“LVIV, Ukraine — The hassles never end for Yuriy Adamchuk, a Ukrainian executive who spends most of his waking hours coaxing 3,000 software coders to deliver projects on time, despite the obstacles and occasional horrors of war and a never-ending series of interruptions. Sitting in his office, he starts to elaborate, then is interrupted. The sounds of air raid sirens fill the streets of this historic, elegant city and an automated voice is heard, from loudspeakers in all directions, urging citizens to head to the nearest bomb shelter. From Mr. Adamchuk, the 43-year-old chief operating officer of Avenga, a software developer based in Lviv, there is no sense of concern. He resigns himself to evacuating the building and stands up, wearing a turquoise Lacoste shirt and the grudging smile of a world-weary man. ...”
5 takeaways from the January 6 hearing
“The January 6 committee concluded its first series of public hearings Thursday night with a revelatory look at what then-President Donald Trump was doing, and who was trying to influence him, during the 187 minutes between when he finished his Stop the Steal speech at the rally on January 6, 2021, and when he tweeted a video calling for the rioters at the Capitol to leave. ... 1) During the siege, Trump watched Fox News and “poured gasoline” on what he saw unfolding. For nearly three hours, according to the committee, Trump watched Fox News as it broadcast live images of the Capitol being breached and the mob attacking law enforcement officers. That matched previous press reports about Trump’s activities at the time. ...”
A writer recalls “the beauty of it all” after a visit to 1890s Manhattan Beach
“During summer in the early 1890s, a huge electric sign dominated the side of the St. Germain Hotel, at Broadway and 22nd Street. The St. Germain stood on the sliver of land that would be home to the Flatiron building less than a decade later. But at that time, nothing obstructed the ad—which faced the fashionable hotels, streetcar lines, and shopping emporiums of Madison Square. ... The electric sign hoped to lure sweltering city residents to this middle class resort, a more genteel version of Coney Island on the same Brooklyn peninsula. But it also captivated Theodore Dreiser, who was new in New York City after a stint as a journalist in the Midwest. ...”
The Manhattan Beach Hotel, 1900
Europe’s gas crisis is here
“Nord Stream 1, the pipeline that delivers natural gas from Russia to Germany, was shut down this week for annual maintenance. Typically, this is routine. But typically, a war isn’t raging in Europe. That’s why Germany — and the rest of the European Union — was nervous that when the 10-day maintenance was scheduled to end on July 21, the pipeline wouldn’t come back online. Instead, Russia might keep it closed, or drastically reduce its flows, as retaliation against Germany and the rest of Europe for sanctions and their support for Ukraine. The worst didn’t happen. Gas is flowing through Nord Stream 1 again as of Thursday morning, though at less than half of its capacity. ...”
A young Ukrainian rallies against Uniper Energy, Germany’s largest importer of gas from Russia, in front of the company’s headquarters in Duesseldorf, Germany, on July 14
Pessoa (2022)
“... In Pessoa, you are one of Pessoa’s most famous heteronyms — Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Álvaro de Campos, and Bernardo Soares — and move between the metaphysical space of Pessoa's head and the physical spaces of Lisbon to gain inspiration from the iconic cafés, visit bookshops to expand your library and knowledge, and seek inspiration to write poems, thereby scoring victory points. Whoever has the most victory points at the end of the game wins.In more detail, Pessoa is a worker-placement game with special rules in which players can place their heteronyms since each player is a different heteronym, but all players are also the same physical person, that is Fernando Pessoa. ...”
2008 March: Fernando Pessoa, 2012 October: The Book of Disquiet, 2012 November: Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems, 2014 May: Aspects by Fernando Pessoa, 2016 March: Passoa's Trunk - 13+ ways of looking at a poem, 2017 September: Fernando Pessoa’s Disappearing Act, 2020 February: Strange Music Of Silence: Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet, 2021 August: The Heteronymous Identities of Fernando Pessoa By Richard Zeniths, 2022 January: Conceptual Personae: The many imagined lives of Fernando Pessoa
Body and Soul - Coleman Hawkins (1939)
“The language of jazz is built on small phrases — riffs that pass like coveted currency from one musician and one generation to the next. But every now and then, there comes a moment when that tried-and-true vocabulary no longer serves, and by rejecting it, an artist arrives at a statement that nudges or catapults the music in new directions. Coleman Hawkins' 1939 treatment of ‘Body and Soul’ is one of those great evolutionary leaps. Hawkins, who's been called ‘The Father of the Tenor Saxophone,’ was by all accounts the first to establish the tenor sax as a jazz instrument. ...”
European nations are asked to cut their use of natural gas 15 percent until next spring.
“BRUSSELS — To avoid energy shortages that would stall economic growth and leave households cold in the winter as Russia weaponizes its gas exports, European countries should immediately start rationing use of the fuel, the European Commission said on Wednesday, and cut their use 15 percent until next spring. If the bloc’s 27 member countries agree to adopt the plan and the new legislation that goes with it, it would solidify the sense that Europe’s economy is on war footing because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The proposal would grant the Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, powers to force member nations to follow a strict plan of energy consumption cuts as of this summer. ...”
