stokes

First Snow By Jill Talbot

"A silver mixing bowl, that’s what I remember my mother handing me. I was five. My first snow ice cream. For five years, my daughter and I have lived in this Texas town. For five years, no snow. But this morning, snow rushed down as my daughter slept. I snuck outside and cupped enough from the hood of her car. Milk, vanilla, sugar, and a pinch of salt. My mother’s bowl. This is not missing. This is us, living."
The Paris Review

Albert André - Music (1900)

"The critic Claude Roger-Marx successfully defined the charm of this painting by pointing out that 'the communion established between the figures and the décor, an atmosphere of good grace and contented bourgeoisie, the warmth here and there shedding a golden light on the faces, the hangings, the carpets, the frames, all have an attraction that compares to the best paintings by Vuillard'. Albert André was, moreover, a friend of Vuillard and an enthusiast of the Nabi aesthetic. In this respect, one can see here, in addition to the subject, the Nabi style of layout, particularly with the figures abruptly cut off in the foreground, a technique borrowed from Japanese prints. ..."
Musée d'Orsay
W - Albert André

Street kissers, street kittens: Bruce Davidson's new Britain – in pictures

Teenagers and jukebox, Hastings, England, 1960
"In 1960, the photographer was sent to the UK to shoot a country and a people emerging from postwar austerity into a new era. He perfectly captured the customs and traditions often overlooked by the British themselves.
Guardian

Wales, 1965

Cahiers du Cinéma

"The first issue of Cahiers du Cinéma was dated April 1951 and featured on its cover a black-and-white still of Gloria Swanson, bathed in the beam of an unseen movie projector, from Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard. The choice seems ironic now, given that neither Wilder nor the silent cinema as embodied by Swanson remained a Cahiers favorite for very long. Though Wilder was much admired by the magazine’s founders—Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, Lo Duca, and André Bazin—his work was typed as too literary by the generation of 'Jeunes Turcs' who quickly took over the magazine. Under the leadership of one Maurice Schérer, who became better known under his pseudonym, Eric Rohmer, the group included François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, and Jean-Luc Godard—the core of the movement that, when these young writers re-invented themselves as filmmakers, became known as the Nouvelle Vague. ..."
Cahiers Back in the Day
Guardian: A Short History of Cahiers du cinéma
LA Review - Binge and Purge: The Rise of Extreme Film Criticism
W - Cahiers du Cinéma, W - Cahiers du cinéma's Annual Top 10 Lists
amazon: Cahiers du Cinéma: The 1950s: Neo-Realism, Hollywood, New Wave, Cahiers du Cinéma: The 1960s (1960–1968): New Wave, New Cinema, Reevaluating Hollywood, Cahiers du Cinéma, 1969-1972: The Politics of Representation

Claude Chabrol and Jean-Luc Godard at the Cahiers offices in 1959

Treasure Fever

"... Yet some of Cape Canaveral’s most storied attractions lie unseen, wedged under the sea’s surface in mud and sand, for this part of the world has a reputation as a deadly ship trap. Over the centuries, dozens of stately Old World galleons smashed, splintered, and sank on this irregular stretch of windy Florida coast. They were vessels built for war and commerce, traversing the globe carrying everything from coins to ornate cannons, boxes of silver and gold ingots, chests of emeralds and porcelain, and pearls from the Caribbean—the stuff of legends. ..."
Hakai Institute (Audio)

Elizabeth Warren’s Smart Answer on ‘Electability’

"Over the past few days, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have had a back-and-forth about whether he told her, in a private conversation in 2018, a woman couldn’t get elected president. She says he did. He vehemently denies it. There is a real chance they could both be right. I have had many conversations go this way, and either party’s interpretation of what was said or meant could ring true. I believe that Mr. Sanders sees women as capable of being president. I also believe Ms. Warren perceived him to be arguing that a woman was incapable of winning. It actually mirrors an Ipsos poll from June in which three-quarters of Democratic and independent women believed they would be comfortable with a female president. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: Winners and Losers of the Democratic Debate
CNN: Elizabeth Warren's winning zinger (Video)

