Pain and Glory - Pedro Almodóvar (2019)

"Every so often in Pedro Almodóvar’s sublime 'Pain and Glory,' Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas) closes his eyes and drifts away. A celebrated Spanish filmmaker, Salvador has lost his bearings. He’s gravely depressed, and his body seems to have permanently surrendered to his maladies, to his bad back, migraines, asthma and fits of terrifying, mysterious choking. When a friend offers him some heroin to smoke, Salvador readily lights up and disappears. His nagging pains suddenly give way to images from his childhood, idylls that brighten the screen like beacons in a fog. A story of memory and creation, youth and its loss, 'Pain and Glory' circles around the idea of art as self-creation. ..."
NY Times - ‘Pain and Glory’ Review: Almodóvar’s Dazzling Art of Self-Creation (Video)
W - Pain and Glory
Guardian - Pain and Glory – bittersweet perfection from Pedro Almodóvar (Video)
amazon
YouTube: Pain and Glory

Dreaming On Bob Dylan’s Mythic ‘Basement Tapes’

"... The Basement Tapes are a myth. They’re one of those stories that serious music fans, the type of fan that most people would call a collector, and others might call crazy, get lost in. As the myth has been told and retold since the late ‘60s, Bob Dylan, then one of the greatest, if not the greatest, rock stars in the world, had a motorcycle accident. After recovering from his accident in the seclusion of an 11-room house in upstate New York, Dylan called up his band, a handful of musicians who had been known as The Hawks when they backed Canadian rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins, and they joined him, soon renting houses not far from where Dylan was residing, one of which came to be known as Big Pink. Over the summer, in the basement of Big Pink, they recorded over 100 tracks, including some new Bob Dylan compositions that remain some of his best. ..."
Days of the Crazy-Wild (Video)
Guardian - Bob Dylan’s back pages: the truth behind the Basement Tapes

2014 December: Jeff Bridges narrates Bob Dylan's road to Big Pink and 'Basement Tapes'

Young Rembrandt

Rembrandt, Self-portrait wearing a soft cap, c. 1633
"The Young Rembrandt exhibition charts the astonishing transformation of the Dutch master Rembrandt. Spanning the years 1624 to 1634, it traces how a young and unremarkable artist from Leiden became the superstar of 17th-century Amsterdam and one of the greatest artists of all time. Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, simply known as Rembrandt, was born in 1606. There was nothing particularly promising about his work when he qualified as a painter around 1624/5. But during the subsequent decade – working in painting, printmaking and drawing – he was relentless in his efforts to improve. By looking over Rembrandt’s shoulder as he learns from his mistakes and as he experiments with new techniques and subjects, we can follow the steps by which he established himself as an extraordinary talent. ..."
Ashmolean Museum (Video)

Map of Leiden adapted from Pieter Bast, Lugduni, 1600

2020 February: Rembrandt's J'Accuse - Peter Greenaway (2008), 2020 April: Dutch Golden Age Art Wasn’t All About White People. Here’s the Proof.

A Brief History of the Policing of Black Music

"Billie Holiday died handcuffed to her hospital bed because her drug addiction had been criminalized. A Black FBI informant posed as a suitor, hunted her, fell in love with her even, and turned her in for heroin possession, not for hurting anyone, or violence, or for singing too beautiful and true a song but because she was self-medicating against the siege of being a famous Black woman in America, a woman who carried the weight of the nation’s entire soul in her music. For as long as Black music has been popular, crossover, coveted by white listeners and dissected by white critics, it has also been criminalized by white police at all levels of law enforcement. A micro-archive of the criminalization of Black music and police presence within the music, focused on jazz music and improvised forms, shows why we now cry and chant unapologetically for abolition. ..."
LitHub (Video)
Billie Holiday: A Complex Woman, A Jazz Legend (Video)
Independent - Billie Holiday: The wild lady of jazz who adored England (Video)

2010 April: Billie Holiday, 2014 December: "Strange Fruit" (1939), 2014 November: A Harlem Throwback to the Era of Billie Holiday, 2015 February: The Hunting of Billie Holiday, 2015 June: "Fine and Mellow" (1957), 2016 December: Banned From New York City – Live 1948 to 1957

