All Things Are Possible: Mario Vargas Llosa on the Eternal Youth of Flaubert’s Writing

“At some point in the last century, I arrived in Paris and that very day bought a copy of Madame Bovary in a bookstore called Joie de Vivre in the Latin Quarter. I stayed up nearly all night reading it and by dawn I knew what kind of writer I wanted to be. Thanks to Flaubert, I was starting to get familiar with all the secrets of the art of the novel. No one did more to further the genre of the novel than the Hermit from Croisset. ... This is how Flaubert created the modern novel and laid the foundation for what, years later, would be the infinite devices and techniques that James Joyce invented with which to supply the genre and differentiate it from the past and its classic iteration. ...”

LitHub

2015 March: Mario Vargas Llosa, 2019 April: The Metamorphosis, 2022 July: Mario Vargas Llosa: Fiction and hyper-reality

​Six Months Later, Are We Forgetting Ukraine?

“New Yorkers have a reputation for standing up for their home city. This came to the fore during the Covid-19 pandemic when city residents acted together in the battle against the virus. That same tough mindset supported the city’s Ukrainian community in the days and weeks following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. What once sounded like a joke or an unlikely scenario became a somber reminder of the brutality of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and the fragility of young democracies. ... Seemingly overnight, New York’s attention turned to Ukraine. The city is home to 150,000 Ukrainian Americans, the largest community in the country, and everywhere New Yorkers turned there were symbols of support for Ukraine. People flocked to Ukrainian businesses and to cultural hubs in ‘Little Ukraine,’ in the East Village, and many attended protests demanding that NATO ‘close the skies’ over Ukraine. ...”

Voice

NY Times: Ukrainian Children Bring a Play From a Bomb Shelter to Brooklyn

LA Times: In New York’s ‘Little Odessa,’ solidarity with Ukraine, strained friendships (March 19, 2022)

CBS: Brighton Beach Corner co-named "Ukrainian Way" in solidarity (Video)

Support for Ukraine in the East Village: On “President Zelenskyy Way,” at Big Bar, on East 7th Street, and at the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America, on Second Avenue.

​The staircases left behind after the original Penn Station was demolished

“It took five years to build Penn Station: millions of tons of granite, steel, stone, and bricks were transformed into a triumphant Beaux Arts monument to modern transportation that officially opened in 1910. (Constructing Penn Station leveled several blocks and hundreds of tenements in the Tenderloin, but that’s another story.) A half century later, it took three years to demolish what was now an underused, money-losing station. On October 28, 1963, small groups of protestors could not stop the team of wreckers who began jackhammering the exterior and carting away the rubble. ...”

Ephemeral New York

Cooking with Nora Ephron - Valerie Stivers

“I am a baker of pies and a believer in pleasures, but also the kind of killjoy who can’t take a rom-com in the spirit it’s intended. Hence my fraught relationship with Heartburn by Nora Ephron. I remember—from 1983, the year the book was published—it being marketed as a ‘hilarious’ comedy about a woman cooking her way out of a broken heart at the end of a marriage. Heartburn was a cultural sensation in the suburbs of my youth, such that I recall my mother cackling over the film adaptation and criticizing Meryl Streep’s looks—not pretty enough! ...”

The Paris Review

The Paris Review - Category Archives: Eat Your Words

​Ukraine war round-up: Russia burns off its excess gas and war memorial torn down

“Satellite images of a fuel plant in north-west Russia show huge amounts of gas being burned off into the air, analysts tell the BBC. The liquified natural gas (LNG) complex is thought to be burning unused fuel that would have normally been sold to Germany, Western countries have been trying to reduce the amount of Russian energy they use to end their dependence on Moscow. But left with too much unsellable gas, it now appears that Russian operators have simply decided to burn it into the air - prompting environmental concerns too. ...”

BBC

NY Times: War Brings Ukraine’s Women New Roles and New Dangers

Jacobin: What Are the Chances for a Negotiated End to the Ukraine War? It’s Complicated.

