​‘Deeply Problematic’: Experts Question Judge’s Intervention in Trump Inquiry

“A federal judge’s extraordinary decision on Monday to interject in the criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s hoarding of sensitive government documents at his Florida residence showed unusual solicitude to him, legal specialists said. This was ‘an unprecedented intervention by a federal district judge into the middle of an ongoing federal criminal and national security investigation,’ said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at University of Texas. Siding with Mr. Trump, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, ordered the appointment of an independent arbiter to review the more than 11,000 government records the F.B.I. seized in its search of Mar-a-Lago last month. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: Judge Grants Trump’s Request for Special Master to Review Mar-a-Lago Documents

Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald J. Trump’s residence and private club in Palm Beach, Fla.

​Elodie Lauten as Postminimalist Improviser

Delivered to the Minimalism Conference in Helsinki, September 2015 By Kyle Gann: “Elodie Lauten was born in Paris in 1950, moved to the US in 1972, and tragically died all too young on June 3, 2014. The daughter of the jazz pianist and drummer Errol Parker, she studied piano at the Paris Conservatoire at age seven, and started composing at age twelve. ... Despite these radical beginnings, Elodie poured the creative energy of her later years into the forms of opera and oratorio, beginning in 1985 with The Death of Don Juan, and including such large works as Deus ex Machina, Orfreo, and Waking in New York, this last based on [Allen] Ginsburg poems that he had selected for her. ...”

Kyle Gann (Audio)

2010 July: Elodie Lauten, 2016 July: Orchestre Modern (EP - 1981), 2017 October: Transform EP (2014), 2019 November: Piano Works Revisited (2010)

 

​Ukrainians in Rural Ireland Piece Together New Lives, Step by Step

“ARRANMORE ISLAND, Ireland — There are two flags flying over the youth hostel on Arranmore Island, a speck of land off Ireland’s northwestern coast, visible from the ferry as it pulls into its tiny port: the Irish tricolor and the blue and yellow banner of Ukraine. ... Since the middle of this summer, she and her children have been among 25 Ukrainian refugees living on the remote island, where the population had been steadily dropping for decades. They are among the countless Ukrainians grappling with the uncertainty of how the next chapter of their lives will unfold as the war with Russia enters its seventh month, making it clear that their temporary displacement could become long term. But the communities hosting them are also confronting the complexities of assimilating and providing for newcomers as they face their own economic and social challenges. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: As Russia Chokes Europe’s Gas, France Enters Era of Energy ‘Sobriety’

BBC - Ukraine war: Russia postpones 'referendum' in occupied region

A Ukrainian woman minding a child at a hostel that hosts Ukrainian families on Arranmore Island, Ireland.

​Women in the Algerian War

“Women fulfilled a number of different functions during the Algerian War (1954–1962), Algeria's war for independence.  The majority of Muslim women who became active participants did so on the side of the National Liberation Front (FLN). The French included some women, both Muslim and French, in their war effort, but they were not as fully integrated, nor were they charged with the same breadth of tasks as their Algerian sisters.  The total number of women involved in the conflict, as determined by post-war veteran registration, is numbered at 11,000, but it is possible that this number was significantly higher due to underreporting. There exists a distinction between two different types of women who became involved: urban and rural. ...”

Wikipedia

From militants to student activists: The women who fought for Algeris

The role of women in the Algerian independence movement

W - Women in Algeria

France24: Rape as a weapon of war: France's shameful legacy in Algeria (Video)

Last image of Zoulikha Echaïb, taken moments after her arrest by French troops on 10/15/1957 in the Algerian War. Tortured extensively, she died 10 days later after being thrown from a French Army helicopter while in handcuffs, her body not discovered until 1984 when a farmer found and buried her.

