"Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564 – 1637/38) was hugely successful in his lifetime. Born in Brussels, he was the son the renowned painter, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1526/30 – 1569). Clearly talented, by the time he was around 20 years old, Brueghel the Younger was already registered as a master in Antwerp’s Guild of Saint Luke. Between 1588 and 1627, he took on nine formal apprentices, an indication of his studio’s success, while records reveal his workshop produced more than 1,400 paintings. These range from exact copies of famous compositions by his father, to pastiches and more inventive compositions that further promoted the distinctive Brueghelian ‘family style’, usually focused on scenes of peasant life. ...”
Pablo Neruda: Man of words, man of politics
"Pablo Neruda, the late Chilean poet, continues to be among the most read poets of all time. He died on September 23, 1973, 12 days after General Augusto Pinochet’s military coup and 12 days after he was offered asylum in Mexico. For many years, there were doubts about the real reason for his death. Documents released by Chile’s Ministry of the Interior acknowledged later that it is ‘quite possible’ that Pablo Neruda was assassinated. ... Although he claimed that he was not a political writer, Neruda was an artist who knew how to blend politics and poetry in his life. ...”
February 2009: Pablo Neruda, 2011 November: 100 Love Sonnets, 2015 November: The Body Politic: The battle over Pablo Neruda’s corpse, 2015 December: In Chile, Where Pablo Neruda Lived and Loved, 2016 May: Windows that Open Inward - Pablo Neruda. Milton Rogovin, Photographing., 2018 March: What We Can Learn from Neruda’s Poetry of Resistanc, 2018 July: Poet of the People: The partisan world of Pablo Neruda, 2018 December: Neruda - Pablo Larraín (2016), 2019 July: An Introduction to Chilean Poet Pablo Neruda: Romantic, Radical & Revolutionary
Salvador Allende and Pablo Neruda
Russian threats revive old nuclear fears in central Europe
"WARSAW, Poland — Two stories beneath a modern steel production plant on Warsaw's northern edge lies an untouched Cold War relic: a shelter containing gas masks, stretchers, first aid kits and other items meant to help civil defense leaders survive and guide rescue operations in case of nuclear attack or other disasters. A map of Europe on a wall still shows the Soviet Union — and no independent Ukraine. Old boots and jackets give off a musty odor. A military field switchboard warns: ‘Attention, your enemy is listening.’ Until now, nobody had seriously considered that the rooms built in the 1950s — and now maintained as a ‘historical curiosity’ by the ArcelorMittal Warszawa plant, according to spokeswoman Ewa Karpinska — might one day be used as a shelter again. ...”
Guardian: What happened in the Russia-Ukraine war this week? Catch up with the must-read news and analysis (Video)
Switches and gauges on a control united of power generators in Josip Broz Tito's underground atomic war command in Konjic, Bosnia, Monday, Oct. 17, 2022. ... It was built to withstand nuclear war.
Notes from Iran
"Before this September, I hadn’t heard from Yara in months. They’re an Iranian journalist who has reported for the country’s most prominent newspapers and publications. We first met in New York in 2018 and bonded over the difficulties that come with reporting on Iran: they were rightly afraid of being arrested for their work, and I’ve been afraid that I will no longer be able to return to the country where I was born due to writing about it from abroad. As the Islamic Republic began to escalate the crackdowns on journalists, activists, and civil society, Yara—a pseudonym I’m using to protect their identity—was forced to leave Iran. If the authorities knew that Yara was communicating with me, an Iranian dual national who works for the New York Times, they could accuse them of conspiracy, spying, and a whole host of other nonsensical charges. I worried about Yara, but I knew their silence meant they were safe. ...”