Renée Méndez Capote (1901-1989)
“Renée Méndez Capote y Chaple (12 November 1901 – 14 May 1989), also known by the pseudonyms Io-san, Berenguela, and Suzanne, was a Cuban writer, essayist, journalist, translator, suffragist, and feminist activist. She worked in children's literature, short stories, essays, and biographies. ... Together with Berta Arocena de Martínez Márquez, she was one of the founders of the Lyceum on 1 December 1928, one of the ‘most cultural and intellectual’ feminist organizations of the era. They were joined by Carmen Castellanos, Matilde Martínez Márquez, Carmelina Guanche, Alicia Santamaría, Ofelia Tomé, Dulce Marta Castellanos, Lilliam Mederos, Rebeca Gutiérrez, Sarah Méndez Capote, Mary Caballero, María Josefa Vidaurreta, and María Teresa Moré in organizing a group which advocated for women's suffrage. This became a lobbyist institution in Cuba's parliament and organized several feminist events in the country. ...”
How we tell the story of African film history
“In December 2019, film connoisseurs in Ethiopia received a rare treat when the Addis Ababa Cinema Houses Administration Enterprise arranged a festival to showcase some of the classic Ethiopian movies made between 1964 and 1992. These films had been largely inaccessible to filmgoers, filmmakers, instructors, and students, for decades. The last time any of them screened was in 2008. The desire to go back in time and see some of these early masterpieces was evident as crowds lined up to enter the Ambassador Theatre in the center of Ethiopia’s capital city. ...”
How ‘Stop the Steal’ Captured the American Right
“The Pennsylvania State Capitol, in Harrisburg, is a Beaux-Arts landmark that on its eastern side echoes the west terrace of the U.S. Capitol, and the scene there on Nov. 7, 2020, four days after Election Day, strikingly prefigured the one in Washington two months later. On the plaza below, more than a thousand strong, were the Donald Trump faithful, in MAGA hats and every possible variation of red, white and blue clothing, waving the banners of the campaign. ‘Stop the steal!’ they chanted. ‘Stop the steal!’ ... The larger, louder pro-Trump contingent included many of the same groups, and in some cases the same people, who would later be investigated for their role in the events of Jan. 6. There were men with assault-style rifles and forearm tattoos pledging allegiance to the Proud Boys and the Three Percenter antigovernment movement, and the Groypers, supporters of the young white nationalist Nick Fuentes’s America First group. ...”
The protest outside the Pennsylvania Capitol on Nov. 7, 2020, the day news organizations began calling the race for president for Joe Biden.
Russia hits Ukrainian homes, infrastructure as Putin visits Iran
“Russian missiles have struck cities and villages in eastern and southern Ukraine, hitting homes, a school and a community centre as Russian President Vladimir Putin was in Iran to discuss a United Nations-backed proposal to unblock exports of Ukrainian grain. At least two civilians were killed and 15 more were wounded by Russian attacks across Ukraine during the past 24 hours, Ukraine’s presidential office said in a morning update on Monday. In Kramatorsk, a city in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk province that is considered a likely occupation target of Russian forces, one person was killed in an air raid on Monday that hit a five-story residential building, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said in televised comments. ...”
A five-story residential building is seen damaged from a rocket attack in a residential area, in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine
‘Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel’ Review: Bohemia’s Holdouts
“Early in ’Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel,’ a construction worker says that the famed building has ‘a lot of ghosts.’ A home for untold authors, artists and musicians since it opened in the Gilded Age — and probably the only dwelling anywhere that housed, at different times, Mark Twain and superstars from Andy Warhol’s Factory — the Chelsea Hotel, as seen in this documentary from Amélie van Elmbt and Maya Duverdier, appears haunted even by its current residents, who wander halls that have been filled with plastic sheeting. ...”
2010 October: Hotel Chelsea, 2014 January: Arena Hotel Chelsea, 2019 August: The Chelsea Affect - Arthur Miller
Putin Thinks He’s Winning
“... We sat in silence for a moment before I changed the topic. Since when did a political disagreement have the power to make my mother cry? How much further had my family been transformed by propaganda since I had escaped its claws? Like my parents, I had been pro-Putin once. I thought that Russia had ‘saved’ Crimea from neo-Nazi rebels, that it was the victim of a global smear campaign because the world couldn’t bear the fact that Russia is so big and oil-rich. But since I moved to the U.S. for a second bachelor’s degree and fell in love with journalism, I realized that my political views were rooted not in facts but in a lifelong exposure to the Kremlin’s propaganda machine. My family is still in Russia, and over the years, the views of my reasonable, highly educated and once liberal-leaning parents have become almost alien. Like many Russians, they believe the invasion of Ukraine is just an ‘operation to take out neo-Nazis.’ ...”
Travelers wait to board a Ukrainian bus to Kyiv, at the bus station in Krakow, Poland, on June 16.
