A Journey into the World of the Ottomans

"... Commenting on the importance of this exhibition, Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa, Chairperson of Qatar Museums Authority, said: 'In celebrating Doha as the Cultural Capital of the Arab World, it gives me great pleasure to share this moment with the opening of a Journey into the World of the Ottomans, to highlight some of the greatest Orientalist masterpieces. The State of Qatar has long collected works of Oriental art, archiving these works as historic artefacts worthy of study and exploration.' Her Excellency went on to say: 'Although the notion of 'Orientalism' is commonly perceived as a view from the West on the East, we believe that there is an opportunity to explore and appreciate the spaces in between. Although these works were mainly Western documentations of Eastern lands, the importance of this European art movement lies in that it recorded major historical events, people, customs and culture.' ..."
Orientalist Museum launches “Journey into the World of the Ottomans”
Painter in the Palace
amazon
DailyMotion: A Journey into the World of the Ottomans

Nicolas Ryckx. Procession of the Turks, c. 1665.

2018 April: Orientalism - Edward W. Said (1978), 2019 January: Orientalism’s Equestrian Eye

Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino (1972)

"Invisible Cities (Italian: Le città invisibili) is a novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino. It was published in Italy in 1972 by Giulio Einaudi Editore. The book explores imagination and the imaginable through the descriptions of cities by an explorer, Marco Polo. The book is framed as a conversation between the elderly and busy emperor Kublai Khan, who constantly has merchants coming to describe the state of his expanding and vast empire, and Polo. The majority of the book consists of brief prose poems describing 55 fictitious cities that are narrated by Polo, many of which can be read as parables or meditations on culture, language, time, memory, death, or the general nature of human experience. ..."
Wikipedia
Illustrations of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities
NY Times: Invisible Cities
[PDF] Invisible Cities
amazon

Rare Grooves on Vinyl from Around the World: Hear Curated Playlists of Arabic, Brazilian, Bollywood, Soviet & Turkish Music

"Just as the category of 'Foreign Language Film' has serious problems, so too does that of 'World Music,' which names so many kinds of music that it names nothing at all. World music 'might best be described by what it is not,' noted a 1994 Music Library Association report. 'It is not Western art music, neither it is mainstream Western folk or popular music.' The report adds some vague qualifications about 'ethnic or foreign elements' then gives away the game: 'It is simply not our music, it is their music, music which belongs to someone else.' Perhaps one can see why the idea is now regarded by some as 'outdated and offensive.' As the University of Minnesota’s Timothy Brennan argues in a historical analysis of the term, 'world music does not exist' except 'as an idea in the mind of journalists, critics, and the buyers of records.' ..."
Open Culture (Video)
[PDF] World Music Does Not Exist - Timothy Brennan

Baseball: Part 3: The Faith of Fifty Million People

Honus Wagner / Pittsburgh Pirates
"On Opening Day 1910 President William Howard Taft supposedly invented the seventh inning stretch. See 'Baseball Music' for a more detailed explanation of the real story. Also at the start of the same season, legendary Comiskey Park opened in Chicago with the ability to seat over 45,000. In 1910, two of the usual powers regained dominance. The Chicago Cubs reasserted themselves at the top of the National League, winning their fourth pennant in five years, and the Philadelphia Athletics won the American League by 14.5 games. For Philadelphia, pitcher Jack Coombs finished the year with a 1.30 ERA and 31 wins, the most in the American League. Coombs would win three games in the World Series, and the Athletics cruised to a 4-1 series win. ..."
Cementing baseball as the national pastime: 1910-1920
PBS - Part 3: The Faith of Fifty Million People (Video)
Great Grandson Finds 1910 Ty Cobb And Cy Young Tobacco Cards In A Cigar Box In The Attic, Library of Congress 1910-1919
W - 1908 bribery attempt, 1914 World Series upset, 1917–1918 suspicions, 1919 conspiracy
W - Federal League, SABR: Was the Federal League a Major League?, Anatomy of a Murder: The Federal League and the Courts - John Thorn, Part 2, NYPL - Outlaw Baseball! The Federal League of 1914-1915
W - 1910 Major League Baseball season, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1914, 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919