Guardian: Concerns over Ukraine nuclear plant persist amid reports of shelling

A colourised version of this satellite image captures infrared radiation from the burning of gas at the Portovaya plant

Donald Trump Is Not Above the Law

The Editorial Board: “Over the course of this summer, the nation has been transfixed by the House select committee’s hearings on the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and how or whether Donald Trump might face accountability for what happened that day. The Justice Department remained largely silent about its investigations of the former president until this month, when the F.B.I. searched his home in Palm Beach, Fla., in a case related to his handling of classified documents. The spectacle of a former president facing criminal investigation raises profound questions about American democracy, and these questions demand answers. Mr. Trump’s unprecedented assault on the integrity of American democracy requires a criminal investigation. The disturbing details of his postelection misfeasance, meticulously assembled by the Jan. 6 committee, leave little doubt that Mr. Trump sought to subvert the Constitution and overturn the will of the American people. ...”

NY Times | Opinion

NY Times: Classified Material on Human Intelligence Sources Helped Trigger Alarm

NY Times: The Affidavit for the Search of Trump’s Home, Annotated

NY Times: Possibility of Obstruction Looms Over Trump After Thwarted Efforts to Recover Documents

NY Times: The full affidavit used to search Mar-a-Lago.

Alex Katz Is Still Perfecting His Craft

“Entering Alex Katz’s home and studio, on the block in New York’s SoHo neighborhood where he has lived and worked since 1968, is like stepping directly into his mind, from which his enveloping aesthetic world originates. When I arrive at his light-washed loft space late on a summer morning, Katz, who turned 95 this past July, is in the spare nook of the kitchen, where he has just put the finishing brushstrokes on a study of lavender peonies — one of the first iterative steps toward creating his monumental works, which are hung on walls and leaning against various surfaces in the living space and adjacent studio. ... Through the doorway of a room off the kitchen, I glimpse his reclusive wife, Ada, 94, a spectral, gray-haired figure. ...”

NY Times (Video)

2008 February: Alex Katz, 2010 December: Life Imitates Art, 2012 June: Alex Katz Prints, 2013 April: On Painting: Alex Katz & Felix Vallotton, May 2016: Alex Katz at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, 2021 December: Alex Katz: The Brooklyn Rail

One of the artist’s early group portraits, “The Cocktail Party” (1965).

Should Russian Culture Be ‘Canceled’ Over the Ukraine Invasion?

“Should the anti-Russia backlash triggered by the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine spare Russian culture, whether in the form of performances by modern-day Russian musicians or courses on classical Russian literature? This question has stoked polemics since the early days of the invasion, when Russian artists such as singer Anna Netrebko, conductor Valery Gergiev, and pianist Alexander Malofeev found their contracts dropped and their concerts canceled, and when an Italian university postponed (though it later reinstated) a lecture course on Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Even many people who fully support the Ukrainian side feel that ‘canceling’ Russian artists and writers, including long-dead ones, for Vladimir Putin’s or the Russian army’s sins is taking things too far; meanwhile, pro-Russian and Ukraine-skeptical voices invoke such cancellations as evidence of mindless Russophobic zeal in the pro-Ukraine corner. But there are also those who say that Russian culture, current or past, cannot be separated from Russian imperialism and militant nationalism—and that promoters of this aggressive ideology must be held to account. ...”

The Bulwark

GRID: Why Crimea matters: Ukrainian attacks are frightening Russian tourists and forcing Russia’s army to change tactics

NY Times: With Military Attacks and Mockery, Ukraine Pokes the Russian Bear

Guardian: Impact of war on Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant – visual guide

A plinth in Ternopil, Ukraine sits empty after a statue of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin was dismantled in April 2022. Similar statues came down around Ukraine as part of the “Pushkinopad” (Pushkinfall) in response to the Russian invasion.