NY Times: Iran’s Loyal Security Forces Protect Ruling System That Protesters Want to Topple (Oct. 17), How Two Teenagers Became the New Faces of Iran’s Protests (Oct. 13), Unveiled and Rising Up: How Protests in Iran Cut to the Heart of National Identity (Oct. 5)
Aljazeera: Iran indicts dozens for inciting ‘riots’ amid persisting protests (Video - Oct. 12), Can protests in Iran bring change? (Audio)
Rubbish Music – Upcycling (2022; Flaming Pines); Iain Chambers – Secrets of Orford Ness (2020; Flaming Pines)
"Rubbish Music is the duo of Kate Carr (who runs the label Flaming Pines) and Iain Chambers (who runs the label Persistence of Sound). Both artists compose using field recordings as well as found objects, usually in a specific thematic context as it pertains to the audio picture they want to make or service to the idea they want to put across. ... The ‘upcycling’ in this case refers to the inevitable degradation of humanity’s discarded items, eventually expressing a kind of ‘new’ state that serves to benefit animals and other lifeforms in positive ways. Now that’s a rather high concept, not to mention, an original idea for an audio recording! ...”
Ukraine war: We secretly filmed our lives in occupied Kherson
"... It wasn't clear what - if anything - Ksusha had seen that day to evoke the disturbing image. But evidently she was unsettled. Nothing had been the same since Russian soldiers first marched past our window in the late afternoon of 1 March, and I began filming our lives for a BBC Eye documentary. My day job had been as a local reporter. Never did I think I would be filming an invasion of my home city - the only Ukrainian regional capital to have been captured. How we shielded Ksusha from the brutality of Russia's invasion, and we ourselves remained sane, became central to our lives, as my wife Lidia and I grappled with our new reality. In the first few days our city seemed frozen - I filmed the emptiness as schools stood closed, government buildings abandoned, and factories and offices empty. Most people laid low. The Russian forces, having taken Kherson, were now trying to advance on nearby Mykolaiv, and were shelling ferociously. ...”
NBC News - Cold, dark and without power: Ukraine faces outages as Russian attacks begin a long winter (Video)
As Russia scrambles to pull its civilian staff out of the city of Kherson ahead of a Ukrainian counter-offensive, Ukrainian father Dmytro Bahnenko reflects on the months he and his family lived there under occupation and secretly filmed for BBC Eye at great personal risk.
Scenes of misery and charity on Gilded Age New York’s most famous breadline
"The Gilded Age ushered in opulent mansions, ostentatious balls, and very conspicuous consumption. But this era synonymous with wealth also brought us the breadline—where impoverished New Yorkers stood in the shadows night after night, waiting their turn to obtain a free meal. Breadlines (many of which distributed more than bread) proliferated by the turn of the century at Gotham’s missions and benevolent societies created to serve the poor. But the first breadline, where the term originates, started at a fashionable bakery on Broadway and 10th Street in 1876. ...”
“Fleischmann’s Bread Line,” by Everett Shinn, about 1900
Carl Stone - We Jazz Reworks Vol. 2 (2022)
"Carl Stone is keeping busy these days. Since the Unseen Worlds label started to issue some of his under-recognised work from the 1970s–90s in 2016, the Tokyo-based composer has enjoyed a popular resurgence, and a spate of new works has met with even more accolades. Much of Stone’s recent music is constructed by taking popular musics from around the world and pulling them through various sampling technology (most especially the MAX programming language) like so much digital taffy. These compositions are texturally familiar, but structurally challenging; they can be gorgeous, silly, even nigh-danceable. ...”
2010 August: Carl Stone, 2012 September: Carl Stone' DARDA performance Super Deluxe Tokyo, 2013 December: Tetsu Inoue and Carl Stone - pict.soul (2001), 2016 August: Electronic Music from the Seventies and Eighties (2016), 2022 April: Mom's (1992)
Where Have All the Men in Moscow Gone?
"MOSCOW — Friday afternoons at the Chop-Chop Barbershop in central Moscow used to be busy, but at the beginning of a recent weekend, only one of the four chairs was occupied. ‘We would usually be full right now, but about half of our customers have gone,’ said the manager, a woman named Olya. Many of the clients — along with half of the barbers, too — have fled Russia to avoid President Vladimir V. Putin’s campaign to mobilize hundreds of thousands of men for the flagging military campaign in Ukraine. Many men have been staying off the streets out of fear of being handed a draft notice. As Olya came to work last Friday, she said, she witnessed the authorities at each of the four exits of the metro station, checking documents. Her boyfriend, who was a barber at the salon, has also fled, and the separation is taking a toll. ...”