Casting Out

The anchor rope at the bow of the Marilyn Jean IV.
"Growing up in Sheepshead Bay, I was fascinated by the small group of men who fished in the waters off the southern tip of Brooklyn. I would often see their boats docked at the piers and wondered what it was like out on the open water. I live in Clinton Hill now, but when I return to my old neighborhood, I still see those fishermen. So on a recent Saturday, I purchased a ticket to ride aboard the Marilyn Jean IV, a 70-foot boat that takes passengers out on twice-daily fishing trips in the Atlantic. We cast off from the bay and set out on the ocean. The din of the city fell away; Brooklyn turned into a mere speck on the horizon. These are the images of an afternoon aboard the boat. ..."
BKLYNR (August 15, 2013)
15 Things to Know About Sheepshead Bay
forgotten new york
W - Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn

Making a Garden That Welcomes the Birds

A young rose-breasted grosbeak spent part of a summer afternoon on a leaf in the back garden.
"In this most isolated of springs, birds have kept me company. I’ve watched their mating games and turf wars, listened to their serenades and tagged along as they shopped for just the right piece of garden real estate (as long as I was very quiet; no kibitzing, Margaret). Some even let me meet their newborns when the big moment came. All the things I cannot do with my people so much lately, we’ve been doing as usual; the birds remained in my bubble all along. I cannot imagine life without the 70 or so species that visit or reside in the garden each year. As I often say (and write): The birds taught me to garden — or at least to do it smarter. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: The Birds Are Not on Lockdown, and More People Are Watching Them
[PDF] Creating a Garden for Birds

The adult male scarlet tanager is a medium-size songbird with glaring crimson feathers and jet-black wings.

2008 September: Birds, 2008 June: Bird Songs, 2017 April: Of a Feather, 2017 June: Bird Sounds, 2017 July: Beautifully Designed Tiny Houses... For Birds, 2019 September: The Crisis for Birds Is a Crisis for Us All, 2019 March: She Invented a Board Game With Scientific Integrity. It’s Taking Off., 2019 June: Where Birds Meet Art . . . After Dark, 2019 September: The Crisis for Birds Is a Crisis for Us All, 2019 October: A Quest to Protect the World's Last Silent Places

Dance Time, across the Diaspora

"My father, at cocktail parties, liked to get children dancing. We’d be in the backyard flinging ourselves at and off things: tire swings, tree branches, each other. He’d wander out, beer or scotch in hand. 'What is this?' he’d ask in a loud voice. 'The annual Foolishness International board meeting?' I’d fill with a pleasant warmth. My father would toss one or two of us over his shoulders. He’d run. We’d chase him to the patio or the living room—wherever the stereo system was. 'Dance time!' he’d say. He’d teach us moves. Sometimes he’d even do a little choreography. We’d show off, get sweaty. Shy children my father would take by the hand. He’d coax and twirl them until they loosened. I was shy, but not when dancing with him. ..."
The Paris Review (Video)
Smithsonian: How a Tightknit Community of Ghanaians Has Spiced Up the Bronx

New York may be the largest enclave of the Ghanaian diaspora.

Four Corners Public Arts Project in Newark, NJ with: Manuel Acevedo, Gera Luz, Layqa Nuna Yawar, Kelley Prevard, Rorshach Art Collective, Armisey Smith, Jo-el Lopez, Sue Daly, Gabe Ribeiro & More

"Named for the historical Downtown Newark district in which the mural project is located, the Four Corners Public Arts initiative has brought over a dozen alluring murals to Treat Place and Beaver Street in Downtown Newark — a short work from Newark Penn Station. Referencing the neighborhood and its distinct history, the artworks were conceived and painted largely by local artists. The mural featured above, a tribute to the late neighborhood legend, Jerry Gant a.k.a 2 Nasty Nas, was painted by Newark-native Manuel Acevedo. Several more murals sponsored by Four Corners Public Arts — an ongoing collaboration between the City via Invest Newark, the Newark Downtown District (NDD), Newark Arts and local property owners RBH Group and Paramount Assets — follow: ..."
Street Art NYC

