Bump & Hustle Music - Various (2021)

 

“... Collated from the Prestige & Fantasy catalogues, this includes Jazz, Soul, Funk, Latin-Jazz rarities & masterpieces... including the incredible and often overlooked 'All The Way Down' by Etta James...as well as 83 stunning hand picked tracks from label creator Jason Lee Lazell. by legends such as Terry Callier, Latin Jazz Quintet, Walt Dickerson, Roy Haynes, Hampton Hawes, Andy Bey, Gary Bartz, Harold Mabern, Rusty Bryant, Yusef Lateef, Wally Richardson, Freddie Hubbard, Sonny Red and Esther Marrow and Charles Earland... Working as a buyer, in what was the greatest record shop in Europe, Tower Records, No 1 Piccadilly, opened my ears to some of the coolest Souls & Jazz music ever... including lesser known gems that appear on this collection... “

moochin’ about / Bandcamp (Audio)

Discogs (Video)

Snowball Fights in Art (1400–1946)

 

Detail from a fresco depicting the month of January at Buonconsiglio Castle in Trento, Italy, ca. 1400 — Source

“Few seasonal activities are as universal — across time, place, or culture — as the snowball fight. As many of us head into the cold, winter months, hoping for a holiday season with frosted trees or icicles dripping like stalactites from the eaves of homes, we might also long for that slightly slushy grade of powder that makes for perfect packing. Snowmen and angels can be created later. And perhaps there will be sledding: on toboggans (for connoisseurs) or cafeteria trays (for the crafty). Yet nothing signals the year’s first snowfall quite like an apple-sized projectile cutting a parabolic path — through crisp evening air, the haloed light of streetlamps, and exhalations of foggy, illuminated breath — to make direct contact with an unsuspecting hat or coat. ...”

The Public Domain Review

 

Detail from Winterlandschaft, 1586, by the Flemish painter Lucas van Valckenborch (ca. 1535–1597) — Source

Fear and Falsehoods Fill the Premier League’s Vaccination Gap

 

For athletes sensitive about anything they put into their bodies, even the debunked claims can still seem persuasive. 

"The report spread like wildfire. Premier League players shared the link among their peers. Some passed it to their family members and closest confidantes. A handful were sufficiently troubled by what it seemed to suggest that they presented it to their clubs’ in-house medical teams, seeking advice. It had been produced by a website that says it tracks the number of 'young athletes who had major medical issues in 2021 after receiving one or more Covid vaccines.' The report claimed to list 19 'athletes' — mostly in the United States — who it said had experienced heart attacks after being inoculated. Some of the attacks, the site noted ominously, had been fatal. ..."

NY Times

​Pogo's 'Deck Us All With Boston Charlie:' A Walt Kelly Christmas Carol

“Walt Kelly's Pogo comic strip stopped publishing in 1975, but the spoof Christmas carol ‘Deck Us All With Boston Charlie’ deserves to live on. Kelly's version of the song, mixes winks towards Shakespeare with malapropisms and just straight up gibberish to make one of the weirdest Christmas tunes of the Groovy era. The song became a tradition in Pogo, with Kelly always working some version of it into the comic strip during the lead-up to Christmas. ‘Deck Us All With Boston Charlie’ has six verses, and has been published in several songbooks featuring music from Pogo. ...”

Groovy History

YouTube: "Deck Us All With Boston Charlie" -  Walt Kelly

Okay Cupid: Reopening Vermeer’s love letter to contradiction

 

Johannes Vermeer’s Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, pre-restoration

“In Dresden, a city renowned for the picture-perfect restoration by which it looks the same and yet entirely strange, an old tale of love and deception is playing out. Since Vermeer’s Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, c. 1657–59, arrived in the Saxon capital from Paris in 1742, a girl in a green dress has been intently studying a letter by pale daylight against a white wall. As other of the Dutch master’s pictures, and indeed many of those made by his contemporaries, tend to do, the unadorned interior offers no clue as to what she might be thinking. Instead, what long impressed viewers about this particular girl was her apparent modernity. She was free, it seemed, of mythology and religion, exemplifying a unity of form and substance, a kind of pure presence. ...”

