“For the past fourteen months I have been on a path of conversion to Catholicism. ... We are slowly reading a book of contemporary Italian theology. ... I have struggled especially, as a previously secular person, with believing in sin. As a category, it has always seemed socially malignant, an excuse to burn witches. And in my personal life both gluttony and lust might be problems, especially because they don’t really seem like problems: sex and food are good things. And so I was overjoyed to find an articulation of sin that makes sense to me in The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), a three-volume work wherein a pilgrim travels through nine circles of hell and then seven cornices of purgatory, before reaching paradise. ...”
The War in Ukraine Is the True Culture War
“KYIV, Ukraine — At the thousand-year-old Cathedral of Saint Sophia here, standing on an easel in front of a towering Baroque golden altar, is a new, freshly painted icon that’s just a foot square. It depicts a 17th-century Cossack military commander with a long gray beard. His eyebrows are arched. His halo is a plain red circle. He looks humble beneath the immense mosaics that have glinted since the 11th century — through Kyiv’s sacking by the Mongols, its absorption into Poland, its domination by the Soviet Union. No gold. No gemstones. This icon has been painted on three planks of knotty wood: the planks, I learn, of an ammunition box recovered from the devastated Kyiv suburb of Bucha. Out of Bucha’s mass graves, in the wake of terrifying Russian atrocities against civilians, something new has come to Saint Sophia: an image of mourning and resolve, of horror and courage, of a culture that will not give up. ...”
A new icon in Kyiv’s Cathedral of Saint Sophia depicts Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny, a 17th-century Cossack military commander. It was painted on planks of wood recovered from Bucha, the site of Russian atrocities.
José Martí / Antonio Maceo Grajales
“José Julián Martí Pérez (January 28, 1853 – May 19, 1895) was a Cuban nationalist, poet, philosopher, essayist, journalist, translator, professor, and publisher, who is considered a Cuban national hero because of his role in the liberation of his country from Spain. He was also an important figure in Latin American literature. He was very politically active and is considered an important philosopher and political theorist. ... Martí is considered one of the great turn-of-the-century Latin American intellectuals. His written works include a series of poems, essays, letters, lectures, a novel, and a children's magazine. He wrote for numerous Latin American and American newspapers; he also founded a number of newspapers. ...”
“Lt. General José Antonio de la Caridad Maceo y Grajales (June 14, 1845 – December 7, 1896) was second-in-command of the Cuban Army of Independence. Fellow Cubans gave Maceo the nickname ‘The Bronze Titan’ (Spanish: El Titán de Bronce), nickname that he earned after being wounded several times in battle. Spaniards referred to Maceo as the ‘Greater Lion’ (El León mayor). Maceo was one of the most noteworthy guerrilla leaders in 19th century Latin America, comparable to José Antonio Páez of Venezuela in military acumen. ... In addition to his role as a soldier and statesman in the Cuban movement for independence, Maceo was an influential political strategist and military planner, and José Martí is among Cuban leaders who were inspired by Maceo. ...”
Bernd and Hilla Becher
"Bernhard 'Bernd' Becher (20 August 1931 – 22 June 2007), and Hilla Becher, née Wobeser (2 September 1934 – 10 October 2015), were German conceptual artists and photographers working as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their extensive series of photographic images, or typologies, of industrial buildings and structures, often organised in grids. As the founders of what has come to be known as the ‘Becher school’ or the ‘Düsseldorf School’ they influenced generations of documentary photographers and artists. They have been awarded the Erasmus Prize and the Hasselblad Award. ...”
What is a war crime and could Putin be prosecuted over Ukraine?
“A court in Ukraine has jailed a Russian tank commander for life for killing a civilian at the first war crimes trial since the conflict began. Ukraine says it has identified more than 21,000 possible war crimes, The International Criminal Court has also sent a team of investigators and forensics experts to the country - but the Russian government denies it has been targeting civilians. What is a war crime? It may not seem like it, but ’even war has rules’, as the International Committee of the Red Cross puts it. These are contained in treaties called the Geneva Conventions and a string of other international laws and agreements. Civilians cannot be deliberately attacked - nor can the infrastructure that is vital to their survival....”