​Ann Hamilton: An Inventory of Objects

“Ann Hamilton: An Inventory of Objects is a major publication of the work of one of today’s most important and influential artists. The book is a comprehensive catalogue of Hamilton’s (born 1956) object-based work from 1984 to 2006. The more than 130 color plates document photographs, sculpture, video, audio and language pieces (both unique and editioned), as well as multiples and prints. Many of the objects relate to the large-scale installations for which Hamilton is internationally known. Each object in the inventory is accompanied by a text by Joan Simon, who also contributes a significant new essay setting Hamilton’s objects in critical context. ...”

artbook

2007 November: Ann Hamilton, 2009 September: Songs of Ascension - Meredith Monk and Ann Hamilton, 2010 March: Ann Hamilton - 1, 2011 January: stylus, 2011 April: indigo blue, 2011 December: Objects, 2012 November: phora , 2013 January: Gemini GEL, 2013 September: Ann Hamilton: the event of a thread

Untitled #8-16 (from The Body Object Series)

​How Russia Uses Low Tech in Its High-Tech Weapons

“As Russian forces fire precision-guided weapons at military and civilian targets in Ukraine, officers in Ukraine’s security service working with private analysts have collected parts of the crashed missiles to unravel their enemy’s secrets. The weapons are top of the line in the Russian arsenal. But they contained fairly low-tech components, analysts who examined them said, including a unique but basic satellite navigation system that was also found in other captured munitions. Those findings are detailed in a new report issued Saturday by Conflict Armament Research, an independent group based in Britain that identifies and tracks weapons and ammunition used in wars around the world. The research team examined the Russian matériel in July at the invitation of the Ukrainian government. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: Russia’s Unfounded Claims of Secret U.S. Bioweapons Linger On and On

Aljazeera: Mapping Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant

Guardian - Photographer Boris Mikhailov’s Ukrainian Diary: ‘He is a kind of proto-punk’

A composite image of a variety of circuit boards found in satellite navigation receivers of several models of Russian missiles.

Damnation - Béla Tarr (1988)

“Damnation (Hungarian: Kárhozat) is a 1988 black-and-white Hungarian film directed by Béla Tarr. The screenplay was co-written by Tarr and his frequent collaborator, László Krasznahorkai. The movie has been compared to the works of Andrei Tarkovsky and Michelangelo Antonioni. Damnation tells the story of Karrer (Miklós B. Székely), a depressed man in love with a married torch singer (Vali Kerekes) from a local bar, the Titanik. The singer breaks off their affair, because she dreams of becoming famous. Karrer is offered smuggling work by Willarsky (Gyula Pauer), a local bartender. Karrer offers the job to the singer's husband, Sebestyén (György Cserhalmi). This gets him out of the way, but things do not go as Karrer plans. Betrayals follow. Karrer despairs. ...”

Wikipedia

NY Times - Welcome to His World: Bela Tarr’s First Meteorological Event

SLANT - Béla Tarr’s Mid-Career Masterwork Damnation on Arbelos Films Blu-ray

YouTube: DAMNATION - Official Trailer

2012 January: The Man from London, 2012 January: The Turin Horse

The Ballad of Harlan County

“Mud sucked on my boots. Runoff flowed around my feet, gentle but quick. I was climbing the mountain of my relatives’ former coal mine in Harlan County, Kentucky, walking the land where my grandfather worked for nearly forty years. Brittle vines covered the old office building, the commissary, and the beer hall, which looked as though they could double as a movie set for a Wild West ghost town. This mine, called Brookside, attained national notoriety in the early 1970s after my family sold it to Eastover Mining, a subsidiary of Duke Power, one of the country’s largest energy corporations. ...”

Oxford American

​‘We Do Not Want Unknown Graves’: The Struggle to Identify Bucha’s Victims

“BUCHA, Ukraine — It was supposed to be the bright spot in a grim day. Of a dozen unclaimed bodies set for burial recently at Bucha City Cemetery, one had just been identified. The dead man’s family was present and would be able to bury him with full ceremony. His grave would be marked with his name instead of just a number. But there was a hitch. No one could find the body. In a macabre drama, as the family wilted at the gravesite in the August heat, gravediggers climbed over stinking body bags in the back of a truck, checking the tags for the missing body. As they heaved bodies aside, the deputy mayor, clutching a sheaf of papers, looked on in silence. ...”

