“RUSKA LOZOVA, Ukraine — The Ukrainian major had a few tasks to complete as he made the rounds along his army battalion’s front line. One platoon commander needed anti-tank weapons. Another wanted to show off a new line of trenches that his forces had dug following a recent Ukrainian advance. But as he drove between positions in his camouflaged armored van near the town of Derhachi, the clock was ticking. A Russian surveillance drone hovered above, watching, sending back coordinates to Russian artillery units, the major said. About twenty minutes later, at least three shells rained down, forcing the major and his team to scramble. ...”
One Village at a Time: The Grinding Artillery War in Ukraine
Comicopera - Robert Wyatt (2007)
Wikipedia - "Comicopera is an album by Robert Wyatt released on 8 October 2007, available on both CD and double vinyl formats (the vinyl's fourth side contains no music and has a poem etched into its surface). It is Wyatt's first release on the Domino Records label. It features many other musicians, including Brian Eno, Paul Weller, Gilad Atzmon and Phil Manzanera, and was recorded in Wyatt's house and Manzanera's recording studio. The song Del Mondo is a cover from Ko de mondo, the debut album of Italian post-punk band Consorzio Suonatori Indipendenti."
2010 November: Robert Wyatt, 2013 March: The Last Nightingale, 2013 September: Solar Flares Burn for You (2003), 2014 March: Cuckooland (2003), 2014 October: Robert Wyatt Story (BBC Four, 2001), 2014 December: Different Every Time (2014), 2016 March: Interviews (2014), 2016 June: Dondestan (Revisited)(1998), 2016 September: Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard (1975), 2017 January: '68 (2013), 2017 May: Shleep (1997), 2020 January: Rock Bottom (1972), 2020 November: Nothing Can Stop Us (1982)
Watch remarkable footage of Neil Young busking on the streets of Glasgow, 1976
U.S. Intelligence Is Helping Ukraine Kill Russian Generals, Officials Say
“WASHINGTON — The United States has provided intelligence about Russian units that has allowed Ukrainians to target and kill many of the Russian generals who have died in action in the Ukraine war, according to senior American officials. Ukrainian officials said they have killed approximately 12 generals on the front lines, a number that has astonished military analysts. The targeting help is part of a classified effort by the Biden administration to provide real-time battlefield intelligence to Ukraine. ...”
Samizdat
“Samizdat (Russian: самиздат, lit. ‘self-publishing’) was a form of dissident activity across the socialist Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documents from reader to reader. The practice of manual reproduction was widespread, because most typewriters and printing devices required official registration and permission to access. This was a grassroots practice used to evade official Soviet censorship. ... The Ukrainian language has a similar term: samvydav (самвидав), from sam, ‘self’, and vydavnytstvo, ‘publishing house’. …”
Chestnut Trees - Hermann Hesse
2012 August: Hermann Hesse
A Crumbling Russian ‘Spyville’ Returns to Polish Hands
“WARSAW — Soviet diplomats moved out of the hulking Warsaw housing compound more than 30 years ago. But some Russians stayed behind, sheltering until the early 2000s behind a fence topped with barbed wire from a city that, with the collapse of their empire, had suddenly become hostile territory — and an important intelligence target.A moldering, Russian pulp fiction paperback left behind inside the now derelict property, perhaps provides a clue to the preoccupations of the Russians who lived in the compound that was notorious since its heyday in the 1980s as a nest of spies: ‘Game on a Foreign Field.’ ...”
Why does this lady have a fly on her head?
Soccer capitalism
A Long Way Home for Ukrainian Sailors
“The Ukrainian crew was celebrating with cheesesteak sandwiches on board the cargo ship Ocean Force in late February. After more than a year on anchor in Delaware Bay and dockside in Philadelphia, repairs had been made, and the seven remaining crew members—the minimum required to maintain the cargo vessel while in port—had received long-overdue back pay. A new owner had taken over. They were going home. And then Russian bombs began falling on their homeland and Russian infantry poured across the border. It was Wednesday evening, February 23, in Philadelphia, already Thursday in Ukraine. ...”
Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows
Langlois Bridge at Arles - Vincent van Gogh
“The Langlois Bridge at Arles is the subject of four oil paintings, one watercolor and four drawings by Vincent van Gogh. The works, made in 1888 when Van Gogh lived in Arles, in southern France, represent a melding of formal and creative aspects. Van Gogh used a perspective frame that he built and used in The Hague to create precise lines and angles when portraying perspective. Van Gogh was influenced by Japanese woodcut prints, as evidenced by his simplified use of color to create a harmonious and unified image. ... The reconstructed Langlois Bridge is now named Pont Van-Gogh. ...”