Military situation as of 14 July 2022
How Brian Eno Created Ambient 1: Music for Airports
“In 1978, Brian Eno released Ambient 1: Music for Airports, a landmark album in ambient and electronic music. Although it wasn’t the first ambient album by any means, it was the first album explicitly released as an ‘ambient music album’. The album was essentially a continuation of Brian Eno’s experimentation with the tape machine as a compositional tool, as well as his exploration of generative music, music created by systems. In this article I’ll discuss how Music for Airports was created, I’ll break down and recreate the tracks 2/1 and 1/2, and hopefully give you some ideas about how to adopt this approach yourself. ...”
A teenage immigrant who became a “sweatshop girl” tells her life story
“Amid the fortune making and social swirling of New York’s Gilded Age, more than 12 million immigrants came to the United States. Seventy percent of those newcomers took their first steps on American soil via Castle Garden or Ellis Island, Gotham’s two immigration processing depots. In the early 1900s, Sadie Frowne was one of these new arrivals. A few years later, this 16-year-old’s story of surviving in New York—’The Life Story of a Polish Sweatshop Girl’—made it into a fascinating 1906 book called The Lives of Undistinguished Americans. ...”
Mission Impossible? Officials Wrangle to Free Ukraine’s Grains
“BRUSSELS — Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met Wednesday in Istanbul, in the increasingly desperate effort to release huge amounts of grain from Ukraine’s ports and ship it to a world facing rising hunger. Officials have tried for months to break the impasse without triggering an escalation in the war or, worse, a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO. Wednesday’s meeting raised hopes for a breakthrough, but in interviews, more than half a dozen officials directly involved or briefed on the plans cited obstacles ranging from the mundane to the downright ‘Mission Impossible.’ Proposed alternatives, moving the grain overland or through the Danube River, have been too slow, cumbersome and small-scale to address the challenge of more than 22 million tons of grain stuck in Odesa and other Black Sea ports that are blockaded by Russian warships. ...”
A farm located on outskirts of Lviv, in western Ukraine.
Night, Silence, Desert - Kayhan Kalhor with Mohammad Reza Shajarian (2000)
“An epic modern suite deeply rooted in Iranian musical traditions, Night Silence Desert seeks to unite East and West, past and present, to create a new sound for the country's future. Composed by multi-instrumentalist Kayhan Kalhor, the album features a stellar ensemble of Iranian folk and classical musicians supporting the soul-stirring melodies of legendary vocalist Mohammad Reza Shadjarian, whose lyrics juxtapose the centuries-old poetry of Baba Taher with contemporary lyrics. ...Together, they help to create a transcendent sound that perfectly evokes the atmosphere implied in the album's title. ...”
YouTube: Night Silence Desert 10 video
Before Guernica Won Over the World, It Flopped
“When it comes to art against tyranny, no work is more seared into our consciousness than Guernica, Pablo Picasso’s dark, howling mural against fascist terror. Created in 1937 at the height of the Spanish Civil War, it has in the 85 years since become a universal statement about human suffering in the face of political violence. Throughout World War II, it stood for resistance to Nazi aggression; during Vietnam controversies such as the My Lai massacre, protesters invoked it against the U.S. military. Today, its shrieking women and lifeless bodies conjure the corpse-strewn streets of the Kyiv suburb of Bucha after Vladimir Putin’s brutal assault. But Guernica’s enduring status was hardly foreordained. ...”