NY Times

Guardian - Inside hospital on Ukraine’s frontline: ‘Russia wants to destroy fabric of our lives’

Aljazeera - Fog of war: Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russian forces (Video)

When Russian troops withdrew from the region around Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, at least 458 bodies were discovered in Bucha and the surrounding area, often found lying on the streets and in buildings, gardens, cellars and makeshift graves.

 

​A Constellation of Stars From the Latin Art World

“Of the powerhouse exhibitions headed our way this season, ’Murillo: From Heaven to Earth’ at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth (Sept. 18-Jan. 29) heads my list for its title alone. Given the state of our combusting, war-racked planet, we could use some outside help, and in the painterly cosmos of the 17th-century Spanish Baroque painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo it’s there: Angels and saints beam down to succor ordinary folk, and everyone looks touched by grace. A popular art of immense sophistication in a one-stop-only show. ...”

NY Times

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, “The Marriage Feast at Cana,” circa 1672, from a powerhouse exhibition of the Spanish painter coming to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.

​Sweet Reggae Music Pon di Attack: A History of Soundclash

“Jamaican culture is defined by competition. Athletics is a national virtue, showcased in force on track at the 2016 Olympics. The country has also managed to make a sport out of music. From lyrical contests to dance competitions to car stereo standoffs, there are numerous musical battles held in Jamaica, but none as fundamental to the culture as the sound clash. ... A soundsystem is often defined as a mobile discotheque, but it’s more than just speakers connected to music. ...”

Red Bull  (Video)

Tenor Saw 

​Six months in, the Ukraine war is a brutal stalemate with no end in sight

“Helmuth von Moltke, the chief of staff for the Prussian army, once made the astute observation that no war plan survives ‘first contact’ with a hostile force. If there was ever a war to validate that claim, it’s the one currently churning in Ukraine. As the conflict in Europe’s largest country marks its six-month anniversary on Wednesday, 24 August, the main protagonists have all experienced their fair share of jolted assumptions, operational mistakes, and misplaced beliefs about what is and isn’t possible. Inflated expectations have been punctured, hopes have been dashed, and strategies crafted to cause the enemy discomfort instead produced unintended consequences that are just as painful. Take Russia as an example. Sensing Ukrainian forces would either flee or fold in matter of days, Vladimir Putin believed a military operation in Ukraine could easily dispose of the Volodymyr Zelenskiy administration with minimal resistance. ...”

Guardian

NY Times: Against Fierce Resistance, Ukraine Makes Small Gains in the South

NBC News: U.N. mission arrives at Ukrainian nuclear plant after delay due to fighting (Video)

BBC: UN FAO's global food prices fall for fifth month in a row (Video)

An international agreement to unblock Ukraine's ports has allowed more of its crops to reach international markets

​All of Aaron Judge’s Homers, From 1 to 51

“Aaron Judge did not stay at 50 home runs for long. One day after slugging No. 50 he connected for No. 51, crushing a high fastball to right-center for a three-run homer. While it had seemed as if Judge might have been slowing down a bit as the season stretched on, he has now homered in three of his last five games. As Judge pursues the Yankees’ single-season home run record — every non-Yankee who has hit at least 60 home runs has been connected to performance-enhancing drugs — we are tracking his progress against where Roger Maris was at in 1961 (when he hit 61) and where Babe Ruth was at in 1927 (when he hit 60). ...”

NY Times (Video)

W - Aaron Judge

Baseball Reference

‘The Clones Of Dr. Funkenstein’: Parliament Unleashes An Intergalactic Funk Classic

“In an age when funk was ubiquitous as an expression of Black popular music, George Clinton and Parliament reigned supreme as its quintessential representatives. Wielding a rare combination of unbridled, free-form musicality; an Afrofuturism ethos; a critique of the American social order; and humor, Parliament was almost peerless within the pantheon of funk music. ...”

udiscover (Video)

