Two months of horror and resilience: 7 takeaways from the war in Ukraine
Control and Chaos: Cate Blanchett
“In 2014, Cate Blanchett collaborated with German artist Julian Rosefeldt on a 13-channel film installation, Manifesto. Blanchett plays 12 different roles in the project, each a distinct archetype: a stockbroker, a tattooed punk, a choreographer, a machine operator, and more. In separate 10-minute chapters, each unfolding in a different setting, these figures deliver fragmented monologues comprising snippets of artistic manifestos collaged from various authors, sorted by movement and theme (’Surrealism,’ ‘Architecture,’ ‘Film’). Molding her countenance and gestures to embody each character, Blanchett is transformed beyond recognition. ...”
2014 March: Blue Jasmine (2013), 2016 April: Carol (2015)
Learn About Québec City, a European-Style Walled City in North America
“Are you wishing to travel to the fairytale-like cities of Europe but are North America-bound for now? Québec City, the capital of the beautiful Canadian province of Québec, has all the charm of cathedrals, chateaus, and magnificent vistas. It is the perfect weekend trip for history nerds and winter sports enthusiasts alike. The only walled city north of Mexico, Québec City is the crown jewel of French-speaking Canada. From pitched battles to ice canoe races, the city's history and present are both complex and fascinating. ...”
The Five Conspiracy Theories That Putin Has Weaponized
CNN Navalny (Video), NY Times - ‘Navalny’ Review: Speaking Truth to Power in a Corrupt System (Video)
The Intercept_: American Phone- Tracking Firm Demo'd Surveillance Powers by Spying on CIA and NSA (Video)
Long Island Dirt: Recovering Our Buried Past
National Geographic Celebrates Earth Day with Murals Across the US
“In celebration of Earth Day, National Geographic has partnered with ABC Owned Television Stations (OTV) and local artists in four major cities to fashion murals centered on four themes: wildlife, the Amazon, forests and oceans. All of the murals have been inspired by photos from National Geographic’s archive. The image featured above was painted here in NYC by Brooklyn-based muralist and illustrator Steffi Lynn. Several more images of environmentally-conscious murals that have surfaced this month in collaboration with National Geographic follow. ...”
Warsaw’s Welcome Mat Risks Fraying Under Strain of a New Refugee Surge
“WARSAW — Warsaw’s biggest pediatric hospital has put patients from Ukraine on its waiting list for liver transplants, sometimes ahead of Polish children. Schools in Poland’s capital have had to search for extra teachers to keep up with the influx of new pupils. Public transport has risked buckling under the strain of so many new residents. Yet, to just about everyone’s surprise, Warsaw has kept working, defying predictions of a breakdown and an angry public backlash. The city, which has welcomed hundreds of thousands of fleeing refugees, has decked itself with Ukrainian flags and banners of support for Poland’s war-ravaged eastern neighbor. ...”
For the Record: April 22, 2022.
“For the Record is a weekly round-up of new and upcoming recordings of interest to the new-music community – contemporary classical music and jazz, electronic and electroacoustic music, and idioms for which no clever genre name has been coined – on CD, vinyl LP, cassette, digital-only formats… you name it. This list of release dates is culled from press releases, Amazon, Bandcamp, and other internet stores and sources, social-media posts, and online resources such as Discogs. Dates cited typically correspond to initial U.S. release, and are subject to change. ...”
33 Best Cyberpunk Books of All-Time
2010 October: Bruce Sterling, 2011 July: William Gibson, 2015 May: Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology - edited by Bruce Sterling (1986), 2015 July: A Global Neuromancer, 2016 May: The Difference Engine - William Gibson and Bruce Sterling (1990), 2017 August: Sprawl trilogy, 2019 February: Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk & Postmodern Science - Edited by Larry McCaffery (1992), 2019 December: How William Gibson Keeps His Science Fiction Real, 2020 May: We’re on the Brink of Cyberpunk, 2020 August: The Origins of Sprawl, 2020 November: Cyberpunk
‘Worst crisis since the second world war’: Germany prepares for a Russian gas embargo
“An embargo on Russian natural gas could cause Germany’s economic output to drop as much as 5 percent this year, the Bundesbank warned on Friday, potentially driving the country into a recession while pushing up already high consumer prices. The central bank’s predictions, largely in line with those of several economic institutes, also served as a warning of the danger that Europe’s largest economy could face if Russia decides to cut off gas exports to Europe. The central bank said its predictions were couched in uncertainty, given the unpredictable nature of the crisis surrounding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. ...”
The art of the third-man run (feat. Son, Smith Rowe and De Bruyne)
The Multifaceted Mingus
“Charles Mingus was everything all at once: jazz, folk, dance, theater, label owner, brave Black man. In an era where the wrong opinions could get him killed or, at the very least, exiled from the music business, he expressed himself boldly, and exorcised strong emotions through the strings of his upright bass. His playing style was fierce, almost violent, as if the trauma of American racism was coming through it. Born 100 years ago on Friday along the United States-Mexico border, in a body that confounded easy racial categorization (one of his most memorable ballads is ’Self-Portrait in Three Colors’), Mingus lived, wrote and played bass in a state of agitated brilliance. ...”