Urban Legends Honors Black Music Month With Weekly Live Streaming Events

"Urban Legends have announced a month-long celebration of Black Music Month that includes live DJ sets, new mini-documentaries about James Brown, new episodes of the docu-series Through the Lens, and new releases of re-mixes of classic songs. Urban Legends, a division of UMe, Universal Music Group’s global catalogue company, celebrates and curates a catalogue of some of its most powerful and influential artists and music spanning R&B, soul, hip-hop, rap, blues, reggae genres and more. ..."
udiscover (Video)
allmusic (Audio)
amazom: Soul Pride: The Instrumentals 1960-1969
YouTube: Soul Pride: The Instrumentals 1960-1969 36 videos

Stephen Dedalus

"Stephen Dedalus is James Joyce's literary alter ego, appearing as the protagonist and antihero^[1] of his first, semi-autobiographical novel of artistic existence A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and an important character in Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses. In Stephen Hero, an early version of what became Portrait, Stephen's surname is spelled 'Daedalus' in more precise allusion to Daedalus, the architect in Greek myth who was contracted by King Minos to build the Labyrinth in which he would imprison his wife's son the Minotaur. Buck Mulligan makes reference to the mythological namesake in Ulysses, telling Stephen, 'Your absurd name, an ancient Greek!' In revising the mammoth Stephen Hero into the considerably more compact Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce shortened the name to 'Dedalus'. ..."
Wikipedia
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: An Introduction

2011 March: Passages from James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" (1965-67), 2010 March: Ulysses Seen, 2013 February: ULYSSES “SEEN” is moving to Dublin!, 2013: Dubliners, 2014 May: The Dead (1987 film), 2014 May: “Have I Ever Left It?” by Mark O'Connell, 2014 July: Digital Dubliners, 2014 September: Read "Ulysses Seen", A Graphic Novel Adaptation of James Joyce’s Classic, 2015 January: The Mapping Dubliners Project, 2015 February: Davy Byrne’s, 2016 January: Port and Docks, 2016 February: Hear James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Read Unabridged & Set to Music By 17 Different Artists, 2016 April: Nassau Street, 2016 May: Stephen’s Green, 2016 October: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), 2016 November: Skerries, 2017 January: Walking Ulysses | Joyce's Dublin Today, 2018 October: Bloomsday Explained, 2020 March: Ireland’s Voices

As Baseball Teeters, Rob Manfred’s Words Ring Hollow

Fenway Park in Boston. Even if M.L.B. games are played this year, it will most likely be without fans. That has complicated negotiations between the players and team owners.
"Bud Selig presided over a canceled World Series, which would seem to be about as bad as it gets for a baseball commissioner’s legacy. Yet his successor, Rob Manfred, may sink even lower. Manfred just might cancel the entire 2020 season. On the draft broadcast last week, Manfred said with absolute certainty — '100 percent' — that there would be a Major League Baseball season this year. On Monday, he told ESPN he was 'not confident' there would be a season at all, because of the acrimony with the players’ union. 'It’s just a disaster for our game, absolutely no question about it,' Manfred added. 'It shouldn’t be happening.' ..."
NY Times
NY Times: M.L.B. Owners and Players Stumble Toward an Outcome Neither Wants
NY Times: As Money Squabbles Delay M.L.B., Many Workers ‘Just Get Steam-Rolled’
NY Times: Opinion - What Life Without Baseball Looks Like
NY Times: Minor League Baseball’s Opposition to Overhaul Softens in Pandemic

Craig Baker, who sells food and drinks at Rumble Ponies baseball games, in the empty stadium.

