​When Martin Luther King Came to Harlem

“Less than a year before his assassination, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. came to Harlem. In the June 22, 1967, Village Voice, contributor Marlene Nadle observed the crowd anxiously awaiting the Baptist minister’s arrival: ‘Using programs folded accordion style instead of pastel fans with pictures of Christ, they managed to turn the chandeliered ballroom of the Hotel Roosevelt into a Baptist Church.’ At times during her reporting on the event, Nadle comes across as jaded, as in her description of when the audience initially glimpses King in a movie being shown by the hospital workers’ union, which had arranged the event: ‘The Lord appeared for the first time — on film. There was a great burst of applause.’ ...”

The Diaspora Suite: Ephraim Asili

 
Ephraim Asili’s five-part series The Diaspora Suite is both a personal and global study of the African diaspora. Created over the course of seven years, every film in the series has a unique rhythm built around a specific amalgam of footage shot in American and international locations — each an important site within the African diaspora. Forged Ways (2011) travels between Harlem and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; American Hunger (2013) features Philadelphia, Ocean City, and Cape Coast, Ghana; in Many Thousands Gone (2014), Harlem and Salvador, Brazil; in Kindah (2016), Hudson, New York, and Jamaica; and in Fluid Frontiers (2017), Detroit and Windsor, Canada. ...”

Is Civil War Looming, or Should We Calm Down?

 
“In January of last year, shortly after the storming of the Capitol, the pollster John Zogby conducted a national survey that yielded a troubling finding: A plurality of respondents — 46 percent — believed that the United States is headed for another civil war.According to Barbara Walter, a political science professor at the University of California, San Diego, who studies civil wars, that belief is perfectly within the realm of reason. ... Should Americans take the prospect of another civil war seriously, or do such warnings constitute a misguided, perhaps even dangerous form of alarmism? Here’s what people are saying. ...”

Fragmented Illuminations: Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Cuttings at the V&A

 
“Featuring highlights from the museum's collection of over 2,000 cuttings from medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, this display explores the types of books these pieces came from and the 19th-century context in which they were cut up and collected. ...”

Trail of Tears

 
A map of the process of Indian Removal, 1830–1838. Oklahoma is depicted in light yellow-green.

“The Trail of Tears was part of the Indian removal, a series of forced displacements and ethnic cleansing of approximately 60,000 Native Americans of the Five Civilized Tribes between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government. Tribal members ‘moved gradually, with complete migration occurring over a period of nearly a decade.’ Members of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes—the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations (including thousands of their black slaves) were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to areas to the west of the Mississippi River that had been designated Indian Territory.  The forced relocations were carried out by government authorities after the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. ... The relocated peoples suffered from exposure, disease, and starvation while en route to their newly designated Indian reserve. Thousands died from disease before reaching their destinations or shortly after. Suzan Shown Harjo of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian describes it as a genocide. ...”

 

How to Photograph the Northern Lights

 
A spectacular Aurora display in early 2015 captured from just north of Fairbanks Alaska

“As the Sun heads south for winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the nights grow longer and the opportunities to catch the northern lights, or aurora borealis, increase the further north you live or travel. Aurorae occur when charged particles (mostly electrons and protons) in the solar wind sneak past Earth's magnetic shield and collide with atoms in the upper atmosphere. As the ionized oxygen and nitrogen molecules return to their ‘ground’ state, they glow, much like a neon light does when electrical current runs through it. The results are awe-inspiring, and if you’ll forgive the metaphor, magical. ...”

 
Especially active aurora will also include Nitrogen atoms which will glow a pink or magenta color.

​Oath Keepers Leader Charged With Seditious Conspiracy in Jan. 6 Investigation

 
“Stewart Rhodes, the leader and founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, was arrested on Thursday and charged along with 10 others with seditious conspiracy over what prosecutors said was their wide-ranging plot to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6 last year and disrupt the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s electoral victory. The arrest of Mr. Rhodes, 56, was a major development in the sprawling investigation of the Capitol attack. He and the other Oath Keepers are the first to be charged with sedition among the more than 700 people accused so far of taking part in the assault. ... The Justice Department has brought a variety of charges in connection with the Capitol attack; it has prosecuted about 275 people for obstructing Congress’s duty to certify the 2020 presidential vote count, for example. ...”
 