2009 January: George Clinton, 2010 December: Mothership Connection - Houston 1976, 2011 October: Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove, 2011 October: "Do Fries Go With That Shake?", 2012 August: Tales Of Dr. Funkenstein – The Story Of George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic, 2015 July: Playing The (Baker's) Dozens: George Clinton's Favourite Albums, 2015 August: Chocolate City (1975), 2016 February: Maggot Brain - Funkadelic (1971), 2016 June: P-Funk All Stars - Urban Dancefloor Guerillas (1983), 2017 March: Up for the Down Stroke - Parliament (1974), 2017 May: P-Funk mythology, 2019 September: Tear the Roof Off the Sucker: An Introduction to Parliament Funkadelic, 2019 December: Cosmic Slop - Funkadelic (1973), 2020 July: How George Clinton Made Funk a World View, 2021 November: ‘Computer Games’: How George Clinton’s Solo Debut Played To Win

​Collective punishment or effective sanction? Europe weighs banning Russian tourists

“KYIV, Ukraine — Outraged and anguished after six months of war in Ukraine, Europe is wrestling over a question with deep diplomatic and moral implications: whether to ban Russian travelers. Kyiv’s allies have been aghast at the split-screen juxtaposition of Russian tourists sunning themselves on Mediterranean beaches while many Ukrainians spend some of their summer in bomb shelters, dodging missiles and artillery. Fueled by a plea from Ukraine’s government earlier this month, the debate over visa bans is raging from Brussels to Washington, underscoring longstanding fractures within the West over how aggressively to confront Russia in the war’s next phase. At the heart of the moral question hanging over European capitals is the Russian public’s culpability: Whether ordinary citizens, by putting up little visible opposition, are enabling President Vladimir Putin’s war. ...”

NBC News (Video)

VOX: Should Russian tourists be held responsible for Putin’s war?

NY Times: I’m a Ukrainian Soldier, and I’ve Accepted My Death

NY Times: Witness to the Massacre in Mariupol (Audio)

​Documenta 15

“‘Ideas are to objects,’ suggested Walter Benjamin, ‘as constellations are to stars.’ This metaphor comes to me as I drift through the Fridericianum, which has been restyled as a school by the Indonesian collective ruangrupa, artistic directors of Documenta 15. Etched across the walls on its ground floor are notes and diagrams elaborating the pedagogical methods of Gudskul, an alternative art school devoted to collective practices and ecosystem studies. ... Such inquiries drive Documenta 15, a sprawling affair that has taken over thirty-two venues in Kassel this summer and seeded further projects across the world. ...”

ARTFORUM

Gudskul banner, Fridericianum, Kassel, June 11, 2022.

​The Best Experimental Music on Bandcamp: August 2022

“All kinds of experimental music can be found on Bandcamp: free jazz, avant-rock, dense noise, outer-limits electronics, deconstructed folk, abstract spoken word, and so much more. If an artist is trying something new with an established form or inventing a new one completely, there’s a good chance they’re doing it on Bandcamp. Each month, Marc Masters picks some of the best releases from across this wide, exploratory spectrum. August’s selection includes VHS-inspired composition; bell and gong improvisations; far-out synth exploration; and the hectic sounds of ‘rummaging.’ ...”

Bandcamp (Audio)

​Ukraine war: History is rewritten for children in occupied areas

“When Ukrainian children in occupied areas return to school on 1 September, history lessons will be taught very differently. The BBC has discovered that Ukrainian teachers are being pressured to use the Russian curriculum, which means studying the world according to the Kremlin. Most names in this report have been changed. In the occupied areas of Ukraine's south, administrative and educational buildings - including schools - have been dressed with Russian flags. In Russian-controlled Melitopol, Iryna's 13-year-old child is getting ready to begin the 8th grade. Iryna is worried. ...”

BBC

Aljazeera: Is Ukraine’s counteroffensive progressing?