 

Jean de Florette / Manon des Sources - Claude Berri (1986)

“Jean de Florette... is a 1986 period drama film directed by Claude Berri, based on a novel by Marcel Pagnol. It is followed by Manon des Sources. The story takes place in rural Provence, where two local farmers plot to trick a newcomer out of his newly inherited property. The film starred three of France's most prominent actors – Gérard Depardieu, Daniel Auteuil, who won a BAFTA award for his performance, and Yves Montand in one of his last roles. The film was shot back to back with Manon des Sources, over a period of seven months. ...”

W - Jean de Florette, W - Manon des Sources

Favourite French Films #2: Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources

YouTube: Jean-Claude Petit - Jean de Florette / Manon des Sources  11:34

 

Midnight Scorchers - Horace Andy (2022)

“A companion album to the critically acclaimed Midnight Rocker, this is Adrian Sherwood’s ‘sound system’ take on the original sessions. Featuring new tracks; radical dancehall re-works with MC interjections from Daddy Freddy and Lone Ranger; and stripped back instrumental version excursions in classic dub reggae style. Continuing the series that Sherwood began with Heavy Rain, his re-working of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry's Rainford album, Midnight Scorchers is both an essential sequel to Midnight Rocker as well as being a powerful album in its own right. ...”

Rough Trade

Bandcamp (Audio)

YouTube: Feverish (Official Video)

2015 June: Horace Andy's Dub Box: Rare Dubs 1973-1976

​War and Water: Russia is Destroying Ukraine’s Water Supply

“Today we have a paramount topic. Water and War. Thousands of people in Ukraine are suffering from thirst and lack of safe drinking water. But there were problems with water even before the war. And today’s challenges arose against the background of climate change. Among the countries of Europe, Ukraine is one of the least endowed with water resources—even in the best years, when approximately 1,000 cubic meters of water are available to the average Ukrainian, it is still almost 500 cubic meters under what the UN European Economic Commission recommends to avoid water insecurity. Additionally, only  25% of settlements are provided with a centralized water supply. About 11 million citizens of Ukraine use water from wells, but, according to official Ukrainian data, 15% of those wells are contaminated. How did we get here? Below are three interviews concerning the problem of water and the war in Ukraine. —Oleg Rubel ...”

Voice

Vanity Fair: Holding Russia to Account for War Crimes in Ukraine

POLITCO: How Ukraine used Russia’s digital playbook against the Kremlin (Audio)

Water = Life: Bottled water collected by volunteers for citizens of Mykolaiv; algae blooming in ponds.

Against August

“There is something off about August. This part of the summer season brings about an atmospheric unease. The long light stops feeling languorous and starts to seem like it’s just a way of putting off the night. There is no position of the earth in relation to the sun that comes as a relief. Insomnia arrives in August; bedsheets become heavy under humidity. No good habits are possible in August, much less good decisions. All I do is think about my outfits and my commute, constantly trying to choose between my sweatiness and my vanity. People are not themselves. I go see the party girls and find them wistful. I meet up with the melancholics and find them wanting to stay out all night. ...”

The Paris Review

Edward Hopper, Second Story Sunlight, 1960.

​Cage Chord Megamix Under Construction

“This is a post for Disquiet Junto community members. I wanted to check in about the recent ‘Cage Chord.’ That was the project from two weeks ago (details: disquiet.com/0554). It was one of the three we’ve done this year in collaboration with Musikfestival Bern in Bern, Switzerland (September 7 through 11; musikfestivalbern.ch), thanks to the invitation (for the fourth year in a row) by longtime Junto participant Tobias Reber, who works for Musikfestival Bern. ...”

disquiet (Audio)

Ukraine Under Attack: Documenting the Russian Invasion - Photographers in and around Ukraine have captured the horrors of war.