ARTFORUM

W - Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window

2009 September: Vermeer's Masterpiece, The Milkmaid, 2011 February: Vermeer: Master of Light, 2013 October: Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis, 2015 December: This Is Not a Vermeer ™, 2017 January: The Art of Painting (1665–1668), 2021 December: Museum rivalry ‘could make Dutch Vermeer show last of its kind’

​Charles Mingus’s Secret Eggnog Recipe Will Knock You on Your Ass

 

“As a world-class jazz double bassist, composer and band leader, Charles Mingus is one of the most celebrated figures in American music. He was well-known as a bon vivant and his larger than life physical stature towered over the bandstand and fellow musicians alike. His zeal for parties and drink were just as legendary as his sometimes caustic temperament that led him to occasionally punch fellow musicians and sometimes even lay into patrons. He was the Ron Artest of the jazz world—a brilliant artist that sometimes had trouble at the seams of life. ...”

Voice (December 2012)

Difference and Repetition / A Musical Evocation Of Gilles Deleuze - Palo Alto

 

“This new album (the tenth in their discography) was born from two ambitions: to pay tribute to Soft Machine's Third on form (4 sides / 4 titles) and to philosopher Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition is the title of his thesis) on the contents. ... Literature, and particularly science fiction, is a leitmotiv in the band's work. Antoine Volodine, Thomas Pynchon, Philip K. Dick, Lewis Carroll or J. G. Ballard have been invoked many times. In recent years, Palo Alto has multiplied musical collaborations with, among others, The Residents, Ptôse, Klimperei, Tuxedomoon... From industrial music to inextricable electronic ramifications, by making a detour through improvisation, the musical universe of Palo Alto is multifaceted. ...”

Bandcamp (Audio)

Discogs (Video)

W - Difference_and_Repetition, W - Gilles_Deleuze

Theory Reader [PDF]

amazon

A Grim, Long-Hidden Truth Emerges in Art: Native American Enslavement Image

 

“On a bitter, windy day, a long-overdue reckoning took place in the commandant’s quarters at Fort Garland Museum & Cultural Center, a former military outpost. For most of its history, the museum has celebrated the frontiersman Christopher (Kit) Carson, who briefly commanded this far-flung garrison built during American westward expansion to protect settlers from raids by tribes. But now the museum was telling a far different story in an exhibition titled ’Unsilenced: Indigenous Enslavement in Southern Colorado’ — one of the first dedicated to highlighting details of the little-known and centuries-old system of Indigenous bondage that the historian Andrés Reséndez called ‘the other slavery’ in his landmark 2016 book. ...”

NY Times

Unsilenced: Indigenous Enslavement in Southern Colorado

Run-D.M.C. - Christmas In Hollis (1987)

 

“It was December 24th on Hollis Ave in the dark 

When I see a man chilling with his dog in the park 

I approached very slowly with my heart full of fear 

Looked at his dog, oh my God, an ill reindeer ...”

W - Christmas in Hollis

Genius (Audio)

YouTube: Christmas In Hollis (Official HD Video)

A Memorial in the Stars

 

Ursa Major

“A wise friend recently reminded me that ‘goodbye’ is the price we pay for every ‘hello.’ This painful inevitability feels as old as the stars themselves.Our ancestors told their stories of joy and sorrow in the sky. Great heroes and legends are enshrined in the constellations we recognize today. And while the International Astronomical Union has decreed 88 constellations with set names, there’s no rule that says you can’t create your own star patterns or asterisms for significant and poignant events. It’s something I did to memorialize a significant death. ...”

Sky & Telescope

 

The Big Dipper is a well-known asterism, but any pattern of stars can make up a star pattern.

