On the Night Bus to Kyiv

 

Police inspect a destroyed trolley bus on the site of a Russian bombing attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Monday, March 14, 2022.

“Kyiv, Ukraine—After Russian attacks targeted infrastructure all across Ukraine earlier this week, damaging critical rail lines in the western part of the country, a bus bound for Kyiv was full when it departed from Warsaw an hour before midnight on Wednesday. With the more popular trains suffering cancellations and delays as long as 11 hours, and fuel shortages making personal car travel dicey, the bus emerged as perhaps the best way to get to Ukraine from the west. A crowd of about a hundred people formed at the platforms at Warsaw West station late Wednesday night, many destined for Lviv, Kyiv, or further east. ...”

The Nation

Aljazeera: Battles rage in Ukraine’s Luhansk as Russia targets main city (Video)

NY Times: Germany’s Military Industry Gears Up to Restock Its Own Forces

NY Times: Seizing an Oligarch’s Assets Is One Thing. Giving Them to Ukraine Is Another. (Video)

POLITICO: Biden administration braces for Putin’s Victory Day surprise

 

A Ukrainian national guard soldier walks into an underground bunker near a frontline position on May 07, 2022 in Zelenodolsk, Ukraine.

Paris France - Gertrude Stein (1940)

 

“Gertrude Stein’s Paris France is a book about Paris that tells many true things about the French but also gives a picture of Gertrude and her times that is about who Americans are and what Americans think when they are not in Paris at all. It is a picture of Paris by an American who thinks as Americans think, and we see America in the picture when she thinks she is showing us France. Yet because she is a fine and true writer she knows that she is showing us both things, and many truths about the French come out even though they are written the way an American must write them. ...”

New Yorker: Understanding Steinese

W - Paris France (novel)

amazon

2007 November: Gertrude Stein, 2011 July: The making of "Tender Buttons", 2012 March: The Steins Collect, 2012 May: Gertrude Stein's War Years: Setting the record straight, 2014 November: Lost Generation, 2015 January: The Making of an American by Edward White, 2020 December: Tender Buttons (1914), 2022 February: No no no, nonsense, never...

Hard to Be a God - Aleksei German (2013)

 

“Hard to Be a God ... is a 2013 Russian science fiction art film directed by Aleksei German, based on the 1964 novel of the same name by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. A team of scientists travel to the planet Arkanar that is culturally and technologically centuries behind — progress is stuck way back in the Middle Ages. Anybody the inhabitants of the planet consider an intellectual is instantly executed. The scientists are ordered to not interfere and work undercover, but one of them, Rumata, wishes to stop the senseless murders of brilliant minds and is forced to at last pick a side. ...”

Wikipedia

Guardian: Hard to Be a God review – mud, blood and holy hell (Video)

Senses of Cinema

YouTube: Hard to be a God - Official Trailer, Don Rumata frees a slave who has been chained since he was 3, Don Rumata's heart is full of pity.

​Ukrainian tractors vs. Russian tanks: The hundred-year history behind the meme

 

An ironic banner in Dnipro, Ukraine reads: "Russian soldier, the sowing campaign has already begun" on April 16, in reference to the famous snapshots of Ukrainian tractors pulling abandoned Russian tanks during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, news outlets and social media have captured the magnitude of the destruction: Cities like Kharkiv, Kyiv, Mariupol, Chernihiv and Kherson surrounded by Russian tanks; shelling; children taking shelter in subway stations with relatives’ phone numbers written on their skin. But occasionally there have been more hopeful images, like those of the Ukrainian popular resistance. In the country’s small towns and villages, farmers driving humble tractors have hauled away Russian tanks. These photos and videos symbolize a popular narrative of Ukrainian heroes defending their homeland, risking their lives for the democratic world. In this narrative, farmers and, by extension, civilians, are not merely powerless victims of Russian aggression; they are people who just want to lead normal lives and are determined to fight back. ...”

GRID (Video)

Aljazeera - ‘Stand to the end’: Can diplomacy rescue Ukrainian defenders? (Video)

NY Times - Russia’s Grave Miscalculation: Ukrainians Would Collaborate

 

Oleksandr Vilkul of Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, in his office.