“Atrocities against civilians. Thousands of casualties, with the toll rising. Millions of refugees. Thriving cities besieged and reduced to rubble. Ukrainians continue to resist the Russian onslaught. Joined by civilians who have picked up arms, Ukrainian forces held on to Kyiv, the capital, and forced the Russian military to change its strategy, shifting its attention to the east. On the vast expanse of wide-open flatland, the war has bogged down in fierce artillery duels and hard-fought battles for coal mining and farming towns in the Donbas region, as most of the civilian population has already fled. In mostly deserted towns, authorities trucked in water and food, while volunteers evacuated stragglers, many of them elderly or disabled. ...”

NY Times

NY Times - Thousands of Civilian Deaths and 6.6 Million Refugees: Calculating the Costs of War.

The remains of Russian military vehicles in the town of Bucha, close to Kyiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday. Day 6.

​Best John Lee Hooker Songs: 20 Essential Tracks By The Blues Legend

“He couldn’t boast the effortless authority of Muddy Waters. He wasn’t an outlandish marketable character like Bo Diddley. He couldn’t terrify you from across the hall like Howlin’ Wolf. But John Lee Hooker was a blues survivor who’d rock you to the socks that were poking out of the hole in your soles; he was street-smart, adaptable, even crafty. And armed with nothing but a guitar and his dark, moody, mumblin’, barking voice, he’d make you dance: 'Boogie Chillen,' as he once called it. And that’s where we’ll start our rundown of the best John Lee Hooker songs, because this was his debut single. This 1948 anthem is a call to get ya dance freak on. Oh, but isn’t the blues a noble cry of the poor African-American who is suffering? Hell yes, but Hooker’s telling us if you got feet, you can use them to beat the blues. ...”

udiscover (Video)

W - John Lee Hooker

Discogs

YouTube: Boom Boom (Live Video)

How the Webb Telescope Expanded My Universe

“I have a confession to make: I underestimated the James Webb Space Telescope. For years, as NASA struggled to build the designated successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, I came to think of the Webb as a problem child, ever-delayed, swallowing dollars that could have gone to other telescopes and space missions. ... It was an infrared telescope, which would give astrophysicists a new angle on what was going on out there, but I didn’t think it could have the impact Hubble had. I was wrong. This has been the summer of Webb. ...”

NY Times

​Mariupol remembered: a bright future reduced to rubble

“Maryna Holovnova used to enjoy her summer routine in her southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Before starting work for the day as a tourist guide, the 28-year-old would wake early, jog along the beach and swim in the Azov Sea at sunrise. Afterwards, she would take the bus across the city and drink her morning coffee on her favourite bench in a chestnut-tree-filled alley in Mariupol’s historic centre. On the weekends, she would cycle on newly laid roads to remote fisher villages to camp overnight, passing sunflower fields and people selling watermelons along the way. In the summer seasons of recent years, visitors had discovered Maryna’s city, a place straddled by a sprawling seaport and gargantuan steelworks, turning it into a popular holiday destination. In the humid, Mediterranean weather, tourists would throng the pier and seaside, wading out hundreds of metres into the world's shallowest sea. ...”

Aljazeera

Aljazeera: Six months on, the Russia-Ukraine war mapped out

NY Times: In Ukraine, a Nuclear Plant Held Hostage

A view shows a plant of Azovstal Iron and Steel Works behind buildings damaged during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine April 28, 2022. 

​Why there's no 'Dijon' in Dijon mustard

“Take a wander down any condiment aisle in France these days, and you'll notice a pervasive absence between le mayo and le ketchup. Since this May, France has faced a widespread dearth of Dijon mustard, leading one French resident to advertise two jars for sale to the tune of €6,000 or about £5,000 (since revealed to be merely in jest). The shortage has incited expats (this author included) to not-at-all-jokingly smuggle squeeze bottles of Maille back into the country from places like the US to get their fix, while author and Paris resident David Lebovitz even resorted to hunting his jars down at a local gardening store, of all places. While French news outlets wasted no time in attributing the shortage to the war in Ukraine, the real story is a whole lot spicier than that. ...”

