Man of the Hour: The Resurrection of Jazz Legend Hailu Mergia

"Leave it to Hailu Mergia, a musician of high aptitude and unflinching self-belief, to make an album like Lala Belu, a freewheeling odyssey of accordion solos, anthemic sing-alongs, and acoustic piano pieces. Throughout the album, the Ethiopian virtuoso combines a host of musical interests with both vibrancy and skill. Stripped to the most basic description, Lala Belu could be reasonably pitched as an Ethio-jazz record—its songs are full of vivid hi-hats, twinkling keys, and it emphasizes freestyle expression. But that would be like telling Romeo and Juliet by just running through the first act. Over six songs, the 71-year-old Mergia asserts himself as a master composer and arranger. It’s almost impossible to believe that it’s his first new album in about 30 years. Then again, maybe it takes three decades of storing ideas to put together a piece so packed with creativity. ..."
bandcamp (Audio)
bandcamp: Hailu Mergia (Audio)
W - Hailu Mergia & His Classical Instrument
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Lala Belu (Full Album)

Reggae, riots and resistance: the sounds of Black Britain in 1981

"'In this country in 15 or 20 years time, the black man will have the whip-hand over the white man'. Enoch Powell’s 1968 statement reverberated through post-war Britain, a comfortable assertion that the position of blacks should be one of subjugation and enslavement. The ‘Mother Country’ then was devoid of spaces where ethnic minorities were equal to, let alone owners of, whites. Voiceless and marginalised, blacks in Britain were making themselves heard in a different way. Transporting reggae, dub and sound system culture from the Caribbean, the sound of Jamaica was slowly saturating the British soundscape. The thundering bass quintessential to reggae vibrated through the streets of London in the ‘70s, a warning of the rumbling tension set to erupt in 1981 –- a year which reshaped 'Great Britain' forever. ..."
Pan African Music (Video)
Guardian: Toxteth revisited, 30 years after the riots
W - 1981 England riots

1917 - Sam Mendes (2019)

"1917 is a 2019 British epic war film directed, co-written, and produced by Sam Mendes. The film stars George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman, with Mark Strong, Andrew Scott, Richard Madden, Claire Duburcq, Colin Firth and Benedict Cumberbatch in supporting roles. It is based in part on an account told to Mendes by his paternal grandfather, Alfred Mendes. The film tells the story of two young British soldiers during the First World War who are ordered to deliver a message calling off an attack doomed to fail soon after the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line during Operation Alberich in 1917. This message is especially important to one of the soldiers, as his brother is taking part in the pending attack. ... Filming took place from April to June 2019 in the UK, with cinematographer Roger Deakins and editor Lee Smith using long takes to have the entire film appear as two continuous shots. ..."
Wikipedia
There's an incredible new trailer and a behind-the-scenes look at the new WWI blockbuster '1917' (Video)
YouTube: 1917 - Official Trailer

Fran Lebowitz Is Never Leaving New York

"Fran Lebowitz is the patron saint of staying at home and doing nothing. She is famously averse to working, and famously resistant to technology; she has no cell phone or computer. She moved to New York City from Morristown, New Jersey, around 1970, the moment she was legally able to do so, and became one of New York’s most distinctive personalities, with her defiant grouchiness, her devotion to cigarettes, her trademark ensemble of cowboy boots and custom-made Anderson & Sheppard suit jackets, and her pearl-gray 1979 Checker car. Soon after arriving, she talked her way into a job writing for Andy Warhol’s Interview, and her incisive commentary on city living was collected in two volumes, 'Metropolitan Life' (1978) and 'Social Studies' (1981). ... Thanks to COVID-19, many of us are now trapped at home, if not nearly as stylishly. ..."
New Yorker