Ernesto Valverde and the Prison of Barcelona’s Past

Ernesto Valverde’s biggest failing at Barcelona might be that he couldn’t turn back time.
"The summer before last, Barcelona made the sort of business decision that few — if any — outside the relatively niche world of sports merchandising would have noticed. Since 2001, Barcelona’s merchandising operation had been subcontracted out to Nike, the team’s jersey sponsor. Through a subsidiary company, Nike ran three official Barcelona stores and 15 licensed stores, as well as overseeing some 328 licensed distributors. The branded products they sold included about 7,000 items: apparel and mugs and all manner of sundry tchotchkes. ..."
NY Times (Video)

Artist Ed Ruscha Reads From Jack Kerouac’s On the Road in a Short Film Celebrating His 1966 Photos of the Sunset Strip

"In 1956, the Pop artist Ed Ruscha left Oklahoma City for Los Angeles. 'I could see I was just born for the job' of an artist, he would later say, 'born to watch paint dry.' The comment encapsulates Ruscha’s ironic use of cliché as a centerpiece of his work. He called himself an 'abstract artist… who deals with subject matter.' Much of his subject matter has been commonplace words and phrases—decontextualized and foregrounded in paintings and prints made with careful deliberation, against the trend toward Abstract Expressionism and its gestural freedom. Another of Ruscha’s subjects comes with somewhat less conceptual baggage.  ..."
Open Curture (Video)
vimeo: Staff Pick Premiere: A Getty-commissioned short by Matthew Miller (Video)
Ruscha’s “Every Building on the Sunset Strip”: Plotting a motorized city, paper route style
W - Ed Ruscha

Reality Is the Better Writer

"... The story, recounted in the preface to the novel, neatly captures the way fiction and reportage were constantly interwoven across the breadth of García Márquez’s career—the way oral traditions, legends, and popular memories and the evidence of his eyes and ears work to nourish and creatively enrich each other, often across many years. In fact, while his novels and stories may have won him global renown, journalism was his first calling. Not only was it foundational to his development as a writer, but it also remained integral to his work and public persona throughout his life, from his early days as a cub reporter in Colombia until his death in Mexico in 2014. ..."
The Nation
7 Writing Lessons from Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Gabriel Garcia Marquez is immortalized by The University of Texas at Austin

Pasaporte de Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1969-1976.

2018 May: Latin American Boom, 2017 December: New Gabriel García Márquez Digital Archive Features...

Reading Across America: A Scene Grows in Queens

"Queens’ artistic claims in the realm of music are well known, from the Ramones and Run-DMC to Louis Armstrong and Steinway pianos, but Brooklyn is the NYC borough most often thought of as the home of writers and book enthusiasts. With the spotlight on Brooklyn, many people forget that its almost equally populous neighbor to the north has some great literary chops of its own—and with many artists getting priced out of Brooklyn, more writers are moving to Queens every year. In my opinion, Queens has been undervalued as a literary hotbed, and shortly after I moved there several years ago I decided to do something about it. I have always loved the idea of hosting a reading series. ..."
LitHub
Evolving Ethnic Settlements in Queens: Historical and Current Forces Reshaping Human Geography
Long Island City Photos
The Brief, Baffling Life of an Accidental New York Neighborhood
Woodhaven, Queens: Accessible and Affordable

Woodhaven, Queens

2012 August: Springfield Gardens, Queens, 2017 May: The Queens landscape by Frank Gohlke and Joel Sternfeld, 2017 June: Saving Queens’ Secret Wetlands, 2018 April: Corona Is Queens’ Cultural Smorgasbord, 2018 April: The Many Languages (and Foods) of Jackson Heights, 2019 October: Your Guide to Jamaica: Queens’ First, Bustling Downtown