"The Black Sox Scandal was a Major League Baseball game-fixing scandal in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for money from a gambling syndicate led by Arnold Rothstein, Aiden Clayton and Aaron Nelson. Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was appointed the first Commissioner of Baseball, with absolute control over the sport to restore its integrity. Despite acquittals in a public trial in 1921, Judge Landis permanently banned all eight men from professional baseball. The punishment was eventually defined by the Baseball Hall of Fame to include banishment from consideration for the Hall. Despite requests for reinstatement in the decades that followed (particularly in the case of Shoeless Joe Jackson), the ban remains. ..."
W - Black Sox Scandal
Black Sox Forever, SABR: Eight Myths Out: The Black Sox Scandal, Eight Myths Out: Appendix of errors in 'Eight Men Out' book and film, The Enduring Myth of the ‘Stolen’ Black Sox Confessions, W - Eight Men Out, John Sayles, YouTube: Eight Men Out Official Trailer #1
YouTube: In Search Of History - World Series Fix! The Black Sox Scandal 42:43
amazon: Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series, The Betrayal: The 1919 World Series and the Birth of Modern Baseball

Memory Game - Meredith Monk & Bang on a Can All-Stars (2020)

"MEMORY GAME is both a look back at a pivotal point in Meredith Monk’s storied career, and a richly layered portrait of how vocal music, under the guidance of an indefatigable master, can play with our expectations in poignant and compelling ways. What emerges is a suite of songs that flows with a remarkable narrative cohesion, stemming in large part from the composer’s willingness to revisit the past with an insatiably curious eye. ... Teaming up here with her renowned Vocal Ensemble (featuring Theo Bleckmann, Katie Geissinger and Allison Sniffin) and the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Monk explores all-new arrangements of never-before-recorded selections from her award-winning sci-fi opera The Games, as well as new versions of several pieces originally released on Do You Be (1987) and impermanence (2008). ..."
Cantaloupe Music (Audio)
The Quietus (Audio)
mixcloud - Radio Eclectus #034: Monk, Meredith, memory(Audio)
amazon
YouTube: Memory Game

2008 March: Meredith Monk, 2009 September: Songs of Ascension - Meredith Monk and Ann Hamilton, 2011 February: Meredith Monk: A Voice For All Time, 2011 August: Ellis Island, 2012 December: Turtle Dreams, 2013 February: Quarry: The Rally (Live, 1977), 2014 November; 10 Things You Might Not Know About Meredith Monk, 2015 April: Volcano Songs (1994), 2015 June: Ellis Island, 2016 April: 16 Millimeter Earrings and the Artist’s Body (1966/1998), 2016 December: Beginnings (2009), 2017 February: Book of Days (1988), 2017 May: Piano Songs (2014), 2017 December: Monk Mix: Remixes & Interpretations of Music By Meredith Monk (2012), 2020 March: Quarry (1976)

The walled-in settlement house by the East River

"You can see one side of it from the FDR Drive at 76th Street. High above the roadway overlooking the East River is a Georgian-style red brick building and what must have been an entrance with a faded plaque above it. Squint and you can make out what it says: East Side House Settlement. Settlement Houses began popping up in New York City in the 1890s and early 1900s. Born out of the benevolence movement of the Gilded Age, they were built by social reformers who 'settled' into a poor or working-class community, launching a home base where the community could go take advantage of classes, recreational activities, and cultural offerings. ..."
Ephemeral New York

Twin Peaks: Go Down the Rabbit Hole.