BBC

W - Dijon mustard

YouTube: Why Real Dijon Mustard Is So Expensive | So Expensive 

​An alchemist's guide to Europe

“Alchemy is very, very old. Guided by material handed down through the centuries from ancient Egypt, Arabia and China to classical Greece and Rome, and then to western and central Europe, the practitioner of alchemy has three key aims: to determine the whereabouts of or else synthesise the Philosopher’s Stone, to uncover the secret to eternal life, and to establish a way of turning base metals into gold. While we might claim that such pursuits are clearly founded on a fundamental misunderstanding of chemistry, in the eyes of many monarchs, alchemy was well worth investing in. ...”

Far Out

‘The biggest movement in the history’ — Ukraine evacuates the front line

“KOSTYANTYNIVKA, Ukraine — Ludmila Bohomolova and her husband Mykola know what it means to stay behind after the Russian tanks roll in. The two teachers endured what they describe as five months of hell following the occupation of their village, Pavlivka in eastern Ukraine, earlier this year. For the first three months under Russia, the villagers hid in their cellars, tried to survive on whatever food they had and buried their dead in yards and playgrounds. The only way out was through Russian-controlled territory. The couple also remained after Pavlivka was recaptured by Ukraine, staying on for another two months with no gas, electricity or running water, under constant bombardment by Russian artillery. It was only after Mykola was injured by shrapnel on July 24 that circumstances forced them to evacuate. ...”

POLITICO

The Bulwark: The Death of Dugina

NY Times: Devouring Oysters by Battlefield, Ukrainians ‘Switch Off for a Bit’

Over 12 million have been displaced by the war since Russia invaded Ukraine

Cuba: An American History - Ada Ferrer (2022)

"In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba, where a momentous revolution had taken power three years earlier. For more than half a century, the stand-off continued—through the tenure of ten American presidents and the fifty-year rule of Fidel Castro. ... Meanwhile, politics in Washington—Barack Obama’s opening to the island, Donald Trump’s reversal of that policy, and the election of Joe Biden—have made the relationship between the two nations a subject of debate once more. Now, award-winning historian Ada Ferrer delivers an ambitious and moving chronicle written for a moment that demands a new reckoning with both the island’s past and its relationship with the United States. Spanning more than five centuries, Cuba: An American History provides us with a front-row seat as we witness the evolution of the modern nation, with its dramatic record of conquest and colonization, of slavery and freedom, of independence and revolutions made and unmade. ...”

Ada Ferrer - Cuba: An American History

W - Mass media in Cuba,, W - Special Period, W - Maleconazo, W - Cuban thaw, W - Rationing in Cuba, W - Cinema of Cuba

W - Radio Havana Cuba, W - Freedom Flights, W - Cuban boat people, W - Mariel boatlift, W - Alpha 66

Fascinating Photos That Capture Everyday Life of Cuba in the 1970s

PBS: Cuban Exiles in America

Long View: How the Fight Against Castro Once Terrorized U.S. Cities

Mike Rothschild on the Ongoing Influence of QAnon and Its Self-Made Mythologies

“A small crowd gathered on Dallas’ Dealey Plaza on a cool early November day in 2021, full of excitement and powered by secret knowledge. It was almost a year after the last Q drop, and three years into the COVID-19 pandemic. But the people assembled that morning, in the solemn place where John F. Kennedy was assassinated nearly 60 years prior, weren’t worrying about getting sick. They certainly weren’t wearing masks. Those were slaver muzzles designed to make you stupid. What they did have were a few red ties, a plethora of bedazzled homemade signs and shirts, and the certain knowledge that everything in the world was about to change—within minutes. ...”