Marine Eyes - Idyll (2021)

“idyll is the debut record from Los Angeles-based Cynthia Bernard, aka marine eyes. Cynthia is also half of the electronic ambient duo awakened souls. She worked on this album while her children were sleeping or attending virtual school to create this collection of songs that signify the coming of the spring. idyll is a collection of organic materials coming together  – field recordings, synthesizers, guitars, and vocals emulating the sounds of ocean waves, wind through grass, soft rain, dew on budding flowers – intended to create a peaceful, gentle place, much like their namesake hills. ...”

Petal Motel (Audio)

Bandcamp (Audio)

YouTube: Idyll  39:06

Alex Katz: The Brooklyn Rail

 

Yellow House, 2020

“Alex Katz continues his foray into the lyric appreciation of the world outside us. Leaves and trees abound in this show, and are as technically accomplished as ever. The works, begun either in Pennsylvania or Maine during the quarantine, were completed at the artist’s studio on West Broadway. Katz’s sense of color remains highly original and highly effective, as does his understanding of what takes place in the span of a composition. Now in his mid-’90s, the artist shows no sign of slowing down; the paintings are as energetic and as vibrant as ever. ...”

The Brooklyn Rail

Alex Katz: Gladstone Gallery

2008 February: Alex Katz, 2010 December: Life Imitates Art, 2012 June: Alex Katz Prints, 2013 April: On Painting: Alex Katz & Felix Vallotton, May 2016: Alex Katz at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

 

From the Bridge 5, 2021

​Tina Brooks Quintet – The Complete Recordings (Master Takes)

 

“The splendid tenor saxophonist Tina Brooks was one of many ill-fated jazzmen. He made his first recordings with rhythm & blues bands in 1951-52, but his recording career didn't really start until 1958, when he participated on Jimmy Smith's album ‘The Sermon’. ... This release presents all of the quintet studio albums he made under his own name, in chronological order. Due to personal problems, Brooks would stop recording in early 1961 and wouldn't be heard from again prior to his death in 1974, at the age of 42. Included on this set are the complete classic original albums: Minor Move, True Blue, Back to the Tracks, and The Waiting Game. Featured with Tina Brooks are such stars as Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Johnny Coles, Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew, Duke Jordan, Paul Chambers, Art Blakey, and Philly Joe Jones, among others. ...”

Jazz Messengers

On the tracks of Tina Brooks

amazon

Discogs (Video)

W - Tina Brooks

​In Which a Direct Line is Drawn From Flaubert’s Unfinished Novel to Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

 

“On December 9, 1978, Roland Barthes delivered a lecture in his series about the fantasy of writing a novel. Or rather, he spoke about ‘Wanting-to-Write,’ because he denied he was actually writing one. No, instructed Barthes, it ‘isn’t true; if I were, I clearly wouldn’t be in a position to propose a lecture course on its preparations: writing requires secrecy.’ Secrecy, up to a point. For the French novelist Gustave Flaubert, born 200 years ago this month, the process of writing necessitated complaining about it, loudly. Following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, in which he served as a drill sergeant, and the death of his cherished mother in April 1872, perhaps he felt he had much to complain about. ...”

LitHub

2012 August: On Cataloguing Flaubert, 2013 March: Sentimental Education - 1(1869), 2016 December: Three Tales (1877), 2017 August: The Sentimental Education (1869), 2018 May: In Which Our Tragic Effects Remain Purely Professional, 2019 March: The Dictionary of Accepted Ideas (1911), 2021 November: Madame Bovary and the Impossibility of Re-reading - Anjali Joseph

Semi-automated offsides: FIFA’s new baby and a bold step in the development of VAR

 

"A show of hands please from those who watched Tunisia hammer Mauritania 5-1 on Tuesday. Really? The opening game of the FIFA Arab Cup passed you by? More fool you. It had plenty going for it, honestly. Some classy finishes from Tunisia, particularly the cheeky backheel from Seifeddine Jaziri to break Mauritania’s resolve for 3-0. No way back from there when you are ranked 103rd in the world, that’s for sure. Arguably the most remarkable aspect of the match, though, was the 17 (seventeen) minutes of stoppage time played at the Ahmed bin Ali Stadium in Qatar. Even more remarkable was that none of it was down to offside VAR checks. ..."

