Harry Dean Stanton - Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain, Ry Cooder - Canción Mixteca, Mariachi Los Reyes at the Harry Dean Stanton Award Show

"... And any film where the actor and musician popped up in automatically gained a bunch of cool-factor points. He was just one of those voices and faces that were familiar and drastic. Weathered at times but stoic. After the actor passed away on September 15th, an era or eras even had faded away. But something struck me as a little odd but understandable at the same time. Folks hadn’t really known his love of music or his aspirations, at moments, to be a professional musician. ..."
Global Texan Chronicles
YouTube: Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain, Ry Cooder - Canción Mixteca, Harry Dean Stanton & Mariachi Los Reyes at the Harry Dean Stanton Award Show

2012 March: Paris, Texas (1984), 2014 August: Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction, 2017 September: Harry Dean Stanton (July 14, 1926 – September 15, 2017)

Living in the Present with John Prine

"I’m leaning against a cherry-red 1977 Coupe de Ville at a CITGO station in Gulfport, Florida, waiting for the car’s owner to emerge from the attached convenience store. It’s got to be at least ninety-five degrees out here, and the heat waves coming off the football-field-sized hood are hypnotic; they bring out the deep luster of the paint job, with its overtones of nail polish, lipstick, and Mad Dog 20/20. It takes a while, but John Prine finally appears, wearing a big smile and carrying two gallon jugs of water. 'Just in case!' he says. 'That’s a long bridge coming up.' We are headed for Sarasota, and between it and us stretches a very long causeway, the kind where they tell you to check your gas level before you start across. The car was only just delivered to him two days ago, and aside from a turn or two around the block, this is its first serious drive. ..."
Oxford American (October 8, 2018)
W - John Prine

2010 February: John Prine, 2011 October: John Prine - 1, 2012 May: Diamonds in the Rough., 2013 September: Sweet Revenge (1973), 2016 February: "Souvenirs" - John Prine & Steve Goodman (1973)

Unfair trade

"To the well-known political, economic, and cultural revolutions that inaugurated capitalist modernity, we ought to add a fourth: a pharmacological revolution, one that began innocently enough with a variety of foreign substances — coffee, tea, chocolate — and culminated in a multi-billion dollar regulatory regime responsible for adapting subjects to their alienating conditions of existence. Forget 'the opium of the people': actual drugs have done and are doing more to prop up an increasingly delegitimized system than any mere ideology. Like broader cultural developments, the history of drugs offers a unique lens through which to glimpse the inner workings of capitalism, and specifically the demands it makes on its human subjects. Perhaps no drug more revealingly illustrates this claim than coffee, a stimulant uniquely and consistently praised by the ruling class since its introduction to the west. ..."
The Outline

2010 September: Espresso, April: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, 2013 May: Coffeehouse, 2015 June: Barista, 2015 August: Coffee Connections at Peddler in SoHo, 2015 November: The Case for Bad Coffee, 2016 January: 101 Places to Find Great Coffee in New York (2014), 2017 June: How Cold Brew Changed the Coffee Business, 2017 September: Our 7 Favorite Literary Coffee Shops, 2017 October: Clever Literary Coffee Poster, 2017 October: Coffee as Existential Statement: A Crisis in Every Cup on Valencia Street, 2018 February: The Trencherman: A Tale of Two Coffee Shops

The Arabian Journey of Geraldine Rendel

Of Hofuf’s main market, Geraldine wrote, “We drifted into the crowd and I soon lost all self-consciousness in the picturesque strangeness of my surroundings.” The Rendels shared a single camera, and thus it is not always possible to determine who took a particular photo.
"In 1937, at age 52, she accompanied her husband, George, a British diplomat, on a three-week, east-to-west traverse of the five-year-old Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Along the way, she kept a journal that, though intended originally for publication, remained in her family for 80 years. She became not only the first Western woman to travel openly across Saudi Arabia as a non-Muslim, but also the first to be received in public by the kingdom’s founder, King Abdulaziz Al Sa’ud, and the first to dine in the royal palace in the capital, Riyadh. Although she had been preceded into central Arabia by a tiny coterie of female travelers—notably Lady Anne Blunt, Gertrude Bell and Dora Philby—unlike them, she was neither a tenacious pioneering female traveler nor on an official mission. ..."
AramcoWorld