LitHub

March 2020: Can YouTube Quiet Its Conspiracy Theorists?, 2020 October: QAnon, Blood Libel, and the Satanic Panic, 2020 December: Trump’s Crazy and Confoundingly Successful Conspiracy Theory Image, 2020 December: Accountability After Trump

​The risks to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia power plant, explained

“Russian and Ukrainian forces are locked in a standoff at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, raising fears across Europe and the specter of Chernobyl. Shelling near the strategically located plant — which both sides have blamed on the other — has increased the risk of a serious accident, and families are fleeing the area in the face of a possible nuclear catastrophe. Zaporizhzhia is Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, and it provides electricity to Ukraine and to several European countries. Its location on the Dnipro River makes it a critical target for Russian forces, which have controlled the plant since March. Despite Russian forces allegedly turning the plant into a military installation, Ukrainian operators still manage the safety and daily operations of the plant, under significant duress. ...”

VOX

Guardian: The west is trying to quietly forget the war in Ukraine. It does so at its own peril

BBC - Ukraine war: Drone pilots mark targets for new offensive (Video)

A Russian serviceman patrols the territory of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in Energodar on May 1, 2022.

 

‘22 Goals’: Ronaldo, 2002 World Cup Final in Japan

“As the 22nd men’s FIFA World Cup approaches in November 2022, The Ringer introduces 22 Goals, a podcast by Brian Phillips about the most iconic goals scored in the history of the World Cup. Every Wednesday, until the end of Qatar 2022, we’ll publish an adapted version of each 22 Goals episode. Today’s story involves the ‘original’ Ronaldo from the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan. …”

The Ringer (Audio)

The Ringer – ‘22 Goals’: Diego Maradona, 1986 World Cup in Mexico (Audio)

Idle Hands: Surrealism versus the work ethic

“... This sensational conflict is recounted by art historian Abigail Susik in her recent book Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work. Taking the amorphous if persistent ‘anti-work position’ of Surrealist artists in interwar Europe and postwar United States as its purview, Susik’s account considers symbolic, rhetorical, and ‘parapolitical’ manifestations of sabotage in the writing and automatist practices of the Parisian Surrealists, the paintings and sculpture of Canary Islander and late-coming Bretonian Óscar Domínguez, and, across the Atlantic, the protest performances and exhibitions of the Chicago Surrealists in the 1960s. The book interprets these artistic interventions alongside contemporaneous political movements and material cultures, with particular attention paid to a shifting gendered division of labor. ...”

ARTFORUM

Man Ray, Séance de réve éveillé (Walking Dream Séance), 1924, Left to right: Max Morise, Roger Vitrac, Simone Breton, Jacques-André Boiffard, André Breton, Paul Éluard, Pierre Naville, Robert Desnos, Giorgio de Chirico, Philippe Soupault, Jacques Baron.

Ukrainian Strikes May Be Slowing Russia’s Advance

“KYIV, Ukraine — The Ukrainian military extended the fight deeper into Russian-controlled territory on Friday, as it sharpens a strategy of trying to degrade Moscow’s combat capabilities by striking ammunition depots and supply lines in the occupied Crimean Peninsula and other areas the Kremlin had long thought to be safe. Crimea, a key staging ground for Russia’s invasion, has been firmly under Kremlin control since it was illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014. But it has been rocked by several recent attacks, some carried out by clandestine Ukrainian fighters operating behind enemy lines. Oleksiy Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s national security council, said on Friday that Kyiv would target sites in Crimea as part of a ‘step-by-step demilitarization of the peninsula with its subsequent de-occupation.’ ...”

NY Times

Guardian: Ukraine launches fresh strike on Russia’s Black Sea fleet headquarters (Video)

GRID - World in Photos: Fears of catastrophe at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant

An Ukrainian Emergency Ministry rescuer attends an exercise in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on Wednesday.

