Putin’s Ukraine Gamble Pivots to a Very Different Battlefield

 
A Ukrainian soldier in February in Trokhizbenka, in the Luhansk region.

“KYIV, Ukraine — There are fields instead of city streets, farmsteads instead of apartment buildings. Open highways stretch to the horizon. The battles in the north that Ukraine won over the past seven weeks raged in towns and densely populated suburbs around the capital, Kyiv, but the war is about to take a hard turn to the southeast and into a vast expanse of wide-open flatland, fundamentally changing the nature of the combat, the weapons at play and the strategies that might bring victory. Military analysts, Ukrainian commanders, soldiers and even Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin acknowledge that a wider war that began with a failed attempt to capture the capital will now be waged in the eastern Donbas region. ...”

 
Aerial shots of a map of Kyiv and view of debris of buildings after shelling in Borodianka of Kyiv province

​Lightning Struck Itself: Television’s ‘Marquee Moon’ in Eight Phases

 
“So you say you want a revolution? Two rearguard beatniks banded together on the anything-goes streets of Manhattan in the early ’70s, at the height of its postapocalyptic glamour, when taxi cabs hated to venture below 14th Street but the see-and-be-seen crowd couldn’t resist it. Those who came from elsewhere came to define the scene. Richard Meyers and Tom Miller were two gifted reprobates who fled to New York from a well-to-do Delaware boarding school. They knocked around the stylish wilderness of the Lower East Side and the more civilized clubs and coffee houses of Greenwich Village. ...”

2013 October: See No Evil, 2014 October: Dreamtime (1981), 2014 November: Marquee Moon (1977), January: Adventure (1978), 2015 October: Tom Verlaine (1979)

Announcing New Brooklyn Underground Subway Tour!

 “We’re excited to announce our newest tour, the Brooklyn Underground Subway Tour, the BK version of our popular NYC Underground Subway tour! This new Untapped New York tour is led by Rayn Riel, a bona-fide subway expert and licensed tour guide. We have met a lot of subway experts here at Untapped New York, and there is no one more knowledgable about the Brooklyn subway system than Rayn. Now, after two sold-out tours with our Untapped New York Insiders, we’re bringing the Brooklyn Underground Subway Tour to the public. ...”

​War Brings New Iron Curtain Down on Russia’s Storied Ballet Stages

 The star ballerina Olga Smirnova with Semyon Chudin at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow in 2014.

“AMSTERDAM — Just days after the invasion of Ukraine, Olga Smirnova, one of Russia’s most important ballerinas, posted an emotional statement on Telegram, the messaging app. ‘I am against war with all the fibers of my soul,’ she wrote. “I never thought I would be ashamed of Russia, but now I feel that a line has been drawn that separates the before and the after.’ That’s certainly been true for Ms. Smirnova, 30. As the war got worse, and dissent in Russia was ruthlessly quashed, Ms. Smirnova, who had gone to Dubai to recover from a knee injury, realized that she could no longer return home. ‘If I were to go back to Russia, I would have to completely change my opinion, the way I felt about the war,’ Ms. Smirnova said in a recent interview in Amsterdam, adding that returning would be, ‘quite frankly, dangerous.’ ...”

New Journalism

 
Tom Wolfe

New Journalism is a style of news writing and journalism, developed in the 1960s and 1970s, that uses literary techniques unconventional at the time. It is characterized by a subjective perspective, a literary style reminiscent of long-form non-fiction. Using extensive imagery, reporters interpolate subjective language within facts whilst immersing themselves in the stories as they reported and wrote them. In traditional journalism, however, the journalist is ‘invisible’; facts are reported objectively. The term was codified with its current meaning by Tom Wolfe in a 1973 collection of journalism articles he published as The New Journalism, which included works by himself, Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, Terry Southern, Robert Christgau, Gay Talese and others. ...”

Kassidat: Raw 45s from Morocco (1956)

 
“... Kassidat: Raw 45s from Morocco is a full-length album that features six extended tracks from the golden age of the Moroccan record industry. After Morocco gained its independence in 1956, Moroccan-owned record labels sprouted and flourished in Casablanca. The inexpensive 45 rpm format allowed the record companies to release thousands of songs during the 1960s, creating a snapshot of the raw and hypnotic Berber music that thrived throughout Morocco. Powerful traditional styles were still alive and well at this time and untouched by international pop influences. Kassidat looks back at this era and presents it anew for audiences hungry for intense and authentic folk music. ...”

​Hiding in Plain Sight, a Soviet-Era Air Defense System Arrives in Ukraine

 
The village of Dobra, Slovakia, where the S-300 antiaircraft system recently provided by the country to Ukraine was loaded on a train to be transferred over the border.