Guardian: UN nuclear team in Zaporizhzhia limbo as Russia narrows access to plant (Video)

Children going to school in occupied areas of Ukraine will be taught the Russian curriculum

​Documents at Mar-a-Lago Were Moved and Hidden as U.S. Sought Them, Filing Suggests

“The Justice Department sought a search warrant for former President Donald J. Trump’s residence in Florida after obtaining evidence that highly classified documents were likely concealed and that Mr. Trump’s representatives had falsely claimed all sensitive material had been returned, according to a court filing by the department on Tuesday. The filing came in response to Mr. Trump’s request for an independent review of materials seized from his home, Mar-a-Lago. But it went far beyond that, painting the clearest picture yet of the department’s efforts to retrieve the documents before taking the extraordinary step of searching a former president’s private property on Aug. 8. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: Trump’s Lawyers May Become Witnesses or Targets in Documents Investigation

NY Times: How the Picture of Top Secret Folders at Mar-a-Lago Came About

In its court filing, the Justice Department included a photograph of documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.

​Simone de Beauvoir’s Philosophy on Finding Meaning in Old Age

“In the legend of the Buddha, prince Siddhartha encounters the poor souls outside his palace walls and sees, for the first time, the human condition: debilitating illness, aging, death. He is shocked. As Simone de Beauvoir paraphrases in The Coming of Age, her groundbreaking study of the depredations of growing old, Siddhartha wonders, ‘What is the use of pleasures and delights, since I myself am the future dwelling-place of old age?’ ...”

Open Culture

2010 June: Simone de Beauvoir, 2021 November: The Second Sex - Simone de Beauvoir (1949), 2022 June: Simone de Beauvoir Defends Existentialism & Her Feminist Masterpiece...

A Frontline Shadow Economy: Ukrainian Units Trade Tanks and Artillery

“DONETSK REGION, Ukraine — The Ukrainian sergeant slid the captured Russian rocket launcher into the center of a small room. He was pleased. The weapon was practically brand-new. It had been built in 2020, and its thermobaric warhead was deadly against troops and armored vehicles. But the sergeant, nicknamed Zmei, had no plans to fire it at advancing Russian soldiers or at a tank trying to burst through his unit’s front line in eastern UkraineInstead, he was going to use it as a bargaining chip. ...”

NY Times

GRID: Are the Putin-backed dictators in Belarus and Kazakhstan in his corner for the Ukraine war? It’s complicated.

NY Times: The Vatican, for the first time, calls Russia the aggressor in the war.

Putin Thinks He Can Wait Out U.S. Support for Ukraine

YouTube: At least 25 died in Russian attack on Ukraine station

Repairing a captured Russian armored personnel carrier in the Donetsk region of Ukraine this month.

​It’s Not Just You — Blank Street Coffee Is Suddenly Inescapable

“In August 2020, a tiny, seafoam-green, electric-powered coffee cart opened in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, advertising local pastries and bagels and coffee beans. On Wythe Avenue, in the heart of one of New York City’s most coffee-saturated neighborhoods, another cute spot to buy an iced latte wasn’t cause for commotion. But looming behind that friendly little vehicle, labeled Blank Street, was a stack of market research, venture capital and new technology. ...”

NY Times

2010 September: Espresso, 2013 April: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, 2013 May: Coffeehouse, 2015 June: Barista, 2015 August: Coffee Connections at Peddler in SoHo, 2015 November: The Case for Bad Coffee, 2016 January: 101 Places to Find Great Coffee in New York (2014), 2017 June: How Cold Brew Changed the Coffee Business, 2017 September: Our 7 Favorite Literary Coffee Shops, 2017 October: Clever Literary Coffee Poster, 2017 October: Coffee as Existential Statement: A Crisis in Every Cup on Valencia Street, 2018 February: The Trencherman: A Tale of Two Coffee Shops, 2020 April: Unfair trade, April 2020: A (Very) Brief History of NYC Espresso, 2020 May: The Islamic History of Coffee, 2021 January: The Life Cycle of a Cup of Coffee: The Journey from Coffee Bean, to Coffee Cup, 2021 June: Philosophers Drinking Coffee: The Excessive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard, 2021 July:  The invisible addiction: is it time to give up caffeine?, August 2021: The Birth of Espresso: How the Coffee Shots The Fuel Our Modern Life Were Invented, 2021 October: Brew: A Brief History of Coffee, 2021 November: Coffee and Climate Have a Complicated Relationship, 2022 January: The Bialetti Moka Express: The History of Italy’s Iconic Coffee Maker, and How to Use It the Right Way, 2022 April: All Espresso Drinks Explained: Cappuccino, Latte, Macchiato & Beyond, 2022 June: How to Make the Perfect Cup of Italian Coffee, 2022 August: Café A Brasileira

In just two years, the Blank Street coffee chain expanded from this tiny cart to 40 locations in New York City and five in London.