Baseball: Part 2: Something Like a War

Pitching footage of the "Big Train," Walter Johnson.
"At this time the games tended to be low scoring, dominated by such pitchers as Walter Johnson, Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, and Grover Cleveland Alexander to the extent that the period 1900–1919 is commonly called the 'Dead-ball era'. The term also accurately describes the condition of the baseball itself. Baseballs cost three dollars apiece, which in 1900 would be equal to $92 today; club owners were therefore reluctant to spend much money on new balls if not necessary. It was not unusual for a single baseball to last an entire game. By the end of the game, the ball would be dark with grass, mud, and tobacco juice, and it would be misshapen and lumpy from contact with the bat. Balls were only replaced if they were hit into the crowd and lost, and many clubs employed security guards expressly for the purpose of retrieving balls hit into the stands—a practice unthinkable today. As a consequence, home runs were rare, and the 'inside game' dominated—singles, bunts, stolen bases, the hit-and-run play, and other tactics dominated the strategies of the time. ..."
W - The dead-ball era: 1900 to 1919
PBS: Part 2: Something Like a War (Video)

Frank "Home Run" Baker of the Philadelphia Athletics, 1913.
SABR: The Rise and Fall of the Deadball Era
Why Did the Baseball Glove Evolve So Slowly? - John Thorn
This Great Game: 1900s Birth of the Modern Age, 1906 The Hitless Wonders, 1907 Cultivation of a Georgia Peach, etc.
NY Times: Rascals and Heroes, Before the Babe, Slideshow, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Major League Baseball: 1908 National League season, with map ...
W - World Series: 1903, 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1909
amazon: Deadball Era
YouTube: The Glory of Their Times -- Special Edition, Deadball Era Baseball Game Footage (1900-1920), The Faces and Voices of Baseball's Deadball Era

"Legends of the Dead Ball Era" at the Met contains 600 cards out of the 31,000 it holds, the fruit of one man's obsession.

Cooking with Nescio By Valerie Stivers

"Nescio is Latin for 'I don’t know' and was the pen name of a respectable Holland-Bombay Trading Company director and father of four publishing in Amsterdam between 1909 and 1942. The writer, whose real name was J. H. F. Grönloh (1882–1961), worked in an office by day and by night sparingly penned not-so-respectable short stories about artistic passion, upper-middle-class sexual longing, and the luminous vistas of his water-soaked city. His minuscule output (two books over forty years) is classic literature in the Netherlands but nearly unknown here. Amsterdam Stories was translated into English for the first time in 2012 and published by NYRB Classics. The book is a series of interlocking stories about a gang of pals who want to be painters and how they fare over time. ..."
The Paris Review

The Alexandria Quartet: Mirrors and telescopes

"The first thing that everyone notices about the first book of the Alexandria Quartet is (to borrow a phrase from a Reading Group contributor) the lavishness of the narrator's style. ... Instead, I thought it might be interesting to talk about ways of seeing through that thick haze of metaphor and allusion. One of the most enjoyable and profitable ways of investigating the Quartet is to play detective: to look out for meaningful clues scattered through the stories. If you know where to look, you can find many way-markers through the various and confounding mysteries and intrigues surrounding Balthazar, Justine, Clea and company. There are sentinels whispering to us about who is secretly making love to whom, about occult rites and – delightfully – about international espionage. There are even signs telling us how to read the books themselves. ..."
Guardian
Revisiting Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet — Paul M. Curtis
Guardian - Reading group: The Alexandria Quartet
Guardian - The story of cities, part 1: how Alexandria laid foundations for the modern world

2011 December: The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell, 2013 September: Villa that inspired Lawrence Durrell faces demolition, as Egypt allows heritage to crumble, 2014 August: Prospero’s Cell (1945), 2015 April: Bitter Lemons (1953–1956), 2015 May: Caesar's Vast Ghost: Aspects of Provence, 2016 July: Reflections on a Marine Venus (1953), 2016 September: The Greek Islands, 2016 October: Justine (1957), 2017 February: Balthazar (1958), 2017 April: Mountolive (1958), 2017 May: Clea (1960), 2017 October: The Alexandria Quartet: 'Love is every sort of conspiracy', 2018 February: Pied Piper of Lovers (1935), Panic Spring (1937)