A priest performed a blessing for conscripted men in Moscow earlier this month.
Arsenio Rodríguez
"Arsenio Rodríguez (born Ignacio Arsenio Travieso Scull; 31 August 1911 – 30 December 1970) was a Cuban musician, composer and bandleader. He played the tres, as well as the tumbadora, and he specialized in son, rumba and other Afro-Cuban music styles. In the 1940s and 1950s Rodríguez established the conjunto format and contributed to the development of the son montuno, the basic template of modern-day salsa. He claimed to be the true creator of the mambo and was an important as well as a prolific composer who wrote nearly two hundred songs. Despite being blind since the age of seven, Rodríguez quickly managed to become one of Cuba's foremost treseros. ...”
Making Black America: Through the Grapevine - Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (2022)
"... Professor Gates, with directors Stacey L. Holman and Shayla Harris, chronicle the vast social networks and organizations created by and for Black people beyond the reach of the ‘White gaze.’ The series recounts the establishment of the Prince Hall Masons in 1775 through the formation of all-Black towns and business districts, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, destinations for leisure and the social media phenomenon of Black Twitter. Professor Gates sits with noted scholars, politicians, cultural leaders and old friends to discuss this world behind the color line and what it looks like today. ...”
2017 March: Africa's Great Civilizations, 2019 April: Reconstruction: America After the Civil War, 2019 May: The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross
The Building of Historically Black Colleges and Universities
The world has a choice: act decisively now or face a larger conflict with Russia
"Last week saw the latest grim act in Russia’s war crimes epic. Missiles rained down indiscriminately on civilian areas across Ukraine two days after a massive explosion at a symbolic bridge built to link the annexed Crimean peninsula to Russia.In Zaporizhzhia in the south-east, 12 Russian rockets partially destroyed a nine-storey tower, and levelled five other residential buildings. Kateryna Ivanova and her family were forced to run to the bathroom as their apartment filled with smoke. After managing to escape to the street, Kateryna said she was met by a neighbour who screamed that her husband was dead. Another resident, Lyudmyla, told how she rushed to wake her children and move them to safety after a blast completely destroyed the door to her home. ...”
Large numbers of residential buildings lie in ruins after being destroyed during fighting between Ukrainian and Russian occupying forces, on October 18 in Kozacha Lopan, Ukraine.
The Man from London - Béla Tarr (2007)
"The Man from London is a 2007 film by Hungarian director Béla Tarr. It is an adaptation by Tarr and his collaborator-friend László Krasznahorkai of the 1934 French language novel L'Homme de Londres by prolific Belgian writer Georges Simenon. ... The plot follows Maloin, a nondescript railway worker who recovers a briefcase containing a significant amount of money from the scene of a murder to which he is the only witness. Wracked by guilt and fear of being discovered, Maloin sinks into despondence and frustration, which leads to acrimony in his household. Meanwhile, an English police detective investigates the disappearance of the money and the unscrupulous characters connected to the crime."
Love, Loosha By Lucia Berlin and Kenward Elmslie
"In 1994, the internationally acclaimed fiction writer Lucia Berlin met the New York School poet and librettist Kenward Elmslie at Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program, where they were both visiting writers. 'We just clicked,' Berlin said in a 2002 interview. ... That friendship developed through a faithful and frequent correspondence, a literary exchange of about two letters per week over the course of a decade. ... –Chip Livingston ...”
April 2008: Kenward Elmslie, PENNSOUND, Jacket #7, Wikipedia, 2011 February: Kenward Elmslie's poem songs, 2016 February: Nite Soil (2000), 2017 February: Kenward Elmslie / Videos, 2022 July: Z Press - Calais, Vermont
What is known about the Iranian-made drones that Russia is using to attack Ukraine.
"The latest Russian attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Monday was preceded by a sound that has become increasingly familiar in the war: the buzz of a small engine, like a lawn-mower or moped, that signals the arrival of an exploding Iranian-made drone. Russia’s use of the devices, which first appeared in Ukraine about two months ago, is considered to be a sign that it is running low on precision-guided weapons, analysts say. The drones have allowed Russia to strike energy infrastructure and civilian targets, even as it loses ground on the battlefield in the northeast and south of the country. ...”