The Athletic

FIFA: Semi-automated offside technology explained ahead of FIFA Arab Cup (Video) 24:21

W - Video assistant referee

The Athletic: Thicker VAR offside lines, new referees and away fans – what’s different for the 2021-22 Premier League season

​August Wilson, The Art of Theater No. 14

 

“August Wilson has been referred to (by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) as ‘the most celebrated American playwright now writing, and . . . certainly the most accomplished black playwright in this nation’s history.’ Earlier this fall the beneficiary of Mr. Gates’s praise was in Atlanta to oversee the production of one of his plays. He took time off to meet for lunch at the Sheraton Hotel’s Fourteenth Street Bar, arriving in a black turtleneck sweater under a tweed coat. The tables in the bar are set up on a balcony overlooking the yellowgold emporium that is the hotel lobby. ...”

The Paris Review

2017 July: Fences (2016), 2017 August: The Ground on Which I Stand, a Speech on Black Theatre and Performance (1992), 2018 July: Pittsburgh Cycle, 2018 August: August Wilson in St. Paul: A MN Original Special, 2020 May: August Wilson's Blues Poetry, 2020 July: On Lessons From August Wilson’s Jitney, 2020 December: August Wilson, American Bard

Of Thread & Mist ~ Static Hymns to No One (2021)

“... Of Thread & Mist is a fitting phrase for ephemeral, loop-based work.  This is the new moniker of Richard Knox, no stranger to these pages under various guises.  Recorded during the pandemic, Static Hymns to No One is both a reflection of and music for quarantine.  The very title is at war with itself, implying that no one is upstairs and that we’re going to ask for help anyway, because we can’t be sure.  ‘Grace and Truth Perish’ is like the lamentation of Job, seeking an explanation for his suffering (spoiler alert: two entities made a bet); or Ecclesiastes, lamenting the unheard cries of the oppressed.  The choral elements, coupled with the sense of yearning, make it a hymn....”

a closer listen (Audio)

YouTube: Grace and Truth Perish, A Face Full of Drunken Ticks

​Submission – Unofficial Map: NYC Ferries by Evelyn Fischer

 

“Hello! I just thought I’d send you my attempt at making the NYC Ferry network a bit less intimidating to navigate. While many of the issues are with the network itself (the stopping patterns are absolutely bizarre), I’ve always thought the official map made the network far harder to navigate than it should be. So here’s my attempt to fix that! Like Evelyn, I’ve never really been a fan of the official NYC Ferries map: it’s sloppily drawn and can’t decide if it’s a Vignelli-style diagram or a geographic map. ...”

Transit Map

NYC Ferry

​The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire (2021), The History of Jazz (2021) – Ted Gioia

 

“A few days ago, the revised and expanded edition of my book The Jazz Standards was published by Oxford University Press. I’ve never had more fun writing a book than in creating this guide to the jazz repertoire—which covers 267 essential songs. These were songs that I first learned in my earliest days as a jazz musician, and they’ve remained familiar friends over the decades. The first edition of The Jazz Standards, published in 2011, earned praise from Sonny Rollins, Dave Brubeck, Lee Konitz, and other jazz luminaries—a tough audience to please, because they know these songs intimately. ...”

Special Bonus: A Look at the Expanded 2021 Edition of The Jazz Standards

NPR: Re-Revising ‘The History Of Jazz’

Ted Gioia

amazon: The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire, The History of Jazz

Meadows and the Band of Loyalists: How They Fought to Keep Trump in Power

 

President Donald J. Trump seemed to believe that a small group of Republican lawmakers would help him stay in office.

“Two days after Christmas last year, Richard P. Donoghue, a top Justice Department official in the waning days of the Trump administration, saw an unknown number appear on his phone. Mr. Donoghue had spent weeks fielding calls, emails and in-person requests from President Donald J. Trump and his allies, all of whom asked the Justice Department to declare, falsely, that the election was corrupt. The lame-duck president had surrounded himself with a crew of unscrupulous lawyers, conspiracy theorists, even the chief executive of MyPillow — and they were stoking his election lies. Mr. Trump had been handing out Mr. Donoghue’s cellphone number so that people could pass on rumors of election fraud. Who could be calling him now? ...”