Impulse For Change: The Story Of Impulse! Records

"Founded in 1961 by Creed Taylor, Impulse! Records is regarded as one of the most important and iconic record labels in jazz. Its history is rich with pioneering musicians who refused to sit still, pushing musical boundaries and creating a discography that’s the equal of any other major jazz record label. One man looms large in Impulse! Records’ history: John Coltrane. ... Certainly, Coltrane, who stayed with Impulse! until his death in 1967, was hugely influential and his presence was a key factor in attracting some of the leading protagonists of jazz’s avant-garde movement (namely Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Michael White and Alice Coltrane) to join the roster of what was, in essence, a major label. And yet if you examine the Impulse! Records story in finer detail, you’ll find that, despite its forward-looking motto, 'The New Wave Of Jazz Is On Impulse!', it was a record label that also honoured the idiom’s old guard. ..."
udiscover (Audio/Video)

Tintin

"Tintin (/ˈtɪntɪn/; French: [tɛ̃tɛ̃]) is the titular protagonist of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. He is a reporter and adventurer who travels around the world with his dog Snowy. The character was created in 1929 and introduced in Le Petit Vingtième, a weekly youth supplement to the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle. He appears as a young man, around 14 to 19 years old with a round face and quiff hairstyle. Tintin has a sharp intellect, can defend himself, and is honest, decent, compassionate, and kind. Through his investigative reporting, quick-thinking, and all-around good nature, Tintin is always able to solve the mystery and complete the adventure...."
Wikipedia
The Atlantic: Coming to Terms With Tintin
FT: Tintin and the war
Guardian: How could they do this to Tintin?

2008 May: Georges Remi, 1907-1983, 2010 July: The Adventures of Tintin: Breaking Free, 2011 December: Prisoners of the Sun, 2012 January: Tintin: the Complete Companion, 2012 December: Snowy, 2015 August: The Black Island (1937), 2015 September: King Ottokar's Sceptre (1938), 2015 December: Red Rackham's Treasure (1943), 2016 July: Captain Haddock, 2017 April: Cigars of the Pharaoh (1934), 2018 March: Destination Moon (1950), Explorers on the Moon (1954), 2018 July: The Calculus Affair (1956), 2018 October: Professor Calculus, 2019 March: Thomson and Thompson

Massacre – Killing Time (1981)

“Spittle Records present an expanded reissue of Massacre‘s Killing Time, originally released in 1981. Following the breakup of Cambridge’s avant-rock legends, Henry Cow, guitarist Fred Frith moved to NYC in 1979, and soon found himself deep in the heart of the city’s robust post-punk and free-jazz scenes. He performed with Bill Laswell and Fred Maher, from the group Material, as a power trio of sorts under the moniker of Massacre. The group quickly garnered a reputation around town, and around the world for that matter, as a heavy and heady band that experimented greatly with rhythm, time signatures, and tone. As Frith himself put it, ‘the group was a direct response to New York. It was a very aggressive group, kind of my reaction to the whole New York rock club scene.’ …”
Forced Exposure
W – Killing Time
YouTube:Killing Time [full album]

A Cultural History of the Potato as Earth Apple

October, by Jules Bastien-Lepage (1878).
"The etymology of the word ‘apple’ takes us back to the Early Middle Ages, when it appeared in various related forms across the Germanic languages: as ‘apful’/’aphul’ or ‘apfel’/’aphel’ in Old High German, ‘appel’ in Old Frisian, ‘appul’ in Old Saxon, ‘epli’ in Old Icelandic, ‘æplæ’ or ‘æpæl’ in Old Danish, and so on. At the time, the word referred sometimes to the fruit we call ‘apple’ today; occasionally to the pomegranate; but often it referred broadly to any round fruit which happened to grow on a tree. In Old High German, and on into Old English and Middle Dutch, the term ‘earth apple’ (‘erdaphul’, ‘eorðæpla’, ‘erdappel’) came to be used to refer – in addition to the mandrake and cyclamen plants – to types of cucumber and melon. ‘Eorðæpla’ appears in this context, for instance, in the Old English Hexateuch: the earliest English manuscript of the first six books of the Old Testament, which contains more than 400 illustrations, and dates from the middle of the 11th century. ..."
culturedarm
Smithsonian: How the Potato Changed the World
W - Potato

Still Life: Potatoes in a Yellow Dish, by Vincent van Gogh (1888).

Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? - Linda Nochlin (1971)

"'Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?' is a 1971 essay by American art historian Linda Nochlin. It is considered a pioneering essay for both feminist art history and feminist art theory. In this essay, Nochlin explores the institutional – as opposed to the individual – obstacles that have prevented women in the West from succeeding in the arts. She divides her argument into several sections, the first of which takes on the assumptions implicit in the essay's title, followed by 'The Question of the Nude,' 'The Lady's Accomplishment,' 'Successes,' and 'Rosa Bonheur.' In her introduction, she acknowledges "the recent upsurge of feminist activity" in America as a condition for her interrogation of the ideological foundations of art history, while also invoking John Stuart Mill's suggestion that 'we tend to accept whatever is as natural'. ..."
Wikipedia
Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? - Linda Nochlin (January 1971 issue of ARTnews)
An Illustrated Guide to Linda Nochlin’s “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”
Linda Nochlin Explores the Role of Women in the Arts in a Previously Unaired Interview
W - Linda Nochlin

At the Heart of France’s Long Strikes, a Fight Between the Haves and the Have-Nots

Protesters marching near the Gare de Lyon train station in Paris this week.

"PARIS — A bright red tapestry featuring the Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara over the words 'Onward toward victory!' exhorts strikers not to give up, in the union’s dingy local headquarters. Outside, the local’s boss shouted through a megaphone at the Gare de Lyon train station: 'The rich should never forget: There will always be the sweat of the poor on their money!' The transportation strike against the French government’s pension overhaul plan is already the longest in the country’s history. As it entered its sixth week on Thursday, thousands of protesters again took to the streets all over France. Who stands to gain and lose in the pensions overhaul demanded by President Emmanuel Macron is debated every day. Nobody agrees on the details. ..."

NY Times

Support for the strike, which was initially high, is waning.

Wanted: A Home for Three Million Records

A small selection of the massive analog holdings of the archive.
"In a part of Manhattan booming with trendy green high rises, renovated lofts and digital media companies, a hidden trove of musical relics has been growing for over 30 years. Housed in a nondescript building in TriBeCa is the Archive of Contemporary Music, a nonprofit founded in 1985. It is one of the world’s largest collections of popular music, with more than three million recordings, as well as music books, vintage memorabilia and press kits. For point of comparison, the Library of Congress estimates that it also holds nearly three million sound recordings. ..."
NY Times
W - B. George, W - ARChive of Contemporary Music
The ARChive of Contemporary Music
amazon: Volume: International Discography of the New Wave, International New Wave Discography (Volume-International Discography of the New Wave)

Ivan Turgenev - First Love (1860)

"Ivan Turgenev’s 1860 novella charts the course of a 16-year old boy’s infatuation with the princess next door in the summer of 1833, while on holiday at the family dacha just outside Moscow. What could have been trite, in Turgenev’s hands achieves universal significance as he depicts the powerful emotions experienced by someone who is leaving childhood behind and entering the world of adult relationships, with all their joys and heartbreaks. The title suggests a light summer romance of the ‘old enough to know better, young enough not to care’ variety, but Turgenev instead delivers a powerful dissection of the infatuations of youth. ..."
The Joy of Mere Words
W - First Love (novella), W - Ivan Turgenev
Genius

Light and Shadow: The Story of Hector Zazou

"It was September 8, 2008. Somewhere between the dying moments of the night and the early morning hours, Pierre Job, who most of his colleagues and friends called Hector Zazou, 'Zaz,' or 'Zazou,' passed away at the age of 60. He was a musician, producer, director, journalist and activist. Worldly, idealistic, intellectual and a dreamer. Autumnal, tormented, pragmatic... A father, friend and enemy, he was a man of elusive dualities. Given the quantity of undeveloped works he left behind him, he probably still had plenty to say. ... A mutant discography unlike any other, notable for its catalog of collaborators: Brian Eno, Harold Budd, Asia Argento, Fred Frith, Henry Kaiser, John Cale, Marc Hollander, Papa Wemba, Björk, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jon Hassell, Gerard Depardieu, Bill Laswell. ..."
Red Bull Music Academy (Video)