Geopolitics In Tintin Comics: Around The World In 24 Albums
“What makes certain creative works, containing egregious racial caricatures and politically replete depictions, outlive their popularity among readers they were originally meant for, but continue to hold the fancy among readers in other parts of the world? Just like P.G. Wodehouse, whose quaint, upper-class British humour and characters are all but forgotten in his homeland, but continue to regale generations of English-educated middle class in South Asia. Or, say, Tintin, the globetrotting comicbook hero that Belgians and other Europeans seem to have grown over, but whose fandom continues to grow in the global South. ...”
2008 May: Georges Remi, 1907-1983, 2010 July: The Adventures of Tintin: Breaking Free, 2011 December: Prisoners of the Sun, 2012 January: Tintin: the Complete Companion, 2012 December: Snowy, 2015 August: The Black Island (1937), 2015 September: King Ottokar's Sceptre (1938), 2015 December: Red Rackham's Treasure (1943), 2016 July: Captain Haddock, 2017 April: Cigars of the Pharaoh (1934), 2018 March: Destination Moon (1950), Explorers on the Moon (1954), 2018 July: The Calculus Affair (1956), 2018 October: Professor Calculus, 2019 March: Thomson and Thompson, 2020 January: Tintin
The Lower East Side’s Mechanics Alley is one of the last true alleys in Manhattan
“In the Hollywood-inspired imaginations of people who don’t live here, New York City is a place with shadowy alleys around every corner where danger lurks. Though the city past and present certainly has its dark pockets and little-traveled lanes, Gotham never really had many alleys, even in its earliest days. The creators of the 1811 Commissioner’s Plan, which laid out the street grid, wisely knew that real estate would be too valuable to intentionally leave undeveloped. ...”
Moscow Signals a Shift to a More Aggressive Phase of Ukraine War
“KYIV, Ukraine — In an indication that Russian forces were ending what they called an operational pause in their invasion of Ukraine, the defense minister of Russia, Sergei K. Shoigu, on Saturday ordered his forces to intensify attacks “in all operational sectors” of the war. As the Ukrainian government disclosed modest new ground attacks by Russian forces, the Russian defense ministry said in a statement that Mr. Shoigu had instructed that combat be intensified to stop Ukraine from shelling civilian areas in Russian-occupied territory. After deadly Russian missile strikes across Ukraine in recent days that killed civilians, the statement was a new signal from Moscow that its invasion may be entering a more aggressive phase. ...”
The shadow of a helicopter is seen on the field of sunflowers in Kyiv region on July 14, 2022, amid Russian invasion of Ukraine.
John Lely - Meander Selection (2020)
"The music of John Lely has run a continuous thread through the programmes of Apartment House for some 20 years. A subtle, yet sinuous presence, producing music that has a quiet yet significant sounding air about it. Lely’s titles of his works are ambiguous, yet point to hidden constructs and origins, Pale Signal, Meander Section or Karnaugh Quartets for example. Ambiguous perhaps, but revealing music of great clarity and an etched beauty. The harmonic worlds sound familiar, yet redolent of some hidden, subliminal place, like a photograph by Luigi Ghirri or Eugene Atget. As I wrote that previous sentence the Giacometti sculpture ‘The Palace at 4am’ (1932) popped into my mind’s eye. Lely’s music is there and so are we, listening, eternally. ...”
Hidden Van Gogh self-portrait discovered
“Believed to be a first for a UK institution, the mysterious image was revealed by an x-ray taken when we examined Van Gogh’s Head of a Peasant Woman of 1885 ahead of our exhibition A Taste for Impressionism. Visitors will be able to see the amazing x-ray image for the first time through a specially crafted lightbox at the centre of the display. Hidden from view for over a century, the self-portrait is on the back of the canvas with Head of a Peasant Woman and is covered by layers of glue and cardboard. ...”
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, 2022 May: Langlois Bridge at Arles
In a Flash of Fire and Shrapnel, a Smiling 4-Year-Old’s Life Is Snuffed Out
“VINNYTSIA, Ukraine — They called her Sunny Flower. She had just learned her first words. She liked to clean the corridor at the speech therapy center she attended, and organize the toys. She always seemed happy. And after her final visit to the center on Thursday, Liza Dmytriyeva, a 4-year-old with Down syndrome, did what young children like to do — proudly push her own baby carriage through the park on a walk with her mother. It was, in other words, a typical, happy morning for Liza. But it ended in a flash of fire and metallic shrapnel from a Russian cruise missile strike on Vinnytsia, a central Ukrainian town far from the front lines, where some sense of normalcy had still been possible five months into the war. ...”
The stroller that Liza Dmytriyeva was pushing before she was killed in the Russian missile attack on Vinnytsia, Ukraine, on Thursday.
Barcelona’s incompetence should be celebrated in an age of gross inequality
“The winner of the 2022 Football Book of the Year award is Barca by Simon Kuper, which was originally intended to be about how Barcelona became the world’s most revered football club. During Kuper’s research, however, the situation changed. Barcelona were no longer the world’s most revered club. Rather, they were being roundly mocked for their haplessness at board level. The book was published just before the departure of Lionel Messi on a free transfer to Paris Saint-Germain last summer, which occurred because the club were in such a ridiculous state they weren’t able to register him as a player, despite them wanting to keep Messi and Messi wanting to stay. ...”
Cooking with Dante Alighieri By Valerie Stivers
“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