Epic Vinyls from Brazil

"This time we had the pleasure to have the full duo behind the decks: DJ Carlotta aka DJ Viola and Rasmus Schack aka DJ Contracapa aka Quasileiro aka Babalorischack aka DJ Churrasmus. If you don't know them yet, their DJ Set are made up of exceptional, rare Brazilian music that you have probably never heard before (except for the specialists that you may be!). ... This mix is the #4 from the mixtapes serie 'Afro Brazil Orixa Mixtapes' (ABOM) Check all the episodes here› https://soundcloud.com/epic-vinyls-fr... They kindly provided us all the context and information necessary to better understand this beautiful mix: The records on the mixtape has been carefully collected and selected to present the influence of the afro-brazilian roots on Brazilian popular music. We’ve been wanting to do a mix for Iemanjá - the goddess of the sea - for a long time. ..."
YouTube: Epic Vinyls from Brazil • Vinyl Set 100% Brazilian special Iemanjá Day • Le Mellotron 1:08:05, Indigenous Spirit Tribute Mix 49:01

Artist DIY: Vicky Clarke

"FACT edits each episode remotely, while the artist shoots at their home or studio with whatever equipment they have available. In this episode, Manchester sound artist Vicky Clarke talks us through some of the DIY instruments and techniques she uses to make music. Prior to the pandemic, Clarke worked on a project called Materiality, in which she combines physical materials and digital processes to build sound sculptures, and a collaborative project, Noise Orchestra. More recently Clarke has built an interface for Ableton Live using a revolutionary material called graphene, which she demonstrates in this episode. ..."
FACT (Video)
Vicky Clarke (Video)

The Artistry of Esmond Edwards

Ray Bryant Trio
"Esmond Edwards clearly remembers the day he took his first professional photograph. It was January 27, 1956, a cold winter Friday in New Jersey. He did not know it at the time, but he would frequent the house he was visiting many times in the following years. The address was 25 Prospect Avenue in Hackensack, and it belonged to Louis Van Gelder and Sarah Cohen. Their son Rudy operated a studio in his parents’ house, building a control room next to the living room, which was used as a performing area for jazz musicians. Crossing the bridge from NYC, they flocked the modest establishment to record their albums in a single day of recording. ..."
The Music Aficionado (Video)
W - Esmond Edwards

On the Sunny Side

The brutal beauty of Morocco’s Soccer Ultras

The Raja Ultras, led by the Capo (in lime green jacket standing on the railing between levels) fill the stadium with drum lines, chants, and songs.
"Zakaria Belqadi stands on a railing before a hoard of fans in the cheapest section of Le Grand Stade de Marrakech. He raises his arms, and the stadium begins to throb with the voices of young men. The song they sing has become well-known across the Arab world, and its lyrics have almost nothing to do with soccer: 'In my country they abuse me … Only [Allah] knows, in this country we live in a dark cloud.' These are fans of Raja Casablanca, one of Africa’s most successful soccer teams. Raja has won 11 Botola (Moroccan domestic league) championships and seven various Confederation of African Football (CAF) titles, among other honors. For many young men in Casablanca’s poorer neighborhoods, Raja has become a way of life, and the team’s 'ultras' fan clubs have even become organized, politically active and occasionally violent. ..."
Africas a is Country
W - Raja Casablanca
YouTube: Raja Casablanca Ultras - Best Moments (Aug 26, 2016)

Colorful walls and unabashed team pride covers the Casablanca neighborhood known as the birthplace of Raja, Derb Sultan. April 21, 2019.

A New York painter creates “order against chaos”

“Morning in Brooklyn,” 1929
"George Copeland Ault’s still, ordered paintings of New York City in the 1920s and early 1930s look deceptively simplistic. Known for depicting landscapes and cityscapes in “simple lines and vivid color,” as Smithsonian magazine put it, Ault was considered a Precisionist painter—his work was informed by realism yet emphasized the geometrical forms of his subjects. But his work is more than tightly controlled stillness and smoothed-out lines. Painting was Ault’s way of creating 'order against chaos,' his wife later told an interviewer in The Magazine Antiques. ..."
Ephemeral New York
W - George Ault
Smithsonian American Art Museum

“From Brooklyn Heights”

Deutsche Elektronische Musik 1 (Experimental German Rock and Electronic Music 1972-83)