“DOBRA, Slovakia — Driving back to his village near the Ukrainian border last Thursday, the mayor had to stop to let a train pass, and assumed he wouldn’t have to wait long. But the flatbed wagons, stacked high with military equipment, just kept coming. He waited for nearly half an hour. ‘It was a very long train, much longer than usual,’ recalled Mikolas Csoma, the mayor of Dobra, a previously sleepy village in eastern Slovakia that, over the past month, has become a key artery funneling weapons and ammunition into Ukraine by rail from the West. The train that delayed Mr. Csoma’s drive home was not only unusually long but also signaled a singular escalation in Western efforts to help Ukraine defend itself. ...”

​Jacques Louis David: Radical Draftsman

Jacques Louis David: Radical Draftsman will be the first exhibition devoted to works on paper by the celebrated French artist who navigated vast artistic and political divides throughout his life—from his birth in Paris in 1748 to his death in exile in Brussels in 1825. His iconic works captured the aspirations and suffering of a nation, while addressing timeless themes that continue to resonate today. Through the lens of his preparatory studies, the exhibition looks beyond his public successes to chart the moments of inspiration and the progress of ideas. Visitors will follow the artist’s process as he gave form to the neoclassical style and created major canvases that shaped the public’s perceptions of historical events in the years before, during, and after the French Revolution. ...”

The Passages of Walter Benjamin - Judith Weschler (2014)

 
“In 1933, Walter Benjamin, one of the most brilliant literary and cultural critics of his time, fled Berlin when the Nazis took over and headed for Paris. There he sat, at the Bibliothèque nationale, working in poverty and relative obscurity on his most important project, ‘The Arcades Project.’ With the backdrop of totalitarianism spreading across the European continent, Benjamin explored the origins of modernity. Praising the poet Charles Baudelaire and employing his emblematic characters especially the flâneur and the rag picker, Benjamin wanted to counter the ‘false semblance of totality.’ This enormous incomplete study is both a collection of sources for a radical history of 19th century Paris and the basis for an allegorical critique of European fascism in the 1930s. ...”

​Russian Tech Industry Faces ‘Brain Drain’ as Workers Flee

 
Zvartnots International Airport in Yerevan, Armenia. The country has become a landing spot for tech workers leaving Russia.

“In early March, days after Russia invaded Ukraine and began cracking down on dissent at home, Konstantin Siniushin, a venture capitalist in Riga, Latvia, helped charter two planes out of Russia to help people flee. Both planes departed from Moscow, carrying tech workers from the Russian capital as well as St. Petersburg, Perm, Ekaterinburg and other cities. Together, the planes moved about 300 software developers, entrepreneurs and other technology specialists out of the country, including 30 Russian workers from start-ups backed by Mr. Siniushin. The planes flew south past the Black Sea to Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, where thousands of other Russian tech workers fled in the weeks after the invasion. ...”

 
Protesters in Krakow, Poland, staged a silent demonstration against the mass killing of Ukrainian civilians by the Russian army on April 9.

Key to a Kingdom: Ronda’s Secret Water Mine

 
From the southwest, Ronda's limestone ramparts are split by the Tajo, or gorge, spanned since 1793 by the picturesque "New Bridge." ...

“Approaching the region of the Serranía de Ronda, just inland from the Mediterranean’s Costa del Sol, one passes through mountains and rugged surroundings that have challenged settlers, merchants, travelers and invaders for thousands of years. Over the last ridges, a broad valley opens, circled around by hills and hazy massifs. Near its center, set like a jewel in this natural crown, a small tableland rises some 200 sheer meters above the fields: Ronda, spectacularly cleft by its famous Tajo, a narrow, nearly vertical gorge cut over five million years ago by the river Guadalevín, a name that comes from the Arabic wadi al-laban (valley of milk), after the prosperity its waters brought to the grazing lands below. ...”

How Lucinda Williams Wore Her Pain On Her Sleeve With ‘World Without Tears’

 
“They say time heals all wounds, but that maxim has never applied to Lucinda Williams. On her seventh studio album, 2003’s World Without Tears, Williams brings her unique mix of heartache, carnal desire, and strong-willed resolve, and lays it out for all to witness. ... Not that she’s ever shied away from dark subjects. Williams is a blues singer, after all – that’s reflected in the structure and impassioned delivery of her songs. But one thing is clear: she was mad as hell when she recorded World Without Tears, and she was not going to take it anymore. Nobody’s martyr Williams has made a career wearing her pain on her sleeve, but she’s nobody’s martyr. ...”

​No More ‘Have a Nice Day’: Lviv Learns to Live With War

 
Central Lviv on Saturday.