Mayor Klitschko shared a photo of what he said were fragments of a kamikaze drone on Telegram
Liverpool’s unmovable Van Dijk shows Haaland is a stoppable force
"Virgil van Dijk puffed out his cheeks and wrapped his arms around Joe Gomez. Mohamed Salah may have been Liverpool’s match-winner but this enthralling 1-0 triumph over Manchester City was built on firm foundations. Van Dijk has found himself in uncharted territory this season. His crown as the most complete centre-back in world football has slipped. As Liverpool’s defensive vulnerability has been repeatedly exposed, his form has been held up as a symptom of the team’s decline. There have been uncharacteristic errors and accusing fingers pointing in his direction. ...”
Prince of Enchantment: The 'Ud
"Sitting in his Pennsylvania workshop, surrounded by hanging tools and worktables, Najib Shaheen cradles a hand-crafted, wooden ‘ud (oud) in his arms. As he strums and picks, the nylon strings resonate along an Arab musical scale. Similar in size to an acoustic guitar but far different in shape and sound, the ‘ud is to many the most iconically Arab of all musical instruments. And Shaheen, whose expertise has earned him the nickname ‘Oudman,’ would know. Growing up in the Mediterranean coastal city of Haifa in the 1950s, the instrument has never been far from his reach. As a boy, he learned to play the round-backed, half-pear-shaped instrument amid an extraordinarily musical family. This included his father, Hikmat Shaheen, a well-known music educator, composer and ‘ud performer, and his younger brother Simon, who is today a virtuoso on both ‘ud and violin. ...”
How Vladimir Putin is thinking about the war
"Less than 48 hours after the Kerch Bridge connecting Crimea with Russia proper was damaged by a powerful blast, Vladimir Putin retaliated against Ukraine. Russia fired close to a hundred missiles at a variety of Ukrainian cities this past Monday and Tuesday. The rockets hit an array of buildings, including residences and schools, killing at least 19 civilians and injuring more than 100. While the missile attacks knocked out power and water to Ukraine’s largest cities, the value of the attacks was dubious at best. No military targets were hit. Ukraine’s population seems ever more determined to resist Russia. Experts pointed out that Russia retains a scarce number of precision-guided missiles, and it seemed like a waste to use them on these kinds of targets. Looking ahead, the attacks may well have also created a permission structure for NATO to arm Ukraine with better air defenses. ...”
NBC News: U.S. to provide Ukraine with more weapons as Putin signals end to unpopular mobilization drive (Video)
A mural of a hacker has appeared on the streets of Kyiv
The Jan. 6 Hearings Are Over. These 3 Things Must Happen Now.
"On Thursday, in what was probably its final public hearing before the election, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol revealed new details about former President Donald Trump. Those details included Secret Service records documenting his determination to join a mob he knew was armed and headed for violence. The hearings have provided an indispensable record of an attempted coup that failed but that, as Representative Liz Cheney pointed out, threatens to recur. As the committee waits for the (unlikely) testimony of Mr. Trump, the torch now passes to other actors who hold the power to achieve accountability for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — and to prevent another one from happening. This task fits into three key areas. ...”
Fall Music Preview ~ Drone
"The tractors are plowing the fields, the leaf blowers are clearing the lawns, the construction crews are fixing the roads, and a new season of drone music ~ live and recorded ~ is upon us. Today’s drone post picks up from yesterday’s dark ambient cliffhanger, tilting us toward daylight savings, the harvest and Halloween.While late summer days continue to bring the heat, late summer nights yield a bit of chill, a tinge of the season to come, as the green begins to leach away, stolen by umber, russet and rust. ...”
Sarah Davachi - Two Sisters (2022)
Despite Its Barrage of Missiles, Russia Still Loses Ground in Ukraine
"KYIV, Ukraine — They exploded with dull thuds on the outskirts of towns and detonated in the center of cities with deafening booms. Strikes in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, left cars burning and splatters of blood on the sidewalks. Throughout this week, the Russian military fired its most intensive barrage of missiles at Ukraine since the start of the war in February, killing three dozen civilians, knocking out electricity and overwhelming air defenses. One thing the missiles did not do was change the course of the ground war. Fought mostly in trenches, with the most intense combat now in an area of rolling hills and pine forests in the east and on the open plains in the south, these battles are where control of territory is decided — and where Russia’s military continued to lose ground, despite its missile strikes. ...”