NY Times

​A Century in Stanislaw Lem’s Cosmos

 

Polish covers for Lem’s books, from left: “Insomnia,” The Invasion from Aldebaran” and “Solaris.”

“In ‘The Eighth Voyage,’ a short story by Stanislaw Lem, aliens from across the universe convene at the General Assembly of the United Planets. Lem’s hero, the space traveler Ijon Tichy, watches as an uninformed but overconfident creature steps forward and makes the case to admit Earth to the organization’s ranks. ... His sentimental appeal is well-received, until a second extraterrestrial stands up and begins to list humanity’s wrongdoings, which include meat-eating, war and genocide. Tichy listens as the aliens belittle us and label us misguided and corrupt, our planet a blip on their intergalactic radar. ...”

NY Times

W - Ijon Tichy

amazon: Stanislaw Lem

2011 June: Stanisław Lem, 2017 March: Pilot Pirx (1979-1982), 2017 April: The Star Diaries (1971), 2018 February: His Master's Voice (1968)

The Mauritanian - Kevin Macdonald (2021)

 “The Mauritanian is a 2021 legal drama film based on the true story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian man who was held for fourteen years (from 2002 to 2016) without charge in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, a United States military prison. The film was directed by Kevin Macdonald based on a screenplay written by M.B. Traven, Rory Haines, and Sohrab Noshirvani, adapted from Slahi's 2015 memoir Guantánamo Diary. It stars Tahar Rahim as Slahi, and also features Jodie Foster, Shailene Woodley, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Zachary Levi in supporting roles. ...”

Wikipedia

Guardian: ‘We don’t live in a world of goodies and baddies, do we?’ The true story behind The Mauritanian

YouTube: The Mauritanian | Official Trailer

Magnus Carlsen Pounces on Rival’s Mistake to Retain Chess Title

 

“Magnus Carlsen of Norway retained his world championship on Friday in Dubai after his challenger, the Russian grandmaster Ian Nepomniachtchi, committed the last of a series of blunders that turned their once-taut match into a relatively easy victory. Carlsen’s victory came in the 11th game of an event that had been scheduled to last 14 games. The final score was 7.5 to 3.5 points, with each victory worth one point and draws worth half a point. The loss in the final game by Nepomniachtchi completed one of the worst collapses in a title match in chess history. After the first five games ended in draws, Nepomniachtchi lost four of the last six games. His last three defeats were mostly the result of self-inflicted wounds, as Nepomniachtchi made critical and relatively simple errors in each of them. ...”

NY Times

W - Magnus Carlsen

Brilliance And Blunders Have Defined The World Chess Championship

YouTube: Magnus Carlsen Wins His 5th World Chess Championship Match

New York Rocker

 “New York Rocker published 54 issues between 1976 and 1982. They had a small staff, no more than a half-dozen full-time at most. The peak of its circulation was around 35,000 copies a month. But as they say, it was incredibly influential. And more than being influential, it was just a great paper. And it still is, if you can find the back issues. The writing is excellent, the tone is smart and punchy, and it's also deadly serious. They covered national stuff really well but also managed to stay really hyper-local. Especially as the paper went on, its correspondents weren't just fans active in their own cities and scenes, but also fans of a truly remarkable breed. ... Time and time again, they were on top of things, in a totally sincere, uncynical, and self-aware way. They charted what's now blurrily called American indie rock, but they also had a pretty major hand in inventing it. ...”

New York Rocker and the Invention of Indie Rock

W - New York Rocker

rock’sbackpages: New York Rocker

New York Rocker: The Covers (1976 – 1982)

​Robert Farris Thompson, ‘Guerrilla Scholar’ of African Art, Dies at 88

 

Professor Thompson at his home in New Haven, Conn., in 2019. He continued teaching into his 80s.

