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, 2020 June: Making a Garden That Welcomes the Birds, 2020 July: New Bird Song That ‘Went Viral’ Across This Species of Sparrow Was Tracked by Scientists For the First Time, 2020 August: How to Use Binoculars - Jason Ward, 2020 October: Get the Birds To Come To You, 2020 June: BirdNET, 2021 April: Birds by the Billions: A Guide to Spring’s Avian Parade, 2021 June: Leave This Wondrous Island to the Birds
The Sibley Guide to Birds
A case of the Palestinian blues
“For Kareem Samara, a British-Palestinian multi-instrumentalist, composer, and sound artist, it was naseeb — meant to be. One day in 2020, American-Palestinian filmmaker and music producer Sama’an Ashrawi messaged asking him to play ‘Baby, Please Don’t Go,’ an American blues standard, on the oud. Ashrawi was curious what the blues would sound like in the quarter tones of the Middle Eastern instrument. Minutes later, Samara sent him a recording of the tune. ...”
Eluvium - Virga II (2021), Virga I (2019)
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson (1999)
Bill Evans - Live in Switzerland (1975)
YouTube: Live in Switzerland 1:18:00
2019 June: The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961 - Bill Evan (2005), 2019 November: Some Other Time (2016), 2020 November: Another Time: The Hilversum Concert (1968), 2021 February: Bill Evans Live in Munch Museum, Oslo (1966)
The Names Heard Long Ago – Jonathan Wilson
New York Stories: King of New York - Abel Ferrara (1990)
Criterion: Trailer (Video), amazon
YouTube: King Of New York by Abel Ferrara - TrailerRay Harryhausen | Titan of Cinema
The Alexandria Quartet: 'Love is every sort of conspiracy'
"Lawrence Durrell claimed that the four books of The Alexandria Quartet were 'an investigation of modern love'. It's possible to take that idea at face value. Some have even used it as a stick with which to beat him. Notably, his Guardian obituarist (writing in 1990, at a time when Durrell's reputation was possibly at its lowest ebb) said 'a harsh judgment' of his masterpiece might be that it was 'a four-volume romantic novel written by a poet steeped in Freud and on nodding terms with Einstein'. ...”
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), 2020 April: The Alexandria Quartet: Mirrors and telescopes
Faster Than Birds Can Fly | John Ashbery, Trevor Winkfield
Lee "Scratch" Perry
MoMA’s Online Courses Let You Study Modern & Contemporary Art and Earn a Certificate
Porch Memories
The History of the New York License Plate
‘This is our final’: the team who led athletes’ escape from Afghanistan
“‘We have been working like fingers on one hand, with different roles, and we came together as a big strong punch,’ says the former captain and one of the founders of the Afghanistan women’s national football team, Khalida Popal. She is talking about the small team that pulled off the mission to evacuate 100-200 Afghan athletes and a number of individuals connected to them from the Hamid Karzai international airport in Kabul. Across a two-week period those fingers worked tirelessly around the clock and across numerous time zones, tracking the real-time movements of the Taliban and military personnel on the ground to pull off what seemed completely impossible: to get a group of female football players, many teenagers, and a host of others, including family members, into the airport and on to planes. Who is this motley, but multitalented, crew and how did they manage to get so many out where many more failed? This is their story. …”
What John Sloan painted after “loafing about Madison Square”
2009 August: John Sloan, 2011 November: American realism, 2012 December: Old New York, 2015 May: Spectator of Life, 2015 October: Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York, 1897-1917, 2015 October: Tenderloin, 2015 October: McSorley's Bar - John Sloan (1912), 2015 December: "Red Kimono on the Roof," 1912, 2016 January: “The Hell Hole,” 1917, 2016 February: Gloucester Days, 2016 March: “Hanging Clothes,” 1920, 2016 May: "Roof, Summer Night," 1906, 2016 October: "Spring Rain," 1912, 2016 October: "The Lafayette" (1927), 2016 December: The Old House at Home by Joseph Mitchell (April 1940), 2020 September: Elevated rails, rooftops, and McSorley’s: How painter John Sloan captured 20th-century Manhattan, 2021 February: A snowstorm on Broadway in the Theater District
Take The Power Back: Black Artist-Owned Labels
“... After years of working in a profession that regularly ripped off artists for song rights, publishing, licensing and other monies, Cooke was the first major black artist to start his own independent record label. Cooke’s power move wasn’t only bold; it was a revolutionary DIY act. While artist-run record companies would later be called ‘vanity labels,’ for Sam Cooke and those he inspired – including Curtis Mayfield, James Brown, George Clinton and Prince – having a label was less about ego and more about controlling their music. ...”
Reissue Of The Week: Kling Klang's The Esthetik Of Destruction
Russian Ark - Alexander Sokurov (2002)
YouTube: Russian Ark 1:39:28
2009 March: Aleksandr Sokurov
Sturgeon Moon by Nina MacLaughlin
2021 May: What Color Is the Sky?, 2021 June: Strawberry Moon
New York’s Legendary Literary Hangouts
“You might think of them as solitary creatures, furiously scribbling or typing alone, but as long as there have been writers in New York City, they have socialized together in an assortment of bars, restaurants, apartments and clubs. The Times began writing about these places in its very first issues. In 1910, it published an article lamenting ‘the passing of the literary haunts of New York,’ noting that many once-famous gathering spots were being razed as the city grew and modernized. ‘Number 19 West 24th is gone,’ the piece began. ‘At least the old 19 is gone, and … no account has been made of the fact that it at one time housed the Author’s Club, and that its rakish stairs were somewhat worn away by the feet of Matthew Arnold, Whittier, Lowell and Field.’ ...”
Black Film Archive
“Black Film Archive celebrates the rich, abundant history of Black cinema. We are an evolving archive dedicated to making historically and culturally significant films made from 1915 to 1979 about Black people accessible through a streaming guide with cultural context. ...”
End the Imperial Presidency
FIFA, Deemed a Victim of Its Own Scandal, Will Share $200 Million Payout
DJ Kool Herc vs. Pete DJ Jones
Meditations in an Emergency - Frank O’Hara (1957)
2008 January: Frank O'Hara, 2010 February: USA: Poetry, 2010 October: Stones: Larry Rivers and Frank O’Hara, 2011 October: City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara - Brad Gooch, 2012 December: USA: Poetry, Frank O'Hara (1966), 2013 June: A Visual Footnote to O’Hara’s “The Day Lady Died”: New World Writing and The Poets of Ghana, 2013 March: Happy Birthday, Frank O’Hara: The Beloved Poet Reads His “Metaphysical Poem”, 2014 June: Remembering Frank O’Hara’s Apartments, 2014 August: Lunch Poems (1964), 2014 November: In Which The Elements of Disbelief Are Very Strong In The Morning, 2014 December: Hymns of St. Bridget & Other Writings, by Bill Berkson and Frank O’Hara, 2013 June: Cedar Tavern, 2016 April: Experiments with the New York School of Poets, 2016 October: Frank O’Hara’s “For Bob Rauschenberg,” on His Birthday
The Birth of Espresso: How the Coffee Shots The Fuel Our Modern Life Were Invented
2010 September: Espresso, 2013 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, 2020 April: Unfair trade, April 2020: A (Very) Brief History of NYC Espresso, 2020 May: The Islamic History of Coffee, 2021 January: The Life Cycle of a Cup of Coffee: The Journey from Coffee Bean, to Coffee Cup, 2021 June: Philosophers Drinking Coffee: The Excessive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard, 2021 July: The invisible addiction: is it time to give up caffeine?