2011 July: Spanish Civil War - 75 Year, 18 July, 2011 August: Down and Out in Paris and London, 2012 March: 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother), 2012 June: "The Spanish Earth", Written and Narrated by Ernest Hemingway, 2013 January: The Real George Orwell, 2015 August: Songs of the Spanish Civil War, 2016 September: George Orwell - Homage to Catalonia (1938), 2017 January: Guernica (2016), 2019 September: What Makes Guernica So Shocking? ..., 2019 December: The lost images of anarchist Barcelona
Ukraine claims arms depot attack in occupied Kherson with Himars rockets
“Ukraine's military says it has destroyed a Russian ammunition depot in the southern city of Nova Kakhovka, killing dozens of soldiers, in an attack apparently involving US-supplied missiles. However, Russian occupation officials say homes and warehouses were hit, leaving seven dead and up to 80 hurt. It was not possible to verify the extent of damage or casualties. Unconfirmed footage of several powerful explosions was shared on social media. Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhaylo Podolyak attributed the attack to the US-supplied Himars multiple rocket launcher and spoke of a "reality collision" for the world's ‘second army’. ...”
Russian reports said several people were killed in the attack and that dozens of people had been left homeless
Cuba One Year After the Protests
“One year ago, on July 11, a small protest by Cuban dissidents in a poor suburb of Havana sparked nationwide anti-government demonstrations. In dozens of cities and towns, thousands marched to protest shortages of food and medicine, electricity blackouts, and a surge in Covid-19 infections. Most of the demonstrations were peaceful, but in some neighborhoods, protesters battled with police, overturned cars, and looted stores. The unprecedented protests were a symptom of deep economic and political discontent. They shocked Cuba’s leaders, emboldened the opposition, and rekindled Washington’s perennial pipe dream of regime change. ...”
Webb's First Deep Field
“Webb's First Deep Field is the first operational image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, depicting the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, 4.6 billion light-years from Earth. Revealed to the public on 11 July 2022, the composite image was taken by the telescope's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and covers a tiny area of sky visible from the Southern Hemisphere. Thousands of galaxies are visible in the image, which is the highest-resolution image of the early universe ever taken. ...”
Ukraine investigates, attacks those who collaborate with Russia
“Kyiv, Ukraine – Volodymyr Saldo claimed that in 2016, he was handcuffed to a metal bed for 59 days in the Dominican Republic, almost 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles) away from home.He alleged that the kidnapper, Igor Pashchenko, his former business partner from the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, electrocuted him so he would read certain phrases into a dictaphone. Saldo claimed Pashchenko used those phrases to demand a hefty ransom from his family – and to edit together an audio recording of Saldo’s “confession” to collaborating with Russia.When Saldo, a construction tycoon and Kherson’s former mayor, was released and returned home, he maintained that he had never worked for Russians. ...”
Firefighters and members of a rescue team clear the scene after a building was partialy destroyed following shelling, in Chasiv Yar, eastern Ukraine.
The New New Haven
“On a recent evening in the New Haven, Conn., Dixwell neighborhood, artists, students, academics and locals gathered in a large, state-of-the-art event space for a conversation with the photographer Dawoud Bey, 69, who is known for chronicling unseen facets of the Black experience in America. Using thoughtful, precise words, Bey — who has a rare command of language — described the ways in which a long tradition of Black cultural production informs his work. As the audience took in Bey’s resonant images of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., and the flight routes of enslaved African Americans in Ohio — among the historic sites the artist has reimagined in his work — the event’s venue was significant in more than one way. ...”
Jason Price (left) and Titus Kaphar in front of a former ice cream factory that is now part of NXTHVN in New Haven, Conn. The architect Deborah Berke expanded two existing buildings into a state-of-the-art arts center that includes studios, event spaces and a gallery.