“LVIV, Ukraine — When war came to Ukraine in February, Helen Polishchuk made some adjustments in the six-story bar she manages in central Lviv.The Mad Bars House in Lviv’s historic central square stayed open, but served coffee and hot food instead of alcoholic drinks. They turned off the rock music. And as displaced Ukrainians began pouring into the city from places devastated by Russian attacks hundreds of miles away, she had instructions for the wait staff. ... Now, instead of tourists, there are displaced Ukrainians fleeing the war-torn east of the country. ...”

 
A zoomed-in view of Edgar Degas' Ukrainian Dancers, previously known as Russian Dancers.

Are These the Most Distant Galaxies Yet Seen?

HD1, the candidate for the most distant galaxy discovered to date, appears as the red object in the center of the zoom-in image.

“Astronomers may have found the most distant galaxies ever seen. In two papers posted to the arXiv preprint server, Yuichi Harikane (University of Tokyo) and an international team report the detection of two sources that appear to blaze at us from a mere 330 million years after the Big Bang. In astronomers’ lingo, that corresponds to a redshift of 13. The studies have been submitted for publication but are not yet peer-reviewed. Observers have previously found a handful of galaxies in the universe’s first few hundred million years. ...”

 
This timeline shows how the discoveries of these two candidate early galaxies fit in with the history of the universe.

Made To Measure

 
“Crammed’s legendary Composers’ Series is reactivated in 2021, with the release of new albums, and remastered vinyl reissues of several classics. Inaugurated in 1984, Crammed's MADE TO MEASURE composers’ series set out to chart a map of some of the most interesting instrumental music of the era. Thirty-five albums came out during the series’ first decade, harbouring a great variety of inventive musical adventures which often weaved aspects of neoclassical/chamber music, ambient, electronica, minimalism, experimental avant-rock, soundscape creation & more. ...”

Bucha’s Month of Terror

 
We visited Bucha, documented dozens of killings of civilians, interviewed scores of witnesses and followed local investigators to uncover the scale of Russian atrocities.

“BUCHA, Ukraine — A mother killed by a sniper while walking with her family to fetch a thermos of tea. A woman held as a sex slave, naked except for a fur coat and locked in a potato cellar before being executed. Two sisters dead in their home, their bodies left slumped on the floor for weeks. Bucha is a landscape of horrors. From the first day of the war, Feb. 24, civilians bore the brunt of the Russian assault on Bucha, a few miles west of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. Russian special forces approaching on foot through the woods shot at cars on the road, and a column of armored vehicles fired on and killed a woman in her garden as they drove into the suburb. But those early cruelties paled in comparison to what came after. ...”

 
Local residents pass by a destroyed church, which served as a military base for Russian soldiers, on Sunday in Lukashivka, Ukraine.

​Jules Bastien-Lepage

 
At Harvest Time (1880)

“Jules Bastien-Lepage was a French painter noted for his sentimental genre painting of rural life. Despite growing up during the era of Impressionism, his style of plein air painting was closer to the naturalism of the Realism art movement than the light-oriented art of Claude Monet (1840-1926). Ironically, a  number of Impressionist painters - in Scotland, Holland, America and Australia - preferred to adopt his style of naturalist realist painting rather than Impressionism proper. The French realist writer Emile Zola, who described Bastien-Lepage as ‘the grandson of Courbet and of Millet’, later charactized his painting as: ‘Impressionism corrected, sweetened and adapted to suit the taste of the masses.’ ...”

 
Haymaking (1877)

​A midcentury printmaker celebrates machine age New York City

 
Allen Street, 1929

“As the machine age took hold in the United States in the early 20th century, some artists took a darker view of the mechanization of urban society—seeing isolation and alienation amid skyscrapers, automobiles, and steel bridges. Painter and printmaker Louis Lozowick, however, found something to celebrate. Lozowick isn’t a household name, but his backstory will sound familiar. Born in Ukraine in 1892, he immigrated to New York City in the early 1900s, according to Artnet. ...”

In Mariupol’s Drama Theater, a Cry for ‘Mama!’ That Offered Brief Relief

 

“LVIV, Ukraine — ... Ms. [Viktoria] Dubovitskaya, interviewed last month at a shelter in Lviv, in western Ukraine, said she and her two young children were among the many civilians sheltering in Mariupol’s Drama Theater on March 16 when it was devastated by a Russian airstrike. A wall fell onto her 2-year-old daughter, Nastya, and in those horrific first moments, Ms. Dubovitskaya recalled, she did not know if the girl had survived.Finally, she heard it: “Mama!” Nastya screamed. A mattress that had been propped up against the wall fell against her daughter, cushioning the blows. Under the shattered masonry, Nastya was alive, but the place where they had taken refuge for 11 days, along with hundreds of others, was destroyed. ...”

 
Crates of art from Russian museums that were seized by Finnish customs officials. Officials later decided the art, which had been on loan to institutions in the West, was not subject to sanctions.