"Thirty years ago, on April 8, 1990, one of television’s most influential series premiered: 'Twin Peaks.' There’s something timeless about the series, which arrived at the cusp of one decade and channeled several others. With its combination of high-pitched soap opera and low-frequency supernatural hum, 'Twin Peaks' was always bound to be one of the weirder shows ever to air on American television. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of 'Twin Peaks,' fire walk with us through some of The Times’s best writing on the series. (And, instead of making all that sourdough, you might try to make our recipe for a 'Twin Peaks' cherry pie.) ..."
NY Times: Happy 30th Anniversary, ‘Twin Peaks.’ Go Down the Rabbit Hole. (Video)
An Echo Of Owls: watching repeats of Twin Peaks eleven years later
Guardian: Twin Peaks at 30: the weird and wonderful show that changed television, “One chants out between two worlds”: Visiting Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks.
Telephones, Voice Recorders, Microphones, Phonographs: A Media Archaeology of Sonic Technologies in Twin Peaks
Tensions in the World of Moon: Twin Peaks, Indigeneity and Territoriality

‘Twin Peaks’ Analysis: What Do the Numbers Mean?
Twin Peaks: The Return, or What Isn’t Cinema? (Part One), (Part Two), (Part Three), (Part Four)
YouTube: Twin Peaks Intro, 10 Mind-Blowing Facts You Didn't Know About Twin Peaks, Talk About Judy • Twin Peaks: The Return • Analysis & Theory, Episode 1 • The Ring • Twin Peaks Analysis, Episode 2 • Phillip Jeffries • Twin Peaks Analysis, Episode 3 • Laura Is The One • Twin Peaks Analysis, Episode 4 • The Town of Twin Peaks
Anatomy of a Fascinating Disaster: Fire Walk With Me (Video), W - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, YouTube: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) Trailer

"In a town like Twin Peaks, it’s not hard to get lost. Here are all the Twin Peaks maps I’ve collected so far, but please let me know in the comments if you come across any other ones! ... The city roadmap shows almost all the important sites, including The Great Northern Hotel, White Tail Falls, Black Lake Dam, Twin Peaks Town Hall, The Grange (burned), Palmer House, Briggs House, Hayward House, Twin Peaks High School, Black Lake Cemetery, Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department, Upper Twin Park, The Gazebo, Lower Twin Park, County Museum, The Bookhouse, Old Railroad Depot, Double R Diner, Roadhouse, Horne’s Department Store, Calhoun Memorial Hospital, to Packard Place, to Packard Sawmill, to Owl Cave, to the Railroad Cemetery, to Ghostwood National Forest, Harold Smith’s Apartment, Dead Dog Farm, Big Ed’s Gas Station, to Unguin’s Field Observatory (U.F.O.), and Old Unguin’s Field."
Twin Peaks Maps
A Guide to Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks Tarot Cards Now Available as 78-Card Deck
Twin Peaks Tarot Cards For The Magician Who Longs To See Through The Darkness Of Future Past
Twin Peaks Star Pics Cards
W - Twin Peaks books
W - List of Twin Peaks episodes, W - Log Lady, W - Black and White Lodges, W - The Man from Another Place, W - MIKE, W - Killer BOB, W - The Giant, W - Episode 29
Welcome to Twin Peaks
amazon: Soundtrack From Twin Peaks, Floating Into The Night - Julee Cruise, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus

"'Any way you cut it, this is going to be bad,' a senior medical adviser at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Dr. Carter Mecher, wrote on the night of Jan. 28, in an email to a group of public health experts scattered around the government and universities. 'The projected size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe.' A week after the first coronavirus case had been identified in the United States, and six long weeks before President Trump finally took aggressive action to confront the danger the nation was facing — a pandemic that is now forecast to take tens of thousands of American lives — Dr. Mecher was urging the upper ranks of the nation’s public health bureaucracy to wake up and prepare for the possibility of far more drastic action. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: Trump Reveals the Truth About Voter Suppression
NY Times: Plague Season, Through the Eyes of Writers
Happy Easter: ABC Resurrects Fake News Trump Warned of Virus in November (Video)

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)