Z Press: Kenward Elmslie - Calais, Vermont
“Z Press produced the eponymous one-shot magazines Z, ZZ, ZZZ, ZZZZ, ZZZZZ, and ZZZZZZ in the 1970s, perhaps following in the footsteps of the Once series edited in England in the early 1960s by Tom Clark (Once, Twice, Thrice, Thrice and a 1/2, Frice, etc.). Z, for which Trevor Winkfield drew the logo and cover, also included other work by him, including prose poems. ... Z Press continues to publish books, broadsides, records, and cassettes from time to time (including work by Joe Brainard and Kenward Elmslie) and keeps most of its publications in print and well distributed, being in this way a little unusual or lucky.“
April 2008: Kenward Elmslie, PENNSOUND, Jacket #7, Wikipedia, 2011 February: Kenward Elmslie's poem songs, 2016 February: Nite Soil (2000),, 2017 February: Kenward Elmslie / Videos
Desperate for Recruits, Russia Launches a ‘Stealth Mobilization’
“Four Russian veterans of the war in Ukraine recently published short videos online to complain about what they called their shabby treatment after returning to the Russian region of Chechnya, after six weeks on the battlefield. One claimed to have been denied a promised payment of nearly $2,000. Another grumbled that a local hospital declined to remove shrapnel lodged in his body. ... Ordinarily, these sort of complaints might be ignored, but the swift rebuke underscores how Russian officials want to stamp out any criticism about military service in Ukraine. They need more soldiers, desperately, and are already using what some analysts call a ‘‘stealth mobilization’’ to bring in new recruits without resorting to a politically risky national draft. ...”
Kherson police say Russian troops are deliberately destroying crops
An Introduction to the Voynich Manuscript, the World’s Most Mysterious Book
“’The Voynich manuscript is a real medieval book, and has been carbon-dated to the early 1400s.’ No modern hoax, this notoriously bizarre text has in fact ‘passed through the hands of many over the years,’ including ‘scientists, emperors, and collectors.’ Though ‘we still don’t know who actually wrote it, the illustrations hint at the book’s original purpose,’ having ‘much in common with medieval herbals, astrology guides, and bathing manuals.’ Hence the likelihood of the Voynich manuscript being ‘some sort of medical textbook, although a very strange one by any measure. Then there’s the writing.’ ...”
K. Leimer - A Period Of Review (Original Recordings 1975-1983)
“An incredible 30-track anthology that covers a huge breadth of styles and forms, but is ultimately serene, peaceful and calming. Expect a dream-like journey. A Period of Review (Original Recordings: 1975 - 1983) unearths unheard portions of K. Leimer’s vast archives and highlights the work of a self-taught visionary whose use of generative compositions ferried his music to infinite resonance. With its hypnotic, arcadian terraces and nearly narcotic glacial beauty, A Period of Review has a rightful place in the canon of pioneering ambient music. ...”
2010 September: K. Leimer, 2014 June: K. Leimer by Alexis Georgopoulos , 2015 November: music for land and water (1983)
Ukraine and the Contest of Global Stamina
“WASHINGTON — Another day, another weapons shipment: On Friday, the Pentagon announced a new transfer of precision-guided shells and multiple rocket launchers to Ukraine, the latest armaments heading east. But will there come a day when that system begins to slow? More than four months after Russia invaded Ukraine, a war that was expected to be a Russian blitzkrieg only to turn into a debacle for Moscow has now evolved into a battle of inches with no end in sight, a geopolitical stamina contest in which President Vladimir V. Putin is gambling that he can outlast a fickle, impatient West. ...”
Destroyed cars in Irpin, Ukraine, this month. More than four months into the Russian invasion, the war has evolved into a battle of inches with no end in sight.
Free Jazz legend William Parker Plays Original Composition for Sounds of Saving
"’Everything that is beautiful, the reason it's beautiful is because there's music in there’. In this video, William Parker discusses how we must all find perfection inside ourselves. He invites us into his home to share this story and to play a one time only original composition.”
YouTube 11:16
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), 2022 May: Painter's Spring - William Parker Trio (2000)
Histography: Timeline of History
"HISTOGRAPHY is project by Israeli designer Matan Stauber. It uses an algorithm for identifying and extrapolating historical events from Wikipedia’s immense database. Historical events are mapped in an interactive timeline encompassing 14 billion years, from the Big Bang to 2015. Updates are automatic: Each new historical article appearing on the online encyclopedia is added to the website. The timeline is composed of thousands of tiny black dots on a pink background. Each dot represents a historical event, and all together they span horizontally throughout time, showing an increasing quantity and density as they approach the present. ...”