America Is Not Ready for the End of Roe v. Wade

 

“Imagine that every state were free to choose whether to allow Black people and white people to marry. Some states would permit such marriages; others probably wouldn’t. The laws would be a mishmash, and interracial couples would suffer, legally consigned to second-class status depending on where they lived.It seems an unthinkable scenario in 2022. That’s because in 1967 the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that barring interracial marriage, as 16 states still did, violates the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. ...”

NY Times: Opinion | The Editorial Board

Painter's Spring - William Parker Trio (2000)

 

“As the second release in the acclaimed Blue Series from Thirsty Ear Recordings, Painter's Spring by the William Parker Trio sustains the living bolt of energy infused in the free and avant-garde jazz genres by the debut of Matt Shipp's Pastoral Composure. Bassist William Parker wrote all of the compositions except the traditional ‘There Is a Balm in Gilead’ and ‘Come Sunday,’ and together with Daniel Carter on alto and tenor sax, flute, and clarinet and Hamid Drake on drums, the trio lifts the program to the listener's attention with the melding of individual talents into one powerful musical force. ...”

allmusic (Audio)

W - Painter's Spring

Discogs (Video)

2022 January: A Guide to William Parker, 2022 February: Raining On The Moon – Corn Meal Dance (2007), 2022 March: William Parker Quartets: Meditation / Resurrection (2017)

​One Village at a Time: The Grinding Artillery War in Ukraine

 

Oleg, a construction worker-turned-volunteer, walking by a burning house as he looked for residents to evacuate in Ruska Lozova, Ukraine.

“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. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: The War in Ukraine, as Seen on Russian TV (Video)

The Intercept_: The Left in Europe Confronts NATO’s Resurgence After Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

ARTFORUM: Russian Forces Alleged to Have Looted Thousands of Artworks from Ukrainian Museums

Scott Nelson: The War in Ukraine is a War for Wheat and Corn (Audio)

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."

Wikipedia

Pitchfork

Guardian: Robert Wyatt, Comicopera

YouTube: Comicopera    1 / 16  

YouTube: Q & A, Purcell Room, London 15th Oct 2007 1:30:08

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

 

“Neil Young has always been a man of the people, despite spending the majority of his career on a stage looking down on his audience, truthfully, he’d prefer to be right in there with them. In April 1976, after flying to Glasgow, Scotland, with his Crazy Horse band for a gig at The Apollo, Young headed out into the streets to meet the locals to prove it. He did so, as he did almost every other aspect of his life, with a smile on his face, a song in his heart and a guitar in his hands. ...”

FAR OUT (Video)

​U.S. Intelligence Is Helping Ukraine Kill Russian Generals, Officials Say

 

A Russian tank stuck in the mud in Zavorychi, outside the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, in early April.

“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. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: Europe’s Quest to Replace Russian Gas Faces Plenty of Hurdles

GRID - Ukraine war in photos: Mariupol, then and now

 

A woman stands in the courtyard of a destroyed building in Mariupol, Ukraine, on April 29.

Samizdat

 

Russian samizdat and photo negatives of unofficial literature

“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’. …”

Wikipedia

NY Times: Samizdat Is Russia’ Underground Press (March 1970)

Samizdat: How did people in the Soviet Union circumvent state censorship

Russian Newspaper Turns To Samizdat To Reach Readers ‘Poisoned By Propaganda’

 

Typed copy of Bulgakov’s ‘Heart of a Dog’

Chestnut Trees - Hermann Hesse

 

“Everywhere we’ve lived takes on a certain shape in our memory only some time after we leave it. Then it becomes a picture that will remain unchanged. As long as we’re there, with the whole place before our eyes, we see the accidental and the essential emphasized almost equally; only later are secondary matters snuffed out, our memory preserving only what’s worth preserving. If that weren’t true, how could we look back over even a year of our life without vertigo and terror! Many things make up the picture a place leaves behind for us—waters, rocks, roofs, squares—but for me, it is most of all trees. ...”