​Travelling in the giant footsteps of Tony Soprano’s New Jersey

 
“After the fuzz of the classic HBO intro screen departed, a fractured view of the New Jersey turnpike rolled into the lounge and television would never be the same again. Even the mere opening credits sequence hinted at the cinematic twist The Sopranos was about to give TV that has proved wildly seminal ever since. Iconic skyline sights melded with the gritty inner workings of the locale, all through the occasional plume of puffed cigar smoke, giving the show a deep sense of contextualisation from the off. Sadly, a lot of modern shows have mimicked this cinematic sense without ever delivering the same substance. ...”

​The Encyclopedia of Reggae: The Golden Age of Roots Reggae

“This heavily illustrated guide to reggae is a colourful, herbally endowed and sunsplashed history of one of the world’s most popular musical styles. Reggae was born in 1960s Jamaica, a potent mix of such indigenous genres as ska and rocksteady plus R&B, jazz and traditional African rhythms. Before long, it had conquered the globe, influencing musicians from Britain to Brazil. The Encyclopedia of Reggae focuses on the music’s golden age, from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s heyday of dancehall and features more than 500 images, including rare album art and ephemera. Written by one of the foremost experts on the subject, this amazing resource profiles more than 200 key performers, impresarios and producers from reggae’s history. ...”

A French Village: The Complete Series

A French Village starts off on June 12, 1940, with a premiere that includes a German fighter plane shooting at children on a school trip. The scene is suspenseful but also staged with deliberate restraint, like a dream slowly turning into a nightmare before anybody quite realizes it. The series that follows sticks to that matter-of-fact, almost detached tone. Life in the fictional Villeneuve, a village in occupied France about sixty miles from Switzerland, is irreversibly upended by German rule but still retains a routine element.The pitch for A French Village could fit on half a napkin: Each season covers roughly one year of the occupation of Villeneuve in World War II. ...”

Conceptual Personae: The many imagined lives of Fernando Pessoa

 
“‘Sockpuppeting’ is internet slang for the contemporary variety of an age-old hoax: with a fake account registered under a pseudonym, a social media user becomes free to post whatever they like, unfettered by the wearisome burdens of attribution. Perhaps a pundit wishes to promote his own book without appearing to do so himself. ... The poet who produced that work was named Fernando Pessoa, but the majority of his finest poems were signed with three different names. Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos, and Ricardo Reis were not, however, mere pseudonyms; they were separate identities—what Pessoa called ‘heteronyms’—crafted to undertake distinct and diverging poetic projects. ...”

Hasaan Ibn Ali ‎– Metaphysics: The Lost Atlantic Album (2021)

 
“During his lifetime, pianist and composer Hasaan Ibn Ali (1931-1980) was a jazz enigma. The Philly musician practiced with John Coltrane during the early '50s and is credited as the primary influence on the saxophonist's ‘sheets of sound’ harmonic approach first articulated on Giant Steps -- a sound that exploded across his Impulse! work. Metaphysics: The Lost Atlantic Album is a genuine jazz holy grail, one of only two albums to feature the pianist's compositions and unique playing style. ... The music, though easier to approach in the 21st century, is quite radical in harmonic density and rhythmic invention. Opener ‘Atlantic Ones’ offers a Monk-esque lyric intro before the band careens across a knotty bop head. ...”

Weekly Beats 2022: "Three Clock Problem"

 
“I’m gonna give the Weekly Beats series (weeklybeats.com) another go this year. It’s a great online community, one where people post their tracks and comment on each other’s. Unlike with the Disquiet Junto and other communities, there is no required compositional prompt, though folks do propose such things in the WB forums. My first Weekly Beats recording of the year, ‘Three Clock Problem,’ is a simple drone (yeah, yeah, arguably beat-less) I put together in VCV Rack 2. A series of quantized pitches are sent through a reverb that has a wide array of controls. ...”

Checking Privilege in the Animal Kingdom

 
Check your privilege, squirrel.

“Some North American red squirrels are born with a silver spoon in their mouths. They live in pine forests where the adults defend caches of food. Without a cache of their own, many baby squirrels won’t survive the winter. But each year, some squirrel mothers abandon their territory, bequeathing all their food to one or more babies who stay behind. These young squirrels are much more likely to survive until the spring. Across the animal kingdom, there are other examples of species that share resources such as territory, tools and shelter between generations. ...”