A dream job Sergei secured at the National Library of Russia kept him from leaving Russia. He finally escaped to Georgia, after Putin’s mobilization notice. “Some of the Georgians do call us racist slurs and they might kick Russian emigrants out,” he says. “We deserve it, but I hope it won’t come to that.”
Over 370 Republican Candidates Have Cast Doubt on the 2020 Election
"They include candidates for the U.S. House and Senate, and the state offices of governor, secretary of state and attorney general — many with clear shots to victory, and some without a chance. They are united by at least one issue: They have all expressed doubt about the legitimacy of the 2020 election. And they are the new normal of the Republican Party. About the data Karen Yourish and Danielle Ivory collected and analyzed statements of more than 550 Republican midterm candidates. Read more about their reporting. More than 370 people — a vast majority of Republicans running for these offices in November — have questioned and, at times, outright denied the results of the 2020 election despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, according to a monthslong New York Times investigation. ...”
Simone de Beauvoir Speaks on American TV (in English) About Feminism, Abortion & More (1976)
"France has long been known for the cultural prominence it grants to its philosophers. Even so, such prominence doesn’t simply come to every French philosopher, and some have had to work tirelessly indeed to achieve it. Take Simone de Beauvoir, who most powerfully announced her arrival on the intellectual scene with Le Deuxième Sexe and its famous declaration, ‘On ne naît pas femme, on le devient.”’Those words remain well known today, 36 years after their author’s death, and their implications about the nature of womanhood still form the intellectual basis for many observers of the feminine condition, in France and elsewhere. ...”
2010 June: Simone de Beauvoir, 2021 November: The Second Sex - Simone de Beauvoir (1949), 2022 June: Simone de Beauvoir Defends Existentialism & Her Feminist Masterpiece..., 2022 August: Simone de Beauvoir’s Philosophy on Finding Meaning in Old Age
Russia's Crimea Disconnect
"On 7 October, an explosion destroyed some of the Kerch Bridge, which connects Russia to Crimea. It is a new construction. When Russia invaded Ukraine the first time, in 2014, there was no such bridge, no road connection between Russia and Ukraine's Crimean province. From the perspective of Ukraine, Crimea is a peninsula. From the perspective of Russia, Crimea is an island. The Kerch Bridge was completed in 2018, as a way for Russia to control Crimea, which it claimed to have annexed from Ukraine. This year, it has been used to supply Russian troops, carrying out a war of atrocity in Ukraine. The damage to the bridge will make it harder for Russia to supply the troops occupying Crimea and other parts of southern Ukraine. The explosion was also a blow to Vladimir Putin's prestige, since the bridge is a monument to his personal imperialism. Its vulnerability suggests not only the foolishness of this war for Russia, but more generally the self-destructiveness of Russian attempts to extend empire by force. ...”
Residents of the Kherson region of Ukraine near Mykolaivka on Sunday.
Cuban Caricature and Culture: The Art of Massaguer
"With his biting political satire, caricatures, and magazine and advertising illustrations, publisher and graphic artist Conrado Walter Massaguer (1889–1965) helped shape the visual culture of his native Cuba between the 1920s and 1950s. Drawn from a recent donation by Vicki Gold Levi to The Wolfsonian–FIU, the works reflect Massaguer’s legacy, from images of the ‘New Woman’ flapper ideal and caricatures of politicians and Hollywood celebrities to depictions of tropical paradise for the Cuban Tourist Commission. ...”
Jan. 6 Panel Votes to Subpoena Trump, Setting Up Court Fight
"The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol voted unanimously Thursday to issue a subpoena to former President Donald J. Trump to question him about his role in events that led to the violence that consumed Congress ‘He is required to answer for his actions,’ said Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, at the end of what was possibly the panel’s final public session. ‘He is required to answer to those police officers who put their lives and bodies on the line to defend our democracy.’ The vote emerged after the committee presented a sweeping summation of its case against Mr. Trump, including more details about his state of mind and his central role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. ...”