The Paris Review

amazon: Trees: An Anthology of Writings and Paintings

2012 August: Hermann Hesse

​A Crumbling Russian ‘Spyville’ Returns to Polish Hands

 

The abandoned former Soviet diplomatic housing complex in Warsaw. The city has seized the building and plans to turn it into accommodation for Ukrainian refugees.

“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.’ ...”

NY Times

VOX: Are sanctions against Russia working?

 

The complex, dubbed “Spyville,” was officially emptied of diplomats and their families when the Soviet empire crumbled in the late 1980s, but some Russians continued to live there until the early 2000s.

Why does this lady have a fly on her head?

 

“As we look at this portrait of a woman with an elaborate white headdress, one of the first things that grabs our attention is the fact that there's a fly on the painting ... but upon closer inspection, the fly is IN the painting, or rather, the artist painted the fly as part of the portrait.  What is going on here??? Share this page via: The official title of this painting is Portrait of a Woman of the Hofer Family, and it was painted around 1470 by an unknown artist from the ‘Swabian"’area of Europe.  Never heard of Swabia?  In the middle ages, it covered an area including southern Germany, part of Switzerland, and part of France. ...”

artsology

National Gallery (Video)

Soccer capitalism

 

“Soccer academies are springing up across Africa with remarkable speed, evidence of the immense popularity of the sport and the many aspirations it arouses. These academies—institutions that at their core combine a sportive and an educational system—first arrived in Africa from Europe in the late 1990s, following three interrelated processes: (1) the mistreatment by unscrupulous agents of young African players who migrated to Europe; (2) the Bosman ruling of 1995 that further increased the migration of African players to Europe; and (3) the introduction of new transfer regulations by FIFA in 2001 that aimed at curbing the abuse of young migrant players by making it harder for clubs to sign players under the age of 18. ...”

Africa Is a Country

A Long Way Home for Ukrainian Sailors

 

Despite the powerful engines, there was nowhere for the Ocean Force to go. 

“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. ...”

Voice

NY Times: Russia Could Sell More Energy to Asia, but Has to Slash Prices

POLITICO: What the Kremlin’s rubles-for-gas threat is about (Audio)

NY Times: Opinion | Putin’s Failure to Hold on to the Educated Could Be the World’s Gain

​Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows

 

“The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito circulated inside the court and obtained by POLITICO. The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision – Planned Parenthood v. Casey – that largely maintained the right. ‘Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,’ Alito writes. ...”

POLITICO

NY Times: A Supreme Court in Disarray After an Extraordinary Breach

NY Times: Opinion | This Supreme Court Is Out of Step With Most Americans

***NY Times: Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade

Langlois Bridge at Arles - Vincent van Gogh

 

The Langlois Bridge at Arles with Women Washing, 1888,

“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. ...”

Wikipedia

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.

 

Iryna Abramova at the grave of her husband, Oleh Abramov, who was killed by Russian forces outside their home in Bucha, Ukraine.

“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. ...”

NY Times

Aljazeera: Russian theatre drops directors who spoke out against Ukraine war (Video)

Aljazeera: Evacuation of civilians from Ukraine’s besieged Mariupol delayed (Video)

GRID - Wars, nuclear tests and Taliban 2.0: Global hotspots, far from Ukraine

Samuel Beckett: Film (1965), Notfilm - Ross Lipman (2015)

 

“In 1964, the great playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett began his only venture into cinema. The twenty-two-minute Film, as it was eventually titled, was a collaborative effort of formidable talents. Directed by Alan Schneider, the premiere American interpreter of Beckett’s plays, it starred silent comedian Buster Keaton, was photographed by On the Waterfront (1954) cinematographer Boris Kaufman, and produced by Barney Rosset, legendary founder of Grove Press, the first US publisher of Beckett and such other figures of the European avant-garde as Genet and Ionesco. ...”

ARTFORUM: Not I

W - Film (film), W - Notfilm

Criterion: FILM and NOTFILM

YouTube: Samuel Beckett & Alan Schneider - Film (1965), NOTFILM by Ross Lipman

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

 

Protesters take part in the annual May Day rally marking the international day of the workers on May 1, in Toulouse, southern France.

“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. ...”