2008 September: Hector Zazou, 2011 December: Sahara Blue, 2015 November: Chansons des mers froides (1994)

Artist in Exile: The Visual Diary of Baroness Hyde de Neuville

“Corner of Greenwich Street” (1810)
"Self-taught and ahead of her time, Anne Marguérite Joséphine Henriette Rouillé de Marigny, Baroness Hyde de Neuville (1771–1849) was the first woman artist in America to leave a substantial body of work. Granted exile by Napoleon, she first made her mark in New York City and later Washington, D.C., and her art celebrates the people and scenes of the early American republic, documenting the young country’s history, culture, and diverse population. Neuville’s status as a woman and an outsider made her an astute observer of people from varied backgrounds, and her work documents such significant figures as one of the first visitors to America from China and the earliest accurate portrayals of Indigenous Americans. The first serious consideration of her life and art, this exhibition showcases 114 watercolors and drawings by Neuville, including many that were recently discovered. A scholarly catalogue accompanies the exhibition and is available for purchase in the NYHistory Store. ..."
New-York Historical Society
Woman of the World
W - Anne Marguerite Hyde de Neuville
amazon

Break’s Bridge, Palatine, New York, 1808.

How Qassim Suleimani Wielded His Enormous Power in Iraq

"In the four decades since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, few Iranian leaders have achieved the global profile attained by Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the military commander killed in an American airstrike on Thursday. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Suleimani emerged as the United States’s most capable adversary in that country. His American counterpart at a key point during the occupation, Gen. David Petraeus, described Suleimani as 'a truly evil figure' in a letter to Robert Gates, then the U.S. defense secretary. Over the years, Suleimani gained a reputation as a fearsome military leader who controlled a network of ideologically driven militia proxies across the Middle East. A more nuanced portrait of Suleimani emerges from a leaked archive of secret Iranian spy cables obtained by The Intercept_...."
The Intercept_

2019 March: ISIS Caliphate Crumbles as Last Village in Syria Falls ++, 2019 November: The Iran Cables, 2020 January: Iran Vows ‘Forceful Revenge’ After U.S. Kills General, 2020 January: Iran Loses Its Indispensable Man

John Coltrane’s Handwritten Outline for His Masterpiece A Love Supreme

"Today we present a rare document from the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History: Coltrane's handwritten outline of his groundbreaking jazz composition A Love Supreme. Recorded in December of 1964 and released in 1965, A Love Supreme is Coltrane's personal declaration of his faith in God and his awareness of being on a spiritual path. 'No road is an easy one,' writes Coltrane in a prayer at the bottom of his own liner notes for the album, 'but they all go back to God.' If you click the image above and examine a larger copy of the manuscript, you will notice that Coltrane has written the same sentiment at the bottom of the page. "All paths lead to God." The piece is made up of a progression of four suites. ..."
Open Culture (Audio)

2011 November: John Coltrane Quartet, Live at Jazz Casual, 1963, 2012 March: John Coltrane 1960 - 1965, 2012 September: "Naima" (1959), 2012 October: Blue Train (1957), 2013 April: The World According to John Coltrane, 2013 November: A Love Supreme (1965), 2014 July: New Photos of John Coltrane Rediscovered 50 Years After They Were Shot, 2014 November: Coltrane’s Free Jazz Wasn’t Just “A Lot of Noise”, 2015 February: Lush Life (1958), 2015 May: An Animated John Coltrane Explains His True Reason for Being: “I Want to Be a Force for Real Good”, 2015 July: Afro Blue Impressions (2013), 2015 September: Impressions of Coltrane, 2015 December: Giant Steps (1960), 2016 January: Crescent (1964), 2016 April: The Church of Saint John Coltrane, 2016 July: Soultrane (1958), 2016 December: Dakar (1957), 2017 July: The John Coltrane Record That Made Modern Music, 2017 October: Live at the Village Vanguard (1962), 2017 December: Interview: Archie Shepp on John Coltrane, the Blues and More, 2018 March: Cannonball Adderley Quintet in Chicago (1959), 2018 June: Lost John Coltrane Recording From 1963 Will Be Released at Last, 2018 July: Stream Online the Complete “Lost” John Coltrane Album, Both Directions at Once, 2018 November: Jazz Deconstructed: What Makes John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” So Groundbreaking and Radical?