2015 August: "Meditations On Integration" - Filmed in Belgium on April 19 1964., 2016 February: XXL’s A Great Day in Hip Hop: 16 Years Later (2014), 2017 May: Mingus at the Bohemia (1955), 2017 September: Blues & Roots (1960), 2021 December: Charles Mingus’s Secret Eggnog Recipe Will Knock You on Your Ass
The new phase of the war in Ukraine, explained
“This week, the new phase of Russia’s war in Ukraine has taken form. It is a war over control of the Donbas, the eastern Ukrainian region where Russia has been supporting a separatist rebellion since 2014. Whereas the war — which began with the Russian invasion on February 24 — previously spanned the country, centering on a Russian push to seize Ukraine’s capital and most populous city, Kyiv, its newest offensive is narrowly focused on a region several hundred miles to the east. ‘The Russian troops have begun the battle for the Donbas,’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced in a Tuesday address.This is, in one sense, a smart move by the Russians. ...”
Celebrate Spring with the Lyrids
‘This is rarely taught’: an exhibition examining African-Atlantic history
“Earlier that day she had presided over the US Senate confirmation of the supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who would mark the occasion by quoting poetry: ‘I am the dream and the hope of the slave.’ Then, in the evening, Vice-President Kamala Harris headed to the National Gallery of Art in Washington for a reception celebrating the opening of Afro-Atlantic Histories, a landmark exhibition that explores the brutal history of the transatlantic slave trade and cultural legacy of the African diaspora. ...”
‘I Don’t Think It’s Going to Stop in Ukraine’: 10 Americans on Putin’s War
Henry Cow - Concerts (1975)
Keeping Scores: Women Writing Music
“In 2019 I met with Sinéad Gleeson ahead of her Edinburgh Book Festival appearance to interview her about music in Constellations, her book of essays on and of the body. ‘Music,’ she says in the book, ‘binds us together’. I felt strongly when reading it that it was in fact music that bound the book together. I was surprised when she told me that I was the first person to say this because the pages seep sound and vibrate with the pivotal music memories that we carry in our bodies, in how we map our lives. She told me then that she was working on a project that she couldn’t reveal but was sure I would love. That project was This Woman’s Work, a collection of essays on music, edited by Gleeson with Kim Gordon, written by and about women. She was right. ...”
In the fog of dementia, one grandmother learns again and again that her country is at war.
“Every morning, Olga Boichak’s grandmother wakes up at her home in western Ukraine, turns on the television and discovers anew that her country is at war.Panicked and flashing back to childhood memories of bombings during World War II, she starts packing to evacuate, her granddaughter said. Her husband of six decades hides the house keys and reassures her everything will be all right, and that their home is the safest place for them. Before long, the war, the fear and the reassurance will dissipate into the fog of dementia — as have all new memories in recent years. Until the next morning, or the next air raid siren, when the reality of the invasion that has subsumed Ukraine for more than 50 days will find her once more. ...”
Charles Olsen: “The poet as pedagogue / Is the teacher”
2009 January: Charles Olson, 2009 April: Rockport Harbor, 2010 September: Charles Olson: The Art of Poetry No. 12, 2011 July: Charles Olson: February 21, 1957, 2012 June: In Which We Lather Our Sensibilities At Length, 2013 January: Mass.Charles Olson, 2013 May: The Maximus Poems, 2013 November: A Guide to The Maximus Poems of Charles Olson , 2015 March: "In Cold Hell, in Thicket" (1950), 2017 May: The Collected Poems of Charles Olson edited by George Butterick, 2017 May: Gloucester HarborWalk #: Charles Olson 3rd Letter on Georges, unwritten to Schooner Footage, 2020 March: A Trip to Charles Olson’s Gloucester, 2021 May: Projective Verse (1959)
ROAR is closing down, but the struggle goes on
Ukraine’s Greatest Living Filmmaker Explains What the Images Online Aren’t Showing
An Introduction to the Life & Music of Fela Kuti: Radical Nigerian Bandleader, Political Hero, and Creator of Afrobeat
How Did Roman Aqueducts Work?: The Most Impressive Achievement of Ancient Rome’s Infrastructure, Explained
Atrocities in Ukraine War Have Deep Roots in Russian Military
“In a photograph from the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, Ukraine, a woman stands in the yard of a house, her hand covering her mouth in horror, the bodies of three dead civilians scattered before her. When Aset Chad saw that picture, she started shaking and hurtled 22 years back in time. In February 2000, she walked into her neighbor’s yard in Chechnya and glimpsed the bodies of three men and a woman who had been shot repeatedly in front of her 8-year-old daughter. Russian soldiers had swept their village and murdered at least 60 people, raped at least six women and plundered the victims’ gold teeth, human rights observers found. ...”
An independence revue
2012 October: Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebet
Step Into the Morningside Heights rowdy resort district dubbed ‘Little Coney Island’
“Since 1892, West 110th Street has also been known as Cathedral Parkway. It’s a heavenly name for a stretch of Manhattan that had a citywide reputation for vice and sin at the turn of the 20th century. ‘Little Coney Island,’ as this quickly developing enclave of Morningside Heights was dubbed by residents, police, and politicians, consisted of a few blocks of newly opened pleasure gardens set in wood-frame buildings that attracted carousing crowds of fun-seeking men and women. ...”
‘They Are Gone, Vanished’: Missing Persons Haunt Ukrainian Village
“HUSARIVKA, Ukraine — The cows wouldn’t stop screaming. Russian soldiers had occupied this remote village in eastern Ukraine for about two weeks and were using a farm as a base. But the animals at the farm hadn’t been fed. Their incessant bleating was wearing on both occupiers and townspeople. A group of five residents from Husarivka, an unassuming agricultural village of around 1,000 people, went to tend the cattle. ... What transpired in Husarivka has all the horrifying elements of the more widely publicized episodes involving Russian brutality: indiscriminate killings, abuse and torture taking place over the better part of a month.Human rights workers around Kyiv, the capital, are gathering evidence of Russian atrocities, hoping to build the case for war crimes. ...”