2010 March: Van Gogh Museum, 2010 May: Why preserve Van Gogh's palette?, 2012 April: Van Gogh Up Close, 2015 May: Van Gogh and Nature, 2016 January: Van Gogh's Bedrooms, 2016 November: Wheat Fields - Van Gogh series, 2019 April: At Eternity’s Gate - Julian Schnabel (2018), 2020 April: The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen (1884), 2021 February: Vincent van Gogh Paris painting from 1887 to make public debut
They Fell Deeply in Love in Bucha. One Russian Bullet Ended It All.
“BUCHA, Ukraine — She called him Sunshine. He called her Kitty. They met nearly 20 years ago when she was working at a hospital and he sauntered through the door, young, muscular and beautiful, to fix the roof.Iryna Abramova said she made the first move and followed him to where he smoked cigarettes behind a wall. They started talking and fell in love, she said, ‘word by word.’ But a few weeks ago, the special connection she had with Oleh, the love of her life, and everything they built together ended in a single cruel gunshot. What follows is difficult for Iryna to describe, she said, because it feels so raw and real but, at the same time, it’s almost impossible to believe. ...”
Samuel Beckett: Film (1965), Notfilm - Ross Lipman (2015)
2009 November: Samuel Beckett, 2010 April: A Piece of Monologue, 2011 June: Film (1965) - UbuWeb, 2012 March: “fathoms from anywhere”, 2017 April: Krapp's Last Tape (1957), 2017 May: The Alternative Facts of Samuel Beckett’s “Watt”, 2022 March: Waiting for Godot (1955)
May Day rallies held around world with calls for peace in Ukraine
“Citizens and trade unions have rallied around the world to mark May Day, sending messages of protest to their governments and issuing calls for peace in Ukraine. It is a time of high emotion for participants and their causes, and Sunday’s May Day marches were no different with police at the ready as street demonstrations commemorated International Workers’ Day, or May Day. The war in Ukraine was also front and centre of this year’s May Day messages, with national leaders and union officials calling for peace and also warning that Russia’s war could spread further in Europe. ...”
NY Times: Deaths of foreign fighters draw renewed attention to the military volunteers in Ukraine. (Video)
The May Pamphlet - Paul Goodman (1945)
2020 October: Growing Up Absurd (1960)
How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable
Russia’s war in Ukraine: complete guide in maps, video and pictures
“Moscow has confirmed it carried out an airstrike on Kyiv during a visit on Thursday by the UN secretary general, António Guterres, while Russian forces are again attacking the huge Azovstal steel plant where fighters and some civilians are holed up in the southern city of Mariupol. Russia’s defence ministry said in its daily briefing on Friday that two ‘high-precision, long-range air-based weapons’ had destroyed the production buildings of the Artyom missile and space enterprise in the Ukrainian capital on Thursday night. The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, said on Friday one body had so far been recovered from the rubble of a 25-storey residential building in the capital’s Shevchenkivskyi district after the strike, which Guterres’s spokesperson described as ‘shocking’. ...”
The Booksellers (2019)
Sound American #24 – The Sun Ra Issue
They Survived the Holocaust. Now, They Are Fleeing to Germany.
“HANOVER, Germany — Their earliest memories are of fleeing bombs or hearing whispers about massacres of other Jews, including their relatives. Sheltered by the Soviet Union, they survived.Now elderly and fragile, Ukraine’s Holocaust survivors are escaping war once more, on a remarkable journey that turns the world they knew on its head: They are seeking safety in Germany. For Galina Ploschenko, 88, it was not a decision made without trepidation. ... Ms. Ploschenko is the beneficiary of a rescue mission organized by Jewish groups, trying to get Holocaust survivors out of the war wrought by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. ...”
Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’—and He Damn Well Knows It
True to Nature: Open-Air Painting in Europe 1780–1870
The Bizarre Russian Prophet Rumored to Have Putin’s Ear
Sasha Waltz’s ‘In C’ Marries Choreography and Improvisation
“BERLIN — ‘I started in the deep lockdown,’ said the German choreographer Sasha Waltz. ‘Everything was closed. And it was in the winter. It was gray and everybody was depressed. And we said, we have to keep working. We cannot go on like this.’ Waltz, 59, was talking about ‘In C,’ a dance she choreographed during the pandemic with her Berlin troupe, Sasha Waltz and Guests. The hourlong work, set to Terry Riley’s 1964 composition — a milestone of minimal music — will be performed Thursday through Saturday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where Waltz and company performed frequently before the pandemic. ...”
Five astonishing ghost towns lost to natural disaster
They Flooded Their Own Village, and Kept the Russians at Bay
“DEMYDIV, Ukraine — They pull up soggy linoleum from their floors, and fish potatoes and jars of pickles from submerged cellars. They hang out waterlogged rugs to dry in the pale spring sunshine.All around Demydiv, a village north of Kyiv, residents have been grappling with the aftermath of a severe flood, which under ordinary circumstances would have been yet another misfortune for a people under attack by Russia. This time, though, it was a tactical victory. ...”