The future will be socialist — or it will not be at all

"The world has shifted under our feet. Not many weeks ago, the global economy seemed poised to continue puttering along in spite of mounting headwinds. Today, capitalism faces its most profound crisis since the Great Depression. The unfolding pandemic has revealed the weakness of our supply chains, the fragility of the financial system, and the staggering incompetence of our governments. Today’s capitalism will not be able to survive the momentous challenge that it faces over the coming years. What we need is rapid socialization and mass mobilization to overcome the crumbling infrastructure of global finance, keep the economy functioning, and seize a future worth fighting for. ..."
ROAR
New Republic - Socialism and the Democracy Deficit (Audio)
Is America’s future capitalist or socialist?
Socialism Will Be Free, Or It Will Not Be At All! – An Introduction to Libertarian Socialism

Etta James – Live in Montreux 1975-1993

"To say Etta James was one of the most prolific jazz, soul and blues singers on the planet is a fact, to say her voice will never be matched by another is a fact, to say Etta James:Live At Montreux is the best compilation and showcase of her work is also a fact. It's a great album and has been on repeat in my car for weeks, even the omission of some of my faves couldn't put a damper on the sheer joy this album produces. Live At Montreux is a different sort of live album as it's Ms. James' performances at the Montreux Jazz Festival spanning from 1975-1993. ..."
Review: Etta James: Live At Montreux
amazon
YouTube: Live in Montreux 1975-1993 1:36:24

Astral Jazz: Music On A Higher Plane

"To the uninitiated, spiritual jazz, aka astral jazz, can raise eyebrows even to self-professed jazz fans. With album covers bearing ancient Egyptian iconography and planetary scenes, it seemed destined for its own roped off section at the record store. Lying somewhere on the spectrum between avant-garde jazz and free jazz, astral jazz represented one of the most experimental periods in jazz’s history. Emerging from the chaotic upheaval of the 60s and new spiritual awakening, astral jazz continued to push the boundaries of the form, incorporating new instrumentation, Eastern influences and delving into more abstract expressionism. ..."
udiscover (Video)

“Essential” Workers Are Dying

"Eight New York City transit workers have died—so far—due to complications from COVID-19. This news reminds us of Robert Snyder’s observation that 'in the simplest calculation there are only two classes of people: those who might get hurt or killed on the job and those who don’t.' It seems that transit workers are as much at risk in this crisis as the more prestigious health care professionals—maybe even more. Many more of these young and middle-aged workers—not 80-year-olds with underlying conditions—are breathing through ventilators today. How many family members of transit workers are dying because they are not allowed to stay home? ..."
SLATE

Tommy Guerrero - No Mans Land (2014)

"Musician and skateboarder, member of the legendary Bones Brigade, prolific artist & designer, the untamed kid of San Francisco comes back to charge up our turntables with his new album No Mans Land. '17 tracks tracing an intense and slow journey across a misty California, where space and time distend into a dusty modern western,' describes Asphalt Duchess. 'From dangerously rhythmic dating under a dazing sun, to melodic oasis deliciously refreshing, No Mans Land marks a change in the work of Tommy Guerrero: beyond the clever alchemy of ambient jazz tinged by hip-hop and soul, T.G. reveals a mastery of a typical style that becomes unique and eternal, where are unveiled enjoyment, fun and the raw talent of a mature artist who managed to preserve the purity of his childhood dreams.'"
bandcamp (Audio)
Discpgs (Video)
YouTube: No Mans Land [Full Album]

2017 April: Soul Food Taqueria (2003)

Take a Virtual Tour of New York’s Museum District

The closed Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was supposed to be celebrating its 150th anniversary now.
"The Metropolitan Museum was preparing to celebrate its 150th anniversary right about now. But with Covid-19, it has closed along with the Guggenheim, the Neue Galerie, the Cooper Hewitt and all the other museums along the tony stretch of the Upper East Side known as Museum Mile. This is the second in a series of strolls exploring the city, a project that originated before New Yorkers went on pause and started sheltering at home, when taking a walk was still prescribed. Back then, I canvassed architects, historians and others for suggested routes, with the goal of distracting readers and reminding everyone that, though shuttered, the city remains glorious and isn’t going anywhere. ..."
NY Times

The Ukrainian Institute of America at 2 East 79th Street was designed by C.P.H. Gilbert in French chateau style.

Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, 1936-2013

"A certain kind of creative magic was happening in the mid-nineteen-sixties on the South Side of Chicago. A group of African-American experimentalists organized themselves into a collective called the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, or the A.A.C.M., that has produced some of the most revolutionary American sounds of the past fifty years. Rather than adopting any particular style, the A.A.C.M. nurtured the radical individualism of its members, blowing past the idiomatic restrictions of jazz while embracing its tradition of innovation. The combination of a supportive community of fellow outsiders with a committed philosophy of artistic independence and creative investigation resulted in an extraordinary cohort of musicians and composers: Muhal Richard Abrams, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Anthony Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith, and Henry Threadgill, to name a few. Last week, this family lost one of its members, an artist less known to the wider public but admired deeply by his peers: Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, who passed away on November 9th. ..."
New Yorker - Postscript: Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, 1936-2013
a ballad for kalaparusha maurice mcintyre (Video)
NY Times: Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, Tenor Saxophonist, Dies at 77
W - Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre
Discogs
YouTube: Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre talks about jazz
YouTube: Humility In The Light Of The Creator (Full Album Cd Reissue)

Film Treasures, Streaming Courtesy of the Library of Congress

“The Cry of Jazz” from 1959 features the music of Sun Ra.
"One of the world’s oldest films, 'Sneeze,' is a gift that keeps on giving. Shot in 1894 and about as long as an achoo, it shows a mustachioed gent emitting a single sneeze, a kerchief clutched in one hand. The film was made by W.K.L. Dickson and the sneeze delivered by Fred Ott. Working in Thomas Edison’s New Jersey studio, they gave us the first celluloid sneeze, an open-mouth exhalation that was meant to be humorous but today seems ominous. Cover your mouth! I yelled when I looked at it again. 'Sneeze' is just one of many films that you can watch for free online courtesy of the Library of Congress, which partly acquires deposits through the United States Copyright Office. The biggest library in the world, it has an extraordinary trove of online offerings — more than 7,000 videos — that includes hundreds of old (and really old) movies. ..."
NY Times (Video)

James Agee, Helen Levitt and Janice Loeb filmed this slice of life, “In the Street” (1948).

Baseball | Part 1: Our Game

Second Great Match Game for the Championship,_Athletics and Atlantics, 1866; J. L. Magee; Reach stands by bats at left, arms crossed.
"In New York City, in the 1840s, people need a diversion from the 'railroad pace' at which they work and live. They find it in a game of questionable origins. Inning One, Our Game, looks at the origins of baseball in the 1840s and takes the story up to 1900. Ken Burns refutes the myth that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown and traces its roots instead to the earliest days of the nation."
PBS - Part 1: Our Game (Video)
Ancient Base Balls - John Thorn
W - Abner Doubleday myth, W - Abner Doubleday, W - Cooperstown, New York, W - Elysian Fields, Hoboken, New Jersey
Baseball Stars of the 19th Century
19c Baseball
Baseball Cards, 1887-1914, Card Sets in Chronological Order
The 'Secret History' Of Baseball's Earliest Days - John Thorn (Audio)

A late 1800s lithograph of a baseball game.

Creating feminism in the shadow of male heroes

Tamás Király, Red star dress, 1987.
"The memory of feminism in East Central Europe after 1989 is blurred by the widespread fear to use the term radical feminism – which refers to demands of a deep-rooted social transformation to eliminate the oppression of women in every sphere of life and on every level of society. Gender mainstreaming and post-feminism have largely taken the place of a fight for women’s rights and the talk about women as such – a process that has unfolded in both East and West, but which, curiously, is often seen as an ‘eastern’ problem in the West and a ‘western’ one in the East. When it comes to the interpretation of 1989, a generational clash among feminists complicates not only the process of remembrance but also the future of a feminist movement – beyond boundaries. ..."
Eurozine

An Artist who Cannot Speak English is no Artist by Mladen Stilinović, 1992.

It’s Time to Make Your Own Face Mask Here’s how to do it.