2015 September: Fran Lebowitz

Why Soccer is the Most Universal Language on the Planet - Laurent Dubois

"Soccer is a language, probably the most universal language on the planet. It is spoken more widely than English, Arabic, or Chinese and practiced more widely than any religion. In 1954, the French soccer journalist Jean Eskenazi wrote an essay on the 'universality' of the game. It is, he declared, 'the only denominator common to all people, the only universal Esperanto . . . a world language, whose grammar is unchanging from the North Pole to the Equator.' Although mutually intelligible everywhere it is played, it is still delightfully varied, 'spoken in each corner of the globe with a particular accent.' The Swedish writer Fredrik Ekelund similarly calls the game the 'Esperanto of the feet.' The novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard, who wrote a book of letters about the 2014 men’s World Cup with Ekelund, offers a vivid example of how this language works. ..."
LitHub
LitHub: Football is Everything (Which is to Say Soccer)
amazon: The Language of the Game: How to Understand Soccer, The Age of Football: Soccer and the 21st Century - David Goldblatt, Soccer in Sun and Shadow - Eduardo Galeano, The Illustrated History of Football - David Squires

Murder Most Foul - Bob Dylan (2020)

"Bob Dylan won a Nobel Prize in literature in 2016, but today marked a new accomplishment: his first No. 1 hit. According to Billboard, Dylan’s new song 'Murder Most Foul' has topped its Rock Digital Song Sales chart, giving Dylan his first No. 1 under his own name on any chart. Dylan surprise released the 17-minute 'Murder Most Foul,' which addresses the JFK assassination, on March 27. According to Nielsen data, it sold 10,000 downloads between its release and April 2. ..."
Bob Dylan’s “Murder Most Foul” Is His First No. 1 Song on Any Billboard Chart (Video)
Murder Most Foul - Lyrics
YouTube: Murder Most Foul

Atlas Obscura, 2nd Edition: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders

"... It rocketed to the top of bestseller lists and has over 626,000 copies in print since its publication in late 2016. Now the best gets better and the weirdest gets weirder with this completely revised and updated second edition that includes 120 new entries that offer readers even more of the most unusual, curious, bizarre, and mysterious places on earth. In addition, the second edition includes a full-color gatefold Atlas Obscura road trip map, with a dream itinerary. Created by the founders of AtlasObscura.com, the vibrant travel community that’s grown substantially since the original edition—not only online but in stores, too, with the recent publication of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide for the World’s Most Adventurous Kid—Atlas Obscura expands the reader’s sense of what’s possible. ..."
booktopia
amazon

Agnès Varda - The Little Story of Gwen From French Brittany (2008)

"An extremely rare short film directed by Agnès Varda has debuted online for free just a couple weeks after the one-year anniversary of the legendary French filmmaker’s death. The short film, 'The Little Story of Gwen From French Brittany,' is streaming on YouTube courtesy of the American Cinematheque, the nonprofit dedicated to the history and culture of movies. The organization has announced plans to take its programming to the virtual space in the weeks ahead, starting with the online debut of Varda’s 'The Little Story of Gwen From French Brittany.' ..."
Agnès Varda’s Rare Short Film ‘The Little Story of Gwen’ Debuts Online for Free — Watch
YouTube: The Little Story of Gwen from French Brittany

May 2011: The Beaches of Agnès, 2011 December: Interview - Agnès Varda, 2013 February: The Gleaners and I (2000), 2013 September: Cinévardaphoto (2004), 2014 July: Black Panthers (1968 doc.), 2014 October: Art on Screen: A Conversation with Agnès Varda, 2015 September: Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), 2017 Feb. Plaisir d’amour en Iran (1976), 2017 April: Agnès Varda’s Art of Being There, 2017 April: AGNÈS VARDA with Alexandra Juhasz, 2017 August: Agnès Varda on her life and work - Artforum, 2017 October: Agnès Varda’s Ecological Conscience, 2018 March: Faces Places - Agnès Varda and JR (2017), 2018 July: Vagabond (1985), 2019 March: Agnès Varda, Influential French New Wave Filmmaker, Is Dead at 90

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.