​AFCON 2021 guide: The storylines, the underdogs and the games you won’t want to miss

 
“The latest Africa Cup of Nations is just around the corner. It’s been a long road to get here for a competition that has been moved around the calendar multiple times and, in the style of Euro 2020 last summer has the ‘wrong’ year in its official title, but 24 teams are now finally set to duke it out in Cameroon to become the next champions of Africa, with the tournament getting underway on Sunday, and finishing on Sunday, February 6. Here’s everything you need to know. ..."

​In ‘African Origin’ Show at Met, New Points of Light Across Cultures

 
Partnerships: Spanning eras and cultures, a pairing of artworks from “The African Origin of Civilization” includes “The King’s Acquaintances Memi and Sabu” from Egypt, ca. 2575–2465 B.C. and “Seated Couple”  from Mali, 18th or early 19th century.

“Object for object, there isn’t an exhibition in town more beautiful than ‘The African Origin of Civilization’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Nor is there one more shot through with ethical and political tensions.The gathering of 42 sculptures in one of the Met’s Egyptian galleries unites, for the first time here, pieces from its Ancient Egyptian and sub-Saharan African holdings, centuries apart (the earliest sub-Saharan work on view is from the 13th century). The pretext for the display is a practical one. ...”

​A photographer captures a New York City of abstraction in the 1940s

 
“The street photographers who point their cameras all over the city tend to focus on people in motion in recognizable places—the rush of crowds on a subway platform, barflies at a corner tavern, or the random strollers, workers, loafers, and others found at any moment in time on specific streets and sidewalks. ...”

​The Legacy of Atlanta Hip Hop, Mapped

 
“A new map tells the story of Atlanta’s expansive hip hop legacy. For this week’s MapLab, CityLab’s Brentin Mock has the details: Some of the places and buildings on the ATL Rap Map are no longer actually still standing. They live in memory, and in the lyrics recited by the Atlanta rappers the map honors. The kings and queens of Atlanta’s hip hop culture — Outkast, Jermaine Dupri, Crime Mob and one of its newest stars, Latto, to name a few — frame a portrait of the city, which from a distance looks like a cluster of buildings and street signs surrounded by forests. ...”

​The Bialetti Moka Express: The History of Italy’s Iconic Coffee Maker, and How to Use It the Right Way

 
“I am sure that many an Open Culture reader has a Bialetti Moka Express in their kitchen. I know I do, but I must add that I knew little about its history and apparently even less about how to properly use one. Coffee expert and author of The World Atlas of Coffee James Hoffmann introduces us to the appliance we think we know in the above video.Alfonso Bialetti didn’t originally get into the coffee business. In 1919, the Bialetti company was an aluminum manufacturer, with the Moka Express invented somewhere around 1933 by Luigi de Ponti, who worked for the company. ...”

Mario Batkovic - Introspectio (2021)

 
“Mario Batkovic plays the accordion. Sounds straightforward enough. Except he plays the accordion in the manner of Steve Reich or Terry Riley if they were entranced by the carnivalesque dancing of a youthful Alejandro Jodorowsky, their nimble fingers reenacting the exuberant choreography upon compressed keys. And Batkovic’s fingers work overtime, like Lubomyr Melnyk transported to a squeezebox. He approaches his instrument in the same way that Richard Dawson plays the guitar: it’s recognisable but the musician doesn’t appear to be following any of the rules or tropes that you would normally associate with that instrument. Instead, we’re treated to mantle-deep bellows, glistening twinkles, and squelchy, fuzz-caked riffage akin to the guitar work of Muse but with ideas beyond basic pageantry. This is music for classicists. ...”

Emerson and Thoreau’s Fanatical Freedom

 
“On the title page of my paperback copy of Walden, an echo of a former self greets me. My name, written in loopy adolescent script, and the date: August 12, 1993. I was 17 when I bought the Vintage Books/Library of America edition at Waldenbooks in the Bridgewater Commons Mall, using proceeds from a summer job. I dutifully read it in those final weeks of summer, with pen in hand, underlining here, making embarrassing marginal comments there. One late afternoon, I was sitting alone at home, working my way through the book, when my boyfriend stopped by unexpectedly. I couldn’t have planned it better. I had wanted to be seen just so: dim room, puddle of light from a lamp, reading Thoreau. So goes a story about the Transcendentalists and my world. ...”
 