Ukraine’s Path to Victory
"For too long, the global democratic coalition supporting Kyiv has focused on what it should not do in the invasion of Ukraine. Its main aims include not letting Ukraine lose and not letting Russian President Vladimir Putin win—but also not allowing the war to escalate to a point where Russia attacks a NATO country or conducts a nuclear strike. These, however, are less goals than vague intentions, and they reflect the West’s deep confusion about how the conflict should end. More than seven months into the war, the United States and Europe still lack a positive vision for Ukraine’s future. The West clearly believes that Kyiv’s fight is just, and it wants Ukraine to succeed. But it is not sure yet whether Ukraine is strong enough to retake all its territory. Many Western leaders still believe that the Russian military is too large to be defeated. This thinking has led the members of the pro-Ukrainian coalition to define only their interim strategic military goals. They have not plotted out the political consequences that would come from a complete Russian military collapse. ...”
A mockup of a nuclear reactor at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine.
Cooking with Taeko Kōno - Valerie Stivers
"The Japanese writer Taeko Kōno is a maestro of transgressive desire whose stories often—and deliciously—use food as a metaphor for sexual appetite. Kōno, who died in 2015, is considered one of Japan’s foremost feminist writers and one of its foremost writers of any kind. She won many of the country’s top literary prizes, including the Akutagawa, the Tanizaki, the Noma, and the Yomiuri. The single selection of her work in English, Toddler-Hunting & Other Stories, first published by New Directions in 1996 and translated by Lucy North and Lucy Lower, contains ten dark, deceptively simple stories about women who find the gender roles in Japanese society unbearable, and are warped by them. ...”
The Waning Years of Edward Hopper
"In September 1948, Edward Hopper put the final touches on the painting he would call Seven A.M. As with most of his great pictures—and this is one of them—its quiet power is both plain and a bit mysterious. It shows us a very ordinary scene, a portion of a white storefront, with a partial view of its interior through its wide plate glass windows. It’s not clear what kind of business this is. A pharmacy? A barbershop? Even Hopper wasn’t sure. But whatever it is, he makes it appear a semi-rural place, set along a dirt road and beside a patch of woods with shadowed undergrowth. ...”
2008 July: Edward Hopper, 2010 October: Finding Nighthawks, 2010 December: Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time, 2012 Wednesday: Through Edward Hopper's eyes: in search of an artist's seaside inspiration, 2013 July: Hopper Drawing, 2014 May: INTERVIEW: “An Interview with Edward Hopper, June 17, 1959″., 2014 September: How Edward Hopper “Storyboarded” His Iconic Painting Nighthawks, 2015 February: Edward Hopper's New York: A Walking Tour, 2015 September: Edward Hopper life and works, 2016 May: "Night Windows," 1928, 2016 July: Sunday (1926), 2016 September: Drug Store (1927), 2018 January: Seven A.M. (1948), 2018 February: Jo Hopper, Woman in the Sun, 2019 August: Pennsylvania Coal Town (1947), 2020 January: Queensborough Bridge, 1913, 2021 July: The Mournfulness of Cities
Seven AM (1948)
Ukraine seeks weapons to counter Russia’s ability to strike
"An explosion on the Kerch Bridge connecting the Crimean Peninsula to Russia has led to massive Russian retaliation against Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure in the 33rd week of the war. This, in turn, has led to Ukraine stepping up requests to allies for bolstered air defences and longer-range weapons with which to hit Russian forces. There are also ominous signs that Russia is enmeshing Belarus ever more closely in its war in Ukraine. On Saturday, an explosion on the bridge linking Russian-annexed Crimea with Russia disabled two of its four car lanes and melted tracks on a separate railway span, where a train caught fire. ...”
Guardian: Analysis | Would Lukashenko really throw Belarus into a war Russia is losing?
A Ukrainian civilian tries to survive in a house destroyed by the missile attack after Russia’s latest shelling in different parts of Ukraine, including the capital, Kyiv, on October 11.
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