​2022 Winter Music Preview ~ Ambient and Drone

 
“We absolutely love this time of year at A Closer Listen. As we survey the musical landscape, we see over 200 new releases on the near horizon and our hearts are filled with hope.  Artists continue to be inspired, labels continue to release albums, and we have the privilege of previewing a healthy selection of new music.  This might turn out to be a pretty good year after all.  Over a quarter of our winter announcements are found in the fields of ambient and drone ~ perfect sounds to accompany snowed-in evenings with candlelight and friends, or perhaps a good book. ...”
 

Virginia bluebells

 
Mertensia virginica (common names Virginia bluebells, Virginia cowslip, lungwort oysterleaf, Roanoke bells) is a spring ephemeral plant with bell-shaped sky-blue flowers, native to eastern North America. Virginia bluebells have rounded and gray-green leaves, borne on stems up to 24 in (60 cm) tall. They are petiolate at the bottom of the flower stem and sessile at the top. Flowerbuds are pink. Flowers have five petals fused into a tube, five stamens, and a central pistil (carpel). They are borne in mid-spring in nodding spiral-shaped cymes at the end of arched stems. Flowers are usually blue, but white or pink flowers occur rarely. ...”

​‘The City Lives’: With Russian Forces Gone, Kyiv Starts to Revive

 
Residents returned and businesses opened their doors after a month of Russian artillery attacks on Ukraine’s capital subsided.

“KYIV, Ukraine — On Feb. 25, the day after Russia invaded Ukraine, Kolya Rybytva gathered his grandmother and younger sister and left Kyiv ‘quickly and without unnecessary sentiments,’ he said, heading west. His parents and brother stayed behind to help in the war effort. ... At the time, Mr. Rybytva, 24, understood that he might never return. But two weeks ago, he did, re-entering Kyiv, the capital, just as Ukrainian forces were starting to push Russian troops out of the suburbs and, eventually, into a full retreat. After a month of artillery attacks that ravaged buildings and had Kyiv residents seeking shelter in the subway stations, a sense of relative calm is being restored. ...”

GRID - GlobalUkraine mystery: Why have so many Russian generals been killed?

 
The debate over how to remember Ukraine's World War II history, as well as its implications for Ukrainian nationalism and independence, is key to understanding the current conflict.

Union vs. Hertha: why is the Berlin derby such a special fixture?

 
“Hertha Berlin and Union Berlin will meet three times in 2021/22 and when they do, the eyes of the world will fall on the German capital for a fixture that brings together football, politics and history in a once divided city. Union won the first top-flight meeting of the sides in November of 2019/20, when substitute Sebastian Polter got the only goal from the penalty spot late on, while Hertha romped to a 4-0 victory in the return on Matchday 27. The Old Lady got the better of things in the first encounter of last season, winning 3-1 at home, while the return at the Stadion an der Alten Försterei ended 1-1. …”

 
Berlin was a divided between the Allied powers after WWII and Checkpoint Charlie was one of the few access points between the East and West.

​Six Definitive Songs: The ultimate beginner's guide to Husker Du

“It’s a tale as old as time: Upstate New Yorker pretends to be a Manhattanite as he arrives in the cold, dank eternal winter of Minnesota for college. He meets a record store clerk with a mohawk and reputation for selling weed, and they bond over a love of punk rock. They enlist the only other punk rock-loving clerk to start a band. ... The origins of Husker Du, the legendary St. Paul punk-turned-alternative rock trio consisting of guitarist Bob Mould, drummer Grant Hart, and bassist Greg Norton, are modest. ...”

​He Is a Child of War’: Giving Birth Amid Chaos in Ukraine

 
An estimated 265,000 Ukrainian women were pregnant when the war broke out, according to the United Nations Population Fund.

“KYIV, Ukraine — Before the war, Alina Shynkar’s gynecologist advised her to avoid stress during her pregnancy, suggesting she spend time ‘just watching cartoons and being silly.’ It was simple enough advice, but not so easy to follow after air-raid sirens wailed, artillery booms rattled windows and vicious street fighting broke out a few miles away from her maternity hospital. Then, keeping calm for her baby became Ms. Shynkar’s quiet, personal battle in the Ukraine war. She checked into Maternity Hospital No. 5 in the capital, Kyiv, before the war began in late February for bed rest because of a risk of preterm labor, only to witness the hospital unravel into a chaotic, panicked state weeks later. ...”

​Silence: Lectures and Writings – John Cage (1961)

 
“This collection of essays and presentations by noted composer and musical innovator John Cage attempts to capture on paper both the intellectual and stylistic creativity with which he approached his work. In both the themes of the collection and the internal arrangement of the individual pieces, the author explores the nature of music, music’s relationship to sound, and the value of incorporating randomness into what had previously been an ordered, carefully considered art form. ...”