Stargazing with Ice Cold Enthusiasm

“It was New Year’s Eve Eve — New Year’s Eve Squared? — and a friend sent an email to our writers’ group about greeting the coming year with deliberate passion and cheer. There was a reply chain about setting aside difficulties in order to appreciate the bigger picture, like celebrating that you’re on a hike in an old-growth forest instead of lamenting the cold rain. In short, we wanted to prioritize enthusiasm, re-centering our experiences to focus on the positive despite the humdrum, and to appreciate the awesomeness of each moment so that nothing becomes ‘old hat.’ It’s a worthy theme for a new year. ...”

Elvin! - Elvin Jones (1962)

 
“No one can prove that Elvin Jones — or Buddy or Max or anyone else — was the greatest jazz drummer. But making the case for Elvin wielding a more profound influence than any rhythm master is a snap. Take him out of the history of this music and suddenly you have nobody there to prove that drummers could play in rhythm and out of meter at the same time. You have nobody making the case that the drums could play with rather than behind a soloist. You have nobody pushing way beyond the beat, into texture and dynamic interaction, where drummers once scarcely roamed. ...”

​Lawmakers Speak After Biden Warns of ‘a Dagger at the Throat of America’

 
“President Biden forcefully denounced former President Donald J. Trump for promoting lies and tearing down democracy because he could not stand the fact that he lost a free and fair election, accusing his predecessor and his allies of holding ‘a dagger at the throat of America.’ In his most sustained and scathing attack on the former president since taking office, Mr. Biden used the anniversary of the Jan. 6 mob assault on the Capitol to condemn Mr. Trump for waging an ‘undemocratic’ and ‘un-American’ campaign against the legitimacy of the election system that he likened to the actions of autocrats and dictators in faraway countries. ...”
 

Agnès Varda: From Here to There (2011)

 
“A freewheeling travelogue, a kaleidoscopic survey of the contemporary art scene, and a loving ode to creativity in all its forms, this five-part miniseries by the inimitable Agnès Varda takes us on a journey of discovery as she travels the globe—from Stockholm to St. Petersburg, Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City to Los Angeles—meeting with friends, artists, and fellow filmmakers. Along the way there are chats with titan auteurs Chris Marker (offering a window into his virtual reality world) and a 102-year-old Manoel de Oliveira (doing his best Chaplin impersonation); visits to the Hermitage Museum, the Venice Biennale, and the home of Frida Kahlo; glimpses into the studios of acclaimed visual artists like Christian Boltanski, Annette Messager, and Pierre Soulages; and Varda’s casually profound musings on everything from rivers to the Dutch masters to her own photography and installation works. ...”

​Fifty Disguises: Selections from The Book Against Death

 
1942 There is no longer any measure by which to gauge anything once the measure of human life no longer is the measure. Today I decided that I will record thoughts against death as they happen to occur to me, without any kind of structure and without submitting them to any tyrannical plan. I cannot let this war pass without hammering out a weapon within my heart that will conquer death. It will be tortuous and insidious, perfectly suited to the task. In better times I would wield it as a joke or a brazen threat. I think of the act of slaying death as a masquerade. Employing fifty disguises and numerous plots is how I’d do it. 1943  Freedom hates death most of all, but love is a close second. ...”

​A Long, Hard Year for Republicans Who Voted to Impeach After Jan. 6

 
Before the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, members of Congress gathered at a joint session to confirm the Electoral College votes cast in the 2020 election.

“The 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald J. Trump did so with the same conviction — that a president of their party deserved to be charged with inciting insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021 — and the same hope — that his role in doing so would finally persuade the G.O.P. to repudiate him. But in the year since the deadliest attack on the Capitol in centuries, none of the 10 lawmakers have been able to avoid the consequences of a fundamental miscalculation about the direction of their party. The former president is very much the leader of the Republicans, and it is those who stood against him whom the party has thrust into the role of pariah. ...”

Best Chet Baker Pieces: 20 Jazz Essentials

 
“It can be difficult to untangle the romantic myth surrounding Chet Baker from the merits of his music. His stratospheric rise in the early 1950s owed much to the elegant style and rhythmic grace of his trumpet playing, but his good looks didn’t hurt, and by the time he started to sing in a fragile and androgynous tone that sounded unlike any other singer, he became a teenage pin-up and a celebrity, a rarity in the jazz world. Baker spent his early years in Oklahoma and moved to Southern California with his family as an adolescent. By 1952, he became a regular at jam sessions at the Hermosa Beach club The Lighthouse and played with Charlie Parker on a string of dates on the West Coast. ...”