A homemade protective face mask can help limit the spread of the coronavirus.
"It shouldn’t have come to this, but here we are. The world is running out of face masks for health care workers, which is one reason American officials, including the surgeon general, have warned members of the public against buying their own masks for protection against the coronavirus. But that doesn’t mean face masks for the public are a bad idea, if we had enough masks. Contrary to what American officials told us, many studies show that widespread mask-wearing might be a very effective complement to hand-washing, social-distancing and other measures to mitigate the pandemic. ... But how to get your hands on a mask, when there are no masks? The internet has a plan: Make your own. ..."
NY Times (Video)
NY Times: How to Sew a Face Mask

South Side Soul - John Wright (1960)

"Chicago jazz pianist John Wright earned his reputation with a string of LPs for the Prestige label in the early 60s—his 1960 debut made such an impression that its title, South Side Soul, remains his nickname to this day. His discography has been sparse since then, but he's never stopped playing for long, and he's just had an especially eventful week. On Friday, August 29, Wright spoke at the ceremony to formally designate the 3800 block of South Prairie 'Dinah Washington Way,' reminiscing about his interactions with the great singer in the 1950s. Two days later, he hosted the 28th annual (and possibly final) Wright Gathering, a potluck picnic in the park behind his home in south-suburban Matteson where hundreds of friends, family, and fans enjoyed eight hours of jazz jams, the first three sets led by Wright himself. ..."
Chicago Reader (Video)
W - South Side Soul
W - John Wright
Discogs (Video)
amazon
YouTube: South Side Soul 36:02

Book of Dreams - Jack Kerouac (1960)

"Book of Dreams is Jack Kerouac's record of his dream life, a parallel autobiography of the soul, the sleeper's On the Road. 'I got my weary bones out of bed & through eyes swollen with sleep swiftly scribbled in pencil in my little dream notebook till I had exhausted every rememberable item.' Awake of asleep, Jack's mind spun the web of relationships that were the substance of almost everything he wrote: 'In the book of dreams I just continue the same story but in the dreams I had of the real-life characters I always write about. Lost love, madness, castration, cats that speak, cats in danger of their lives, people giving birth to cats, grade school classrooms, Mel Torme, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Tolstoy and Genet all make repeated appearances.' Book of Dreams is Jack Kerouac's record of his dream life, a parallel autobiography of the soul, the sleeper's On the Road. ..."
A Cappella Books
W - Book of Dreams
[PDF] Book of Dreams
amazon

2009 November: Another Side of Kerouac: The Dharma Bum as Sports Nut, 2010 July: Kerouac's Copies of Floating Bear, 2011 March: Jack Kerouac on The Steve Allen Show, 2013 September: On the Road - Jack Kerouac, 2014 May: “Walker Evans and Robert Frank – An Essay on Influence by Tod Papageorge” (1981), 2015 March: Pull My Daisy (1959), 2015 December: Hear All Three of Jack Kerouac’s Spoken, 2016 July: Mexico City Blues (1959), 2017 February: The Jack Kerouac Collection (1990), 2017 May: The Subterraneans (1958), 2017 June: The Town and the City (1950), 2018 January: Big Sur (1962), 2018 March: A Slightly Embarrassing Love for Jack Kerouac, 2019 March: Jack Kerouac’s “Beat Paintings:”...

The Pleiades

"The Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters and Messier 45, are an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars located in the constellation of Taurus. It is among the star clusters nearest Earth and is the cluster most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky. The cluster is dominated by hot blue and luminous stars that have formed within the last 100 million years. Reflection nebulae around the brightest stars were once thought to be left over material from the formation of the cluster, but are now considered likely to be an unrelated dust cloud in the interstellar medium through which the stars are currently passing. Computer simulations have shown that the Pleiades were probably formed from a compact configuration that resembled the Orion Nebula. Astronomers estimate that the cluster will survive for about another 250 million years, after which it will disperse due to gravitational interactions with its galactic neighborhood. ..."
Wikipedia
The Pleiades Welcome Venus
The Pleiades
How far away are the Pleiades? (Video)

The Nebra sky disk, dated circa 1600 BC. The cluster of dots in the upper right portion of the disk is believed to be the Pleiades.