"Guardian - The first seeds of German rock and experimental electronic music were planted in 1968, as students and workers in Paris, Prague, Mexico and throughout the world demonstrated against mainstream society, the war in Vietnam, imperialism and bourgeois values. The birth of a counter-culture, drug experimentation and social change expanded musical worlds. Germany experienced its own cultural revolution fuelled by these worldwide student and worker revolts and by a generation’s desire to rid itself of the guilt of war. German rock and experimental electronic music grew out of this worldwide counter-cultural revolution of 1968. The objectives were to create new music, ‘free’ from the past, many German youth turning their back on mainstream society. ..."
Holland Tunnel
Discogs (Video)
amazon
YouTube: Deutsche Elektronische Musik 1, Volume 1

Rage and Promises Followed Ferguson, but Little Changed

"America has been here before: a black man on the asphalt dying at the hands of the police. Convulsive protests across the country. A national reckoning. Vows to change. The last time was August 2014. Michael Brown was the victim. Darren Wilson was the officer. Ferguson, Mo., was the place.After the unrest that followed that fatal shooting, police departments spent tens of millions of dollars on body cameras, revised use-of-force policies and held training sessions in implicit bias and de-escalation. A presidential task force issued 153 recommendations and action items. The Justice Department forced seven troubled police departments into consent decrees with mandatory benchmarks aimed at reducing racial disparities and police brutality. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: How Black Lives Matter Reached Every Corner of America
The “abolish the police” movement, explained by 7 scholars and activists
the intercept_: Police Budgets, Austerity, and Tax Cuts for the Rich Are Colliding in Democratic States and Cities
ROAR - Reform is not enough: defund the police, then abolish it
NY Times: Calls for Transforming Police Run Into Realities of Governing in Minnesota
New Yorker: The Bicycle as a Vehicle of Protest

Signs and flowers remained on Friday at the memorial site near where George Floyd was detained by the police in Minneapolis.

Broadsides - William S. Burroughs Collecting

"Recently, I got into a conversation with a book collector friend of mine about collectible broadsides. This discussion forced me to realize that I did not really know what a broadside technically was. I knew one when I saw one. In bibliographic terms, a broadside (or a broadsheet) is merely a large sheet of paper printed on one side only. As a result, a poster, a handbill, and an advertisement, as well as a printed poem, can all technically fit the definition. (For a full set of dictionary entries concerning the term broadside, see Google). For the collector of modern books, the term usually refers to a single poem sometimes accompanied by artwork printed on a single sheet by a fine printer. Ken Lopez Booksellers has a large gallery full of wonderful examples of this fine press art. ..."
RealityStudio

2009 May: Cut-up technique - 1, 2010 March: Cut-up technique, 2010 December: The Evolution of the Cut-Up Technique in My Own Mag, 2014 February: William Burroughs at 100, 2014 September: The Ticket That Exploded, 2014 November: What Is Schizo-Culture? A Classic Conversation with William S. Burroughs, 2015 June: The Electronic Revolution (1971), 2015 August: Cut-Ups: William S. Burroughs 1914 – 2014, 2015 December: Destroy All Rational Thought, 2016 January: Commissioner of Sewers: A 1991 Profile of Beat Writer William S. Burroughs, 2016 June: Nothing Here Now But The Recordings (1981), 2016 September: # 1 – A Descriptive Catalogue of the William S. Burroughs Archive, 2016 December: #6 – Call Me Burroughs LP, 2017 January: A Visit to William S. Burroughs at the Beat Hotel in Summer, 1958, 2017 December: The Nova Trilogy (The Cut-up Trilogy), 2018 September: Material - The Road to the Western Lands (1998), 2019 March: Insect Trust Gazette (1964 / 1968)