“Robert Farris Thompson, a self-described ‘guerrilla scholar’ who revolutionized the study of the cultures of Africa and the Americas by tracing through art, music and dance myriad continuities between the two, died on Nov. 29 at a nursing home in New Haven, Conn. ... Born into an upper-middle-class white family in Texas and educated at Yale, Professor Thompson is remembered by colleagues and students for his energizing thinking and his extravagantly performative presence. In the Yale classroom, where he taught African American studies for more than half a century, he turned lecterns into percussive instruments. On research trips in Brazil, Cuba and Nigeria, he was known to exchange his J. Press madras shorts for the robes of an initiate into tribal religious societies. ...”

NY Times

W - Robert Farris Thompson

Sothebys: Dr. Robert Farris Thompson Remembers the Spirit of Basquiat

Cutting the Transcultural Rug: An Evening with Robert Farris Thompson, by Alan Lockwood

2014 April: Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy, 2017 February: Canons of the Cool

Music makes the past alive

 

“Moving on from ‘clubbing across the continent,’ Africa Is a Country Radio is back on Worldwide FM with a new season. This time, each show will be inspired by a different work of African literature. In the first episode, we visit Ethiopia with Kenyan-American author Mukoma Wa Ngugi, who has just released a new novel called Unbury Our Dead with Song on Cassava Republic Press. In his latest work, Mukoma uses the Tizita, and its birthplace of Ethiopia, as an entry way to ruminate on the intricacies of love, war, life and death, the past, the future, faith and human expression. ...”

Africa Is a Country (Audio)

Greg Tate

 

“Greg Tate, a journalist and critic whose articles for The Village Voice, Rolling Stone and other publications starting in the 1980s helped elevate hip-hop and street art to the same plane as jazz and Abstract Expressionism, died on Tuesday in New York City. He was 64. ... Mr. Tate exploded onto the New York cultural scene in the early 1980s, soon after graduating from Howard University, when he began contributing freelance music reviews to The Voice. Although he didn’t join the weekly newspaper’s staff until 1987, he almost immediately became its pre-eminent writer on Black music and art, and by extension one of the city’s leading cultural critics. New York at the time was an ebullient chaos of cultures, its downtown scene populated by street artists, struggling writers, disco D.J.s and punk rockers living in cheap apartments and crowding into clubs like Paradise Garage and CBGB. ...”

NY Times, NY Times: The Peerless Imagination of Greg Tate

***Village Voice - Flying High: Remembering Greg Tate

Criterion: Greg Tate on Cinema (Dec. 2021)

Village Voice: Harlem When It Sizzled (1982), Langston Hughes: A Genius Child Comes of Age (1988), Chuck D: All Over the Map (1991), Black Metropolis: Upholding Sugar Hill’s Radical Tradition (1987), Gil Scott-Heron, R.I.P. (2011), Voice: Greg Tate

ARTnews: Display Cases: Greg Tate on a Whitney Biennial Haunted by Warren Kanders and Mamie Till

W - Greg Tate

amazon: Flyboy in the Buttermilk, Flyboy 2: The Greg Tate Reader

Inside the Fall of Kabul

 

Instead, to the shock of the world, the Afghan capital fell in a matter of hours.

“Part 1: The Withdrawal. After dark on a mild July evening, I made my way through a heavily fortified neighborhood in downtown Kabul. Over the years, the capital’s elite had retreated deeper behind concrete walls topped with concertina wire; sometimes they even added a layer of Hesco barriers on the sidewalk, forcing me into the street as I passed. I buzzed at the home of a former government official, went inside and climbed the marble stairs to a rooftop party. I’d been to a few of his gatherings over the years, some of them raucous with laughter and dancing, but this was a quiet affair, with a small group of Afghan men and women, mostly young and stylishly dressed, sitting in a circle under the lamplight. The mood was grim. In recent weeks, large areas of the north, places that had not historically supported the Taliban, had suddenly fallen. ...”