​Chroma: Ancient Sculpture in Color

“Ancient Greek and Roman sculpture was once colorful, vibrantly painted and richly adorned with detailed ornamentation. Chroma: Ancient Sculpture in Color reveals the colorful backstory of polychromy—meaning “many colors,” in Greek—and presents new discoveries of surviving ancient color on artworks in The Met’s world-class collection. Exploring the practices and materials used in ancient polychromy, the exhibition highlights cutting-edge scientific methods used to identify ancient color and examines how color helped convey meaning in antiquity, and how ancient polychromy has been viewed and understood in later periods. ...”

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Video)

NY Times - That Painted Greek Maiden at the Met: Just Whose Vision Is She?

​Smoking Harry Whitaker: A Village Jazz Story

“One night at Smalls, the venerable jazz club on West 10th Street in Greenwich Village, I asked Spike Wilner, the venue’s proprietor, ‘Whatever happened to that beautiful cat that used to haunt this place?’ (Though I can’t verify it as fact, it’s possible that across America, many jazz clubs have an official house cat that slinks around the club. A cat amongst cats, as they say in the jazz world.) ... I did remember the late Harry Whitaker. Beginning in the late 1990s, Harry was a regular performer at Smalls. He was a piano player of prodigious talents. I never met Harry, but I saw him play a few times at the club. ...”

Voice

Harry Whitaker – Blues For Piano Players (Video)

 

​Odesa Is Defiant. It’s Also Putin’s Ultimate Target.

“ODESA, Ukraine — The Odesa Fine Arts Museum, a colonnaded early-19th-century palace, stands almost empty. Early in Russia’s war on Ukraine, its staff removed more than 12,000 works for safe keeping. One large portrait remained, depicting Catherine the Great, the Russian empress and founder of Odesa, as a just and victorious goddess. Seen from below in Dmitry Levitzky’s painting, the empress is a towering figure in a pale gown with a golden train. The ships behind her symbolize Russia’s victory over the Ottoman Turks in 1792. ... The decision to let Catherine’s portrait hang in isolation in the first room of the shuttered museum reflects a sly Odesan bravura: an empress left to contemplate how the brutality of Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president who likens himself to a latter-day czar, has alienated the largely Russian-speaking population of this Black Sea port, established by her in 1794 as Moscow’s long-coveted conduit from the steppe to the Mediterranean. ...”

NY Times

W - Odesa

 

Private Parts - Robert Ashley (1978)

“Robert Ashley’s Private Parts has a plot, but you wouldn’t know it. The 1978 LP, which would later serve as the foundation for the composer’s seven-part televised opera Perfect Lives, discusses at length the inner workings of two characters, a man and a woman, anonymous to us and perhaps even to each other. Words flood its 40-plus minute runtime, circling meaning but never arriving at a conclusion. What’s explored by Ashley, in his drawling monologues, seems to be everything that isn’t happening—an inversion that slinks and dances among the shadows. We are privy to his subjects’ fidgety obsessions, tics of behavior, heady ruminations and psychic detritus, but narrative, insight, or meaning remain as elusive as a not-quite-remembered dream. Private Parts is built on emptiness. It is startling just how riveting that emptiness can be. ...”

Pitchfork

40 Years Later, Robert Ashley's 'Private Parts' Is Still a Hilarious Mystery (Audio)

GENIUS

YouTube: Private Parts (1978) FULL ALBUM

2008 March: Robert Ashley, 2012 April: Sonic Arts Union, 2012 July: Various - Lovely Little Records, 2013 October: The Old Man Lives in Concrete, 2014 March: Robert Ashley, 1930-2014, 2016 March: Perfect Lives (1977-83), 2016 June: Music Word Fire and I Would Do It Again: The Lessons (1981), 2018 January: Sound Portraits Radio #15 Robert Ashley w/ Doron Sadja

​The magnificent iron window railings on an 1850s Murray Hill mansion

“There’s a lot to love about the aristocratic brownstone mansion at 231 Madison Avenue, at the southeast corner of 37th Street. Built as one of three freestanding mansions between 1852-1853 by members of the copper-baron Phelps family just as Murray Hill was transitioning from countryside to a posh urban neighborhood, the house was enlarged in the 1880s—then purchased by J.P. Morgan in 1904 as a 45-room family home for his son and business partner, Jack. A study in harmony and symmetry, the mansion possesses the kind of elegant restraint of many Murray Hill townhouses. ...”