At Europe’s Largest Port, Russia Sanctions Meet Their Toughest Test
“ROTTERDAM, Netherlands — Jolanda Wielenga was checking documents accompanying containers bound for Russia when her heart skipped a beat: One held a substance that could be used to make a chemical weapon. The substance could be used for both civilian and military purposes. Exporting it to Russia would have been legal before the invasion of Ukraine. But the E.U. sanctions imposed on Russia in recent months had changed that. Ms. Wielenga, a two-decade veteran customs investigator at Europe’s largest port, blocked the shipment. ‘I slept pretty well that night,’ she said on a recent morning as she paced up the terminal where hundreds of colorful cargo containers, many bound for Russia, were stacked for detailed manual inspection. ...”
Infrastructure and construction works are conducted in Ukraine's Mariupol, which is under control of Russian forces after long conflicts, as Russia-Ukraine war continue on July 06, 2022.
The Colossus of Maroussi - Henry Miller (1941)
“I was watching the sunset on the Greek island of Hydra with my best friend when I suddenly said, ‘I think I hate Henry Miller.’ I’d just raced through The Colossus of Maroussi and then Tropic of Cancer. So, as my friend and I perched on rough stones by the sea, I forced her to listen to my least favorite passages from Tropic of Cancer. ... Does the moment redeem the mass of it? Can I recommend The Colossus of Maroussi for the sake of one gemlike isle? The question engenders other questions: what, if anything, redeems a work of literature? Is the language of redemption even appropriate? What about the language of possession? Yours, mine. Give, take. ...”
2010 March: Dinner With Henry (1979), 2011 December: Asleep & Awake (1975), 2013 April: Henry Miller, 2014 April: Henry Miller, Brooklyn Hater, 2015 July: Henry Miller Interviews, 2015 August: The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1970), 2016 January: Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (1957)
Barbara Kruger: ‘Anyone who is shocked by what’s happening has not been paying attention’
“Few creators can claim the Museum of Modern Art and Rage Against the Machine as fans and collaborators. Yet, this is the unifying power of 77-year-old conceptual artist Barbara Kruger’s work: it’s immediate, powerful, and, as her legion of imitators has proven, it also looks great on a T-shirt.Known for iconic text works proclaiming ‘I shop therefore I am’ and ‘Your body is a battleground’ – the latter given new life last spring as an incendiary cover for New York Magazine – the artist remains ever humble. ...”
2008 February: Barbara Kruger, 2013 February: The Globe Shrinks, Barbara Kruger, 2014 June: Barbara Kruger at Modern Art Oxford, 2021 February: the artwork - Oral History: Barbara Kruger
Ukraine war: 21,000 alleged war crimes being investigated, prosecutor says
“Ukraine says it is investigating more than 21,000 war crimes and crimes of aggression allegedly committed by Russia since the start of its invasion. Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova told the BBC she was receiving reports of between 200 to 300 war crimes a day.She admitted that many trials would be held in absentia, but stressed that it was ‘a question of justice’ to continue with the prosecutions.Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February. It denies all war crimes allegations. Speaking to the BBC's World Service Outside Source programme, Ms Venediktova warned that Russian soldiers who killed, tortured or raped civilians ‘should understand that it's only a question of time when they all will be in court’. ...”
Fighters in Ukraine’s Odin Unit, made up of Ukrainians and foreign volunteers including Britons and Americans, during an operation in March in Irpin.
Tour de France stage 6: Tadej Pogačar takes stunning win and yellow jersey
“Tadej Pogačar followed up his strong showing on the cobbles with a similarly impressive blitz through the Ardennes on Thursday, nabbing the seventh Tour de France stage win of his career. The UAE Team Emirates rider answered an early jump by Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma) inside the final 400 metres of a hilly finale, blasting clear of the others in a select front group and hitting the line first. ...”