Live Updates on George Floyd Protests: Minnesota Tackles Police Overhaul

Port workers and longshoremen hold nine-minute work stoppage to honor George Floyd
"State legislatures have begun responding to calls to change policing. Shaken by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and inspired by the protests that followed, the Minnesota State Legislature will convene a special session on Friday to consider a package of bills aimed at overhauling policing and redressing policies that have led to systemic economic inequality. The measures include a ban on the use of chokeholds, creating community alternatives to policing and restoring voting rights for paroled prisoners. Some of the bills have been stalled for years, though Democratic lawmakers vowed they would push them through this time. ..."
NY Times (Video)
NY Times: On the Future, Americans Can Agree: It Doesn’t Look Good
NY Times: As Public Opinion Shifts on Racism, Trump Digs In
Is the Trump Regime Crumbling? (Audio)
The Paris Review: I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free
The Nation - The Rev. Jesse Jackson: ‘Every City Has Its George Floyd’
The Nation - Dockworkers to Shut Down West Coast Ports in Memory of George Floyd
The Guardian - 'It's a big turning point': is this the end of racist monuments in America?
ROAR - “Claim no easy victories”: reexamining Black rebellion

Rev. Jesse Jackson

Robert Fripp - Music for Quiet Moments (2009)

"King Crimson mastermind Robert Fripp is hoping to keep fans’ minds at ease with his new series 'Music for Quiet Moments'. Each Friday for the next 50 weeks, Fripp will release an original soundscape recorded in collaboration with produce David Singleton. In a note announcing the series, Fripp said some of his soundscapes 'are inward-looking, reflective,' while others 'move outwards, with affirmations.' Still others 'go nowhere, simply being where they are'. Read Fripp’s full comments below. ..."
Consequence of Sound (Video)
Rock Cellar (Video)
YouTube: Music For Quiet Moments

Live Updates on George Floyd Protests: Top General Apologizes for Role in Trump Photo Op

Protesters outside the Mission Police Station in San Francisco include some calling for defunding of police departments.
"... Trump tells the Seattle mayor to ‘take back your city’ from protesters. As protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis have grown into a vast American reckoning with racism, President Trump renewed his threat to take federal action against local protesters in Seattle, telling government officials in Washington State that they needed to crack down on demonstrators in the city. ... Mr. Trump had previously discussed deploying active-duty troops to quell the protests in American cities, which experts said would require invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807. That led to blowback from former military leaders who warned that such action could cause the military to lose credibility with Americans. ..."
NY Times (Video)

Audio from a briefing that National Guard troops received in relation to protests in Washington D.C.
NY Times: Aggressive Tactics by National Guard, Ordered to Appease Trump, Wounded the Military, Too (Video)
NY Times: Federal Arrests Show No Sign that Antifa Plotted Protests
W - Antifa, W - Response from law enforcement and government officials/Trump administration
the intercept_: White House Forced to Retract Claim Viral Videos Prove Antifa Is Plotting Violence (Video)
The Nation: The Bravery of Marching for Black Lives in the Middle of a Pandemic
Jacobin: The Police Will Do Everything They Can to Resist Accountability — They Have to Be Defunded and Demilitarized

Philonise Floyd, brother of George Floyd, give emotional testimony at a House Judiciary Committee hearing to discuss police brutality and racial profiling.

7 Flushing Local

"The 7 Flushing Local and <7> Flushing Express are two rapid transit services in the A Division of the New York City Subway, providing local and express services along the full length of the IRT Flushing Line. Their route emblems, or 'bullets', are colored purple, since they serve the Flushing Line. 7 trains operate at all times between Main Street in Flushing, Queens and 34th Street–Hudson Yards in Chelsea, Manhattan. Local service operates at all times, while express service runs only during rush hours and early evenings in the peak direction and during special events. The 7 route started running in 1915 when the Flushing Line opened. Since 1927, the 7 has held largely the same route, except for a one-stop western extension from Times Square to Hudson Yards in 2015. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times: Here's What the First Night of the Subway Shutdown Looked Life (May 2020)
NY Times: Key to Improving Subway Service in New York? Modern Signals (May 2017 - Video)
YouTube: The 7 Train and Driver's view in Queens New York City (2012) 10:06