In Blackhead, Monhegan - Edward Hopper (1916-19)

In Blackhead, Monhegan, 1916-19 - Edward Hopper
"Blackhead (50m-150 ft) are northside cliffs situated on Monhegan, Manana Island, that have drawn the interest of many artists. The beginnings of the art colony on Monhegan date to the mid-19th century; by 1890, it was firmly established. Two of the early artists in residence from the 1890s, William Henry Singer (1868–1943) and Martin Borgord (1869–1935), left Monhegan to study at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1901. Among many early members who found inspiration on the island were summer visitors from the New York School of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, such as Robert Henri, Frederick Waugh, George Bellows, Edward Hopper and Rockwell Kent. The Monhegan Museum celebrated more the continuing draw of the island for artists in a 2014 exhibit entitled, The Famous and the Forgotten: Revisiting Monhegan’s Celebrated 1914 Art Exhibition. ..."
Wandering Silent Vertexes and Frozen Peaks
MONHEGAN - An Artist's Island by Eunice Agar From American Artist Magazine May 1987
amazon: The Famous and the Forgotten: Revisiting Monhegan’s Celebrated 1914 Art Exhibition

2009 September: Monhegan Island, 2012 August: Monhegan, The Artists' Island, 2014 January: Side By Side on Monhegan: The Henri circle and the American Impressionists

The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen - Vincent van Gogh (1884)

The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen, May 1884
"The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen, alternatively named The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring or Spring Garden, is an early oil painting by the 19th-century Dutch post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh, made in May 1884 while he was living with his parents in Nuenen. Van Gogh made several drawings and oil paintings of the surrounding gardens and the garden façade of the parsonage. The painting had been in the collection of the Groninger Museum since 1962, but was stolen on 30 March 2020 from an exhibition at the Singer Laren museum in Laren, North Holland, Netherlands. ... In Nuenen, Van Gogh documented the changing seasons in his paintings of the parsonage's garden, which was enclosed by a high stone wall and included a duck pond with a boat dock, paths and hedges, flower and vegetable garden plots and an orchard. Preceded by a series of wintery drawings, this painting was probably made in May 1884. It depicts a view of the garden with a dark-clothed female figure in the foreground. ..."
Wikipedia
Parsonage Nuenen, The Netherlands
NY Times: Early van Gogh Painting Stolen From Dutch Museum

2010 March: Van Gogh Museum, 2010 May: Why preserve Van Gogh's palette?, 2012 April: Van Gogh Up Close, 2015 May: Van Gogh and Nature, 2016 January: Van Gogh's Bedrooms, 2016 November: Wheat Fields - Van Gogh series, 2019 April: At Eternity’s Gate - Julian Schnabel (2018)

See Which States and Cities Have Told Residents to Stay at Home

"In a matter of days, millions of Americans have been asked to do what might have been unthinkable only a month ago: Don’t go to work, don’t go to school, don’t leave the house at all, unless you have to. The directives to keep people at home to stunt the spread of the coronavirus began in California, and have quickly been adopted across the country. By Tuesday, more than half the states and the Navajo Nation had told their residents to stay at home as much as possible, with many cities and counties joining in. This means at least 265 million people in at least 32 states, 80 counties, 17 cities, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are being urged to stay home. ..."
NY Times

Jaybird Coleman (May 20, 1896 – January 28, 1950)

"Burl C. "Jaybird" Coleman (May 20, 1896 – January 28, 1950) was an American country blues harmonica player, vocalist, and guitarist. He was a popular musical attraction throughout Alabama and recorded several sides in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Coleman was born to a family of sharecroppers in Gainesville, Alabama, United States. While he and his three brothers endured hard physical labor, he was exposed to musical influences from his fellow sharecroppers in singing and discovering traditional folk songs. At age 12, he was introduced to the harmonica, in large part teaching himself, and was encouraged by his parents to hone his skills as an alternative to their wearying occupation. He performed locally for small wages at dance halls and parties. ..."
Wikipedia
American Music (Video)
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Coffee Grinder Blues
YouTube: Jaybird Coleman - Topic

Then Again: A ‘hotbed of radicalism,’ Barre was first in Vermont to elect Socialist mayor

Barre granite workers gather for a photo taken between 1910 and 1915. Union members made up a large portion of local voters, who elected a socialist as mayor in 1916.
"Vermont’s first socialist mayor wasn’t known for his unruly white hair or his Brooklyn accent. He kept his hair short and his mustache neatly trimmed, and if he had a discernible accent, it was a remnant of the brogue he picked up during his childhood in Scotland. Like Bernie Sanders, Robert Gordon wasn’t what the establishment was looking for in a mayor. Business and community leaders were interested in maintaining the status quo, but Gordon saw changes that needed to be made in his adopted home of Barre. By the time Gordon ran for mayor in 1916, Barre had experienced decades of dramatic change. In 1870, Barre had been an unremarkable Vermont town with a population of roughly 1,900. But after the Central Vermont Railroad built a spur to access the local granite quarries, Barre’s population soared. ..."
VTDigger