Guardian: Thibaut Pinot still France’s favourite but hopes of home glory thin on the ground (July 3)
Relentless fighters: The favorite to win the Tour, Slovenia's Tadej Pogacar, and the other riders struggle through dust and over cobblestones on Stage 5
Twyla Tharp and David Byrne - The Catherine Wheel (1982)
“An evening-long collaborative work between Tharp and David Byrne (of The Talking Heads), The Catherine Wheel is a continuous piece of dance/theater that makes its way toward a firework-like finale [see: The Golden Section] through episodes presenting the disintegration of the nuclear family, while ruminating on the detonation of nuclear weapons. The dance ensemble becomes a cast of specifically defined characters: The Leader and The Chorus; The Mother; The Father; The Sister; The Brother; The Maid; The Pet; and The Poet. A pineapple prop plays a part as its natural self and as its symbolic self, as a nickname for explosive devices. ...”
How War in Ukraine Roiled Russia’s ‘Coolest Company’
“What a difference a war makes. Just a few months ago, Yandex stood out as a rare Russian business success story, having mushroomed from a small start-up into a tech colossus that not only dominated search and ride-hailing across Russia, but boasted a growing global reach. A Yandex app could hail a taxi in far-flung cities like Abidjan, Ivory Coast; Oslo, Norway; or Tashkent, Uzbekistan; and the company delivered groceries in London, Paris and Tel Aviv. Fifty experimental Yandex robots trundled across the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus, bringing Grubhub food orders to students — with plans to expand to some 250 American campuses. ...”
A man walks in the rubble near damaged buildings, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in Bakhmut, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine in this still image obtained from a social media video released on July 2, 2022.
Nerval's Lobster: Is walking a crustacean any more ridiculous than a dog?
“Before Rimbaud, before the Surrealists, there was Nerval (1808 – 1855), living his life as if it were a lucid dream. Of course, it didn't hurt that his mental skies flickered with the chain lightning of madness—bouts of insanity that condemned him to periodic stays in asylums and, ultimately, self-murder. ... T.S. Eliot sampled him in his modernist mash-up The Waste Land. Proust thought he was one of the most important French writers of the 19th century. Yet Nerval lives on in the collective unconscious of the Google Age not as the visionary Romantic who wrote the hallucinatory sonnet sequence Les Chimères but as the eccentric's eccentric: the boulevardier who took his pet lobster for a walk, on a leash made of blue ribbon, in the jardins of the Palais-Royal. ...”
2016 June: Voyage to the Orient (1851), 2017 March: Selected Writings of Gerard De Nerval (1957), 2017 October: Les Filles du feu (1854), 2019 March: Sylvie (1853), 2020 May: Queen of Sheba
Stephen Scott – New Music For Bowed Piano (1984)
“Take the 200-year-old tradition of piano music for four hands, multiply it by, oh, two and a half, and cross it with Henry Cowell and John Cage’s experiments on the pianoforte’s inner regions, otherwise known as prepared piano. When the room stops spinning, what you might end up with is Stephen Scott. ... Piano preparation has the rep of being noisy and cranky, but Cage’s early pieces were often purposely lovely and gamelanlike. Scott explores similarly exotic territory, preferring echoey sonorities and consonant harmonies over grating and dissonance. ...”
YouTube: The Bowed Piano Ensemble perform Stephen Scott's Entrada (Live), Stephen Scott demonstrates the Bowed Piano (Live)
YouTube: New Music For Bowed Piano - 6 videos
‘Like ghosts’: Inside an occupied apartment building in Ukraine
“Hostomel, Ukraine – Andrii Kurpich, a towering, leather-clad 49-year-old chauffeur, manoeuvres his way through the dark and dingy basement of a half-ruined apartment block in Hostomel, a town about 20km (12 miles) northwest of Kyiv. Water drips from the overhead pipes into murky puddles and a stale humid smell hangs in the air. This eerie underground network of corridors and partially flooded rooms was home to nine of the block’s residents, including Andrii and his wife, Viktoria Kurpich, for more than a week after Russian troops stormed the building on March 5, 2022. Viktoria, a cheerful 51-year-old homemaker with short blonde hair, dressed all in black, says she was ‘terrified the soldiers would kill us’ when they knocked on their front door and ordered them outside with their hands up. ...”
Russian shelling has laid waste to large areas of the city