Ephemeral New York

 

​Sleepy Greek Port Becomes U.S. Arms Hub, as Ukraine War Reshapes Region

“ALEXANDROUPOLI, Greece — It is an unlikely geopolitical flash-point: a concrete pier in a little coastal city, barely used a few years ago and still occupied only by sea gulls most of the time. But the sleepy port of Alexandroupoli in northeastern Greece has taken on a central role in increasing the U.S. military presence in Eastern Europe, with the Pentagon transporting enormous arsenals through here in what it describes as the effort to contain Russian aggression. That flow has angered not only Russia but also neighboring Turkey, underlining how war in Ukraine is reshaping Europe’s economic and diplomatic relationships. Turkey and Greece are both NATO members, but there is longstanding animosity between them, including conflict over Cyprus and other territorial disputes in the Mediterranean, and Ankara sees a deeper relationship between Athens and Washington as a potential threat. ...”

NY Times

Aljazeera: The real role of pro-Russian Chechens in Ukraine

GRID - The Ukraine War in data: Counting Russian casualties — in the ‘fog of war’

Guardian: 19 retired generals and ex-officials urge US to increase arms supplies to Ukraine

Alexandroupoli was a sleepy Greek port and a tourist hub before U.S. military supplies started arriving.

King Scratch (Musial Masterpieces from the Upsetter Ark-ive) - Various Artists

“Arguably the greatest Jamaican record producer of all time, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry was instrumental in transforming the island’s national sound throughout the Sixties and Seventies, with his unique approach to music making pushing the music beyond previously perceived boundaries. To mark the first anniversary of his passing, the very best of his work is showcased across a number of products, all of which effectively demonstrate why Perry was widely venerated figure for so long.. ...”

Rough Trade

amazon

YouTube: Lee 'Scratch' Perry: King Scratch (Official Trailer), Lee 'Scratch' Perry: Jungle Lion (Official Visualiser)

2021 September: Lee "Scratch" Perry

​Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum Is Looking Toward the Next 150 Years

“Looking out his window at the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University, Ned Friedman sees 150 years of history — and also millions. He knows this collection of nearly 16,000 woody plants holds clues on how to navigate an increasingly extreme ecological future. ‘When I see a tree, I always end up musing on time,’ said Dr. Friedman, who has been the Arnold’s director for 12 years. In the arboretum’s century-and-a-half history — an anniversary it is marking this year — he is only its eighth leader. There is the timeline of seasonal changes a tree may pass through in any given year, of course — including subtleties that Dr. Friedman urges us to notice, like the purples, pinks and reds of early spring’s ephemeral female conifer cones. ...”

NY Times

Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University

YouTube: Celebrating a Sesquicentennial: The Founding of the Arnold Arboretum

Russians are realising Crimea is ‘not a place for them’, says Zelenskiy

“Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said that panicking Russians have realised that Crimea is ‘not a place for them’ after three mysterious and devastating strikes on the peninsula over the past week, thought to have been carried out by Ukrainian operatives. In his latest video address Zelenskiy said long queues of cars streaming across the Crimea Bridge leading to the Russian mainland proved that the ‘absolute majority’ of Russian citizens had got the message. At least 38,000 cars crossed on Tuesday – a record. The mass exit came after an ammunition dump and electricity sub-station blew up near the town of Dzhankoi, a significant railway hub. Another apparent Ukrainian strike took place outside the regional capital Simferopol, where a Russian airbase was destroyed. ...”

Guardian

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In this image taken from video provided by the RU-RTR Russian television on Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022, smoke rises over the site of  an explosion near the village of Mayskoye, Crimea.