Aljazeera

May Day rallies held across Europe to honour workers, call for peace

NY Times: Deaths of foreign fighters draw renewed attention to the  military volunteers in Ukraine. (Video)

War Has Come to Visit Me (March 22, 2022)

Corrupt Russian Oligarchs Trying to Destroy You? Better Call John Moscow

 

Nikita Kadan. From series ‘The shadow on the ground‘. 2022. Charcoal on paper

The May Pamphlet - Paul Goodman (1945)

 

“The May Pamphlet is a collection of six anarchist essays written and published by Paul Goodman in 1945. Goodman discusses the problems of living in a society that represses individual instinct through coercion. He suggests that individuals resist such conditions by reclaiming their natural instincts and initiative, and by ‘drawing the line’, an ideological delineation beyond which an individual should refuse to conform or cooperate with social convention. While themes from The May Pamphlet—decentralization, peace, social psychology, youth liberation—would recur throughout his works, Goodman's later social criticism focused on practical applications rather than theoretical concerns. ...”

Wikipedia

amazon: Drawing the Line Once Again: Paul Goodman's Anarchist Writings

2020 October: Growing Up Absurd (1960)

How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable

 

“Tucker Carlson burst through the doors of Charlie Palmer Steak, enfolded in an entourage of producers and assistants, cellphone pressed to his ear. On the other end was Lachlan Murdoch, chairman of the Fox empire and his de facto boss. Most of Fox’s Washington bureau, along with the cable network’s top executives, had gathered at the power-class steakhouse, a few blocks from the office, for their annual holiday party. Days earlier, Mr. Carlson had set off an uproar, claiming on air that mass immigration made America ‘poor and dirtier.’ Blue-chip advertisers were fleeing. Within Fox, Mr. Carlson was widely viewed to have finally crossed some kind of line. Many wondered what price he might pay. ...”

NY Times: American Nationalist Part 1 - How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable, Part 2: How Tucker Carlson Reshaped Fox News — and Became Trump’s Heir, Part 3: Look inside the apocalyptic worldview of “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” (Audio)

Russia’s war in Ukraine: complete guide in maps, video and pictures

 

Members of a de-mining team check for unexploded devices in a school ...

“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’. ...”

Guardian (Video)

BBC: How many Ukrainians have fled their homes and where have they gone? (Video)

The Booksellers (2019)

 

“The Booksellers is a 2019 American documentary film that was directed, edited, and produced by D.W. Young. It was also executive produced by Parker Posey, who provides narration in the film. The film explores the world of antiquarian and rare book dealers and their bookstores. It focuses primarily on booksellers in New York City, including Adina Cohen, Naomi Hample and Judith Lowry, the three sisters of the Argosy Book Store; Stephen Massey, founder of Christie’s NY Book Department; and Nancy Bass Wyden, owner of the Strand Bookstore. Other prominent people featured in the film include Fran Lebowitz, Gay Talese, Justin Croft, Zack Hample, Susan Orlean, William S. Reese, A. S. W. Rosenbach, Jay S. Walker, and Kevin Young....”

Wikipedia

NPR: 'The Booksellers' Speaks Volumes About Old Books And Those Who Love Them

YouTube: The Booksellers Movie Trailer (2020) , Documentary Movies Series

Sound American #24 – The Sun Ra Issue

 

“A journal founded in 2012 by Nate Wooley, providing in-depth interviews and essays, Sound American  starts from a simple desire to open the doors of experimental music to a wider audience. Sound American believes that music is for everyone and should be shared on the most basic human level. Sound American aims to accomplish this by creating a direct intellectual, social, and emotional bridge that links audiences and artists. ... Sound American is also an editorial platform for other print or music projects. Sun Ra (1914-1993) is an African-American experimental jazz pianist and composer. ...”

les presses du reel

Sound American #24

​They Survived the Holocaust. Now, They Are Fleeing to Germany.

 

“I understand the pain of these people, I know who they are,” said Pini Miretski, the medical evacuation team leader.

“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. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: On the Trail of Russian War Crimes

NY Times: A Body Bag and a Sister in Denial

 

Charred identification papers that were found with Oleksandr Pokhodenko’s body this month.