NY Times

2021 August: Afghanistan Live Updates: Afghan President Said to Have Fled as Taliban Enter Kabul, 2021 August: How Will the Taliban Rule? Here’s the Early Evidence

 

Families, most likely relatives of Zero Unit fighters, making their way into the airport to be evacuated on Aug. 24.

Tangerine Dream - Poland (The Warsaw Concert 1984)

 

“... This latter attribute clearly struck a chord with the band’s new sponsors, Clive Calder’s UK-based Jive imprint, whose first Tangerine Dream release was November 1984’s Poland. A lavish two-disc live LP, the record was compiled from highlights of the two triumphant shows the Berlin-based trio performed at Warsaw’s cavernous Ice Stadium on December 10, 1983. Tangerine Dream had long since built up a sizable following in Communist-controlled Eastern Europe, and they were one of the first major Western outfits to make significant inroads behind the Iron Curtain. ...”

udiscover

W - Poland (album)

Discogs (Video)

amazon

YouTube: Poland 1:21:45

​Appeals Court Rejects Trump’s Bid to Shield Material From Jan. 6 Inquiry

 

”A federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that Congress is entitled to see White House records related to the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, rejecting former President Donald J. Trump’s claim that he still has the power to keep the material secret. In a 68-page ruling, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that Congress’s oversight powers, backed by President Biden’s decision not to invoke executive privilege over the material, outweighed Mr. Trump’s residual secrecy powers. ...”

NY Times

NBC News: Appeals court rules against Trump in fight over Jan. 6 committee documents request (Video)

​George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four Will Be Retold from a Woman’s Point of View

 

“Nineteen Eighty-Four has been a byword for totalitarian dystopia longer than most of us have been reading books. But apart from its the title and certain words from its invented ‘newspeak‘ — doubleplusgood, unperson, thoughtcrime — how deeply is George Orwell’s best-known novel embedded into the culture? Most of us recognize the name Winston Smith, and many of us may even remember details of his job at the Ministry of Truth, where the facts of history are continually rewritten to suit ever-shifting political exigencies. But how much do we know about the other major character: Julia, Winston’s fellow ministry employee who becomes his clandestine co-dissident and forbidden lover? ...”

Open Culture

Guardian: Feminist retelling of Nineteen Eighty-Four approved by Orwell’s estate

2011 July: Spanish Civil War - 75 Year, 18 July, 2012 March: 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother), 2012 June: "The Spanish Earth", Written and Narrated by Ernest Hemingway, 2013 January: The Real George Orwell, 2015 August: Songs of the Spanish Civil War, 2016 September: George Orwell - Homage to Catalonia (1938), 2017 January: Guernica (2016), 2019 September: What Makes Guernica So Shocking? An Animated Video Explores the Impact of Picasso’s Monumental Anti-War Mural, 2021 November: Down and out in George Orwell’s Paris: A guide to the secret Paname

Robbie Shakespeare

 

“Robert Warren Dale Shakespeare (27 September 1953 – 8 December 2021) was a Jamaican bass guitarist and record producer, best known as one half of the reggae rhythm section and production duo Sly and Robbie, with drummer Sly Dunbar. Regarded as one of the most influential reggae bassists,Shakespeare was also known for his creative use of electronics and production effects units. He was sometimes nicknamed ‘Basspeare’. As a part of Sly and Robbie, Shakespeare worked with various reggae artists such as U-Roy, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, Dennis Brown, Gregory Isaacs, Sugar Minott, Augustus Pablo, Yellowman, and Black Uhuru. His production work also extended beyond the reggae genre, covering various pop and rock artists such as Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Cyndi Lauper, Joe Cocker, Yoko Ono, Serge Gainsbourg, and Grace Jones. Prior to his involvement in Sly and Robbie, he was a member of the session groups The Revolutionaries and The Aggrovators. ...”

Wikipedia

YouTube: Grace Jones - Pull Up To The Bumper, Walk & Don t Look Back - Peter Tosh & Mick Jagger, Sly and Robbie - David  Letterman Show 1985, Sly and Robbie Famous Hits, Productions & Collaborations / RIP Robbie Shakespeare 1953 - 2021