Tracy Everly

"A painter I know asked me one simple question a few months ago that I couldn’t adequately answer. He asked me if I knew what I did well. This was the first painting I did after circling back to reacquaint myself with the importance of values. I was consciously aware of separating my light and shadow families when I painted this. It’s a great question and one that I’m still trying to answer for myself. Because I had come to work in a way that was largely intuitive, I couldn’t necessarily break down the parts, so to speak. I knew that sometimes a painting I did 'worked,' and I may have had some idea why- but not to the extent that I wanted to. ..."
what do you do well?
Tracy Everly

Live Updates on Protests: George Floyd’s Brother Testifies Before Congress

Demonstrators marched in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Friday.
"... Public opinion rarely moves fast, but it is now on Black Lives Matter. American public opinion can sometimes seem stubborn. Voters haven’t really changed their views on abortion in 50 years. Donald J. Trump’s approval rating among registered voters has fallen within a five-point range for just about every day of his presidency. But the Black Lives Matter movement is proving to be an exception. Public opinion on race and criminal justice issues has been steadily moving left since the first protests ignited over the fatal shootings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. And since the death of George Floyd in police custody on May 25, public opinion on race, criminal justice and the Black Lives Matter movement has shifted leftward. ..."
NY Times (Video)
NY Times: How Public Opinion Has Moved on Black Lives Matter
Letter From Oakland: Black Motherhood in Sleepless Times
Sierra: Racism Is Killing the Planet

Police advance on demonstrators who are protesting the killing of George Floyd on May 30, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
NY Times: Black Lives Matter Is Winning
NPR: Unmasking The 'Outside Agitator' (Audio)
The Paris Review: An Open Letter to All the Future Mayors of Chicago
Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop
Jacobin: Police Brutality Against Protesters Only Stoked the Anti–Police Brutality Movement

A Guide to Soul Jazz, Which Used Black Music History to Speak to the Present and to Build the Future

"Jazz, like all popular music, is in and of the world—responsive to its conditions. In the late 1950’s, as the civil rights movement was rising, East Coast jazz musicians were asserting their Black identities through the music they made. 'There is in the music a new note of racial pride,' Lerone Bennett, Jr. wrote in a 1961 article for Ebony. That pride included a deliberate reaching back, a reassessment of 'the Negro folk idiom—the cries, chants, shouts, works songs, and pulsating rhythmic vitality of gospel singers and shouting choirs. […] [They] turned from the academy and faced the storefront church.' This was a powerful way to be seen. Reaching back into the history of Black music to assert that it, like the more 'refined' jazz sounds, was as important to shaping the music as anything else. ..."
bandcamp (Audio)

George Floyd Funeral Updates: Mourners Fill Houston Church

A mural memorializing George Floyd in Houston on Friday.
"After more than two weeks of demonstrations and anguished calls for racial justice, the man whose death gave rise to an international movement, and whose last words — 'I can’t breathe' — have become a rallying cry, will be laid to rest on Tuesday at a private funeral in Houston. George Floyd, 46, will then be buried in a grave next to his mother’s. The service, which began with a procession of mourners at the Fountain of Praise church, comes after five days of public memorials in Minneapolis, North Carolina and Houston and two weeks after a Minneapolis police officer was captured on video pressing his knee into Mr. Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes. A large crowd flowed into the church for more than half an hour, beginning about 11 a.m. Central time, with many people wearing masks because of the coronavirus. ..."
NY Times (Video)
NY Times: George Floyd, From ‘I Want to Touch the World’ to ‘I Can’t Breathe’
Aljazeera - George Floyd to be buried in Houston: Live updates (Video)

Protesters arrested during a recent demonstration in Manhattan that went past the 8 p.m. curfew.
NY Times: Why Secrecy Laws Protecting Bad Officers Are Falling
How Designers Can Help The Black Lives Matter Movement (Video)
NY Times: A Small Mississippi Town, ‘Asking for a Breath’ After Mayor’s Remarks Unleash Protests
NY Times: Floyd Case Forces Arts Groups to Enter the Fray
The Nation: Black Lives Matter Protests and Posters
NPR: Peaceful Anti-Police Brutality Protests Continue Across The Country (Video)

Protesters and activists walk across the Brooklyn Bridge Saturday in New York. Cities saw some of their biggest gatherings of the past two weeks on Saturday.