The Maids - Jean Genet (1947)

"When I was writing my novel Indelicacy, I felt myself in conversation with Jean Genet’s play The Maids. First performed in Paris in 1947, the play is loosely based on the story of the infamous Papin sisters, who murdered their employer in 1933 in Le Mans, France. I’ve never seen the play performed, though I’ve watched the film version from 1975, directed by Christopher Miles. When I first read The Maids, I wasn’t interested in the idea of murder but in Genet’s highly charged representation of the two sisters, their crazed relationship to each other, as well as to their 'Madame,' and in the depiction of class warfare in a domestic space. More recently, I’ve been thinking, too, about its mad circling of artificiality and authenticity, two sides of the same coin. In their roles as maids in the rooms of Madame’s high-class apartment, Solange and Claire become unhinged, especially when they are there alone. ..."
The Paris Review: Be Yourself Again
W - The Maids, W - The Maids (film)
NY Times: Interpreting ‘The Maids’ Through a Shifting Societal Lens
NY Times: Screen: Exciting 'Maids':American Film Theater Presents Genet Work By Vincent Canby (April 22, 1975)
[PDF] The Maids
YouTube: The Maids (1974) - Glenda Jackson, Susannah York - Trailer
DailyMotion: The Maids (1974) 1:33:47

2017 August: Three Stones for Jean Genet told Patti Smith (2013), 2019 September: Jean Genet in Tangier – Mohamed Choukri, Paul Bowles (Translator)

Who Writes History? Competing Narratives about the Conquest of Mexico and the Fall of the Aztec Empire

Butterfly-and Jaguar-Fish in Book 11 of the Florentine Codex (“On Earthly Things”). Ms. Mediceo Palatino 220, 1577, fols. 62v and 63.
"In 1577, a generation after the conquest of Mexico, a unique illustrated book was completed. Called the Florentine Codex, because it’s housed in Florence, the manuscript documents the culture, politics, natural science, and history of the Aztecs (a group of Nahuatl-speaking people who dominated large parts of central Mexico between 1428 and 1521). It does so in a period of Mexican history that was marked by great cultural transformation, social upheaval, and recurrent epidemics. The codex may be thought of as an Encyclopedia Britannica of early-modern Mexico and of Nahua knowledge. It is written in two languages, native Nahuatl and Spanish. Nahuatl, once the lingua franca of Mesoamerica, is one of 68 Indigenous languages still spoken in Mexico. It is considered an endangered language today with an estimated 1.5 million speakers. The codex is therefore not only invaluable for its content but is also an important historical record of this language. ..."
the iris

Finding the concordance between a facsimile of the Florentine Codex and various published translations and transcriptions of the texts.

Pandemic Journal, March 17–22: Anne Enright, Madeleine Schwartz, Joshua Hunt, Anna Badkhen, and Lauren Groff, et al.

A cyclist wearing a mask crossing the Williamsburg Bridge, New York City, March 18, 2020
"Madeleine Schwartz. BROOKLYN, NEW YORK—I am a reluctant biker, but on Monday night I rode from downtown Brooklyn, where I live, to upper Manhattan, where my mother claimed to be having trouble downloading Skype. The road was empty. Two finance bros discussed going to “Nick’s aunt’s townhouse in South Beach.” A few joggers retreated into their AirPods. There were no children on the street. The western length of Manhattan is lined with thousands of apartments worth millions of dollars, most of them built with big glass windows facing the river. I did not see a single face looking outside. ... Anne Enright. DUBLIN, IRELAND—On March 11, the day Donald Trump addressed the nation about Covid-19, I was in the middle of a book tour (the show must go on!) in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I’d made the decision to travel from Ireland when there were six reported cases of the illness in New York State, and the odds seemed good to me. The situation changed as I traveled, but not much. ..."
NYBooks (Audio)

Chairs piled up outside a restaurant in the old town of Plaka, which is closed for fifteen days during the Covid-19 outbreak, Athens, Greece, March 16, 2020