​Kabyle people

"The Kabyle people ... are a Berber ethnic group indigenous to Kabylia in the north of Algeria, spread across the Atlas Mountains, 160 kilometres (100 mi) east of Algiers. They represent the largest Berber-speaking population of Algeria and the second largest in North Africa. Many of the Kabyles have emigrated from Algeria, influenced by factors such as the Algerian Civil War, cultural repression by the central Algerian government, and overall industrial decline. Their diaspora has resulted in Kabyle people living in numerous countries. ...”

W - Kabyle people, W - Kabylia

W - Messali Hadj

Algeria: The Kabyle mentality

Commonweal: No Mere Colony - Albert Camus & Algeria

2019 September: Les Pieds-Noirs: Algeria’s Forgotten Footballers

Six months in, how are sanctions impacting Russia’s economy?

“Six months into Russia’s war in Ukraine, severe economic sanctions initiated by the US and the EU seem to be having the twofold effect of stifling Russia’s economy and encouraging divestment by large corporations, with the US-based Citibank the latest to announce its formal withdrawal from the Russian market.Citibank on Thursday issued a press release stating its intention to wind down its consumer and local commercial banking enterprises in Russia as part of a longer-term ‘global strategic refresh’ first announced in April 2021. ‘We have explored multiple strategic options to sell these businesses over the past several months. It’s clear that the wind-down path makes the most sense given the many complicating factors in the environment,’ CEO of Legacy Franchises Titi Cole said in the release. ...”

VOX

Aljazeera: Did sanctions really hurt the Russian economy?

POLITCO: Cities near Ukrainian nuclear plant shelled

A view of a crater from a night Russian rocket attack, near to damaged buildings in downtown Kharkiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Aug. 27, 2022.

Lou Reed - Words & Music (May 1965)

“... Around the time [ Elise] Cowen was being driven out of New York, across the city on Long Island, a teenage Lou Reed was seeking refuge (’despite all the computations…’) in the doo-wop, R&B and rock & roll he heard on the radio, singing and playing along on a cheap guitar he’d had since he was nine. They were similar in ways, Cowen and Reed – young, hungry intellectuals from well-off Jewish backgrounds, socially awkward, bisexual, adventurous in terms of hedonistic pleasures and transgressive culture, and both facing immense familial and societal pressure to conform. There were significant differences, of course, with the Beat poet Gregory Corso later pointing out, ‘In the 50s, if you were male, you could be a rebel, but if you were female, your families had you locked up.’ ...”

The Quietus (Video)

amazon

YouTube: I'm Waiting for the Man - May 1965 Demo, Heroin - May 1965 Demo

2010 August: Heroin, 2011 June: All Tomorrow's Parties - The Velvet Underground, 2011 June: The Velvet Underground, 2012 November: Songs for Drella - Lou Reed and John Cale, 2013 October: Lou Reed (1942 - 2013), 2014 June: The Bells (1979), 2014 August: New York (1989), 2015 June: Capitol Theatre Passaic, NJ 9/25/1984, 2015 October: The Blue Mask (1982), 2016 March: New Sensations (1984), 2016 May: Coney Island Baby (1976), 2017 March: Celebrating Lou Reed: 1942–2013, 2017 November: Watch Footage of the Velvet Underground Composing..., 2018 February: Street Hassle (1978), 2018 October: Lou Reed at The Ritz (07-16-1986), 2019 February: Lou Reed, John Cale And Nico - Le Bataclan '72 (1972), 2020 November: Concert Film Berlin Streaming Free Online for the Next Week

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