"Ironweed is a 1987 American drama film directed by Héctor Babenco. It is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by William Kennedy, who also wrote the screenplay. It stars Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, with Carroll Baker, Michael O'Keefe, Diane Venora, Fred Gwynne, Nathan Lane and Tom Waits in supporting roles. The story concerns the relationship of a homeless couple: Francis, an alcoholic, and Helen, a terminally ill woman during the years following the Great Depression. Major portions of the film were shot on location in Albany, New York, including Jay Street at Lark Street, Albany Rural Cemetery, and the Miss Albany Diner on North Broadway. ...”
Late winter was boot scraper season in 19th century New York City
"In the 18th and 19th centuries, New York City roads were filthy. Garbage was tossed in gutters (sometimes consumed by free-roaming pigs, who left their own waste behind), dust got kicked up on dry days, and manure from the thousands of horses that pulled streetcars and wagons caked the streets. Add in the snow and sleet typical of late February and early March, and the cityscape that appears so charming in old black and white photos was actually a muddy, grimy, soupy mess. ...”
Does Europe want Ukrainians as living partners or dead heroes?
"Nine years ago, Maidan, the main square of my home city Kyiv, was filled with people carrying EU and Ukrainian flags. Maidan, or the Revolution of Dignity, was the last successful European democratic revolution. The protesters won. They – we – managed to overthrow a regime that was actively preparing Russia’s political annexation of Ukraine. Nine years ago, the human ocean of Maidan carried on its shoulders the coffins of activists who had been shot dead by police. The tragedy was immense but the space for mourning was limited: the annexation of Crimea began and we realised that the Kremlin had gone to war against Ukraine, against us. We learned then that achieving the impossible might be romantically beautiful in songs or movies. It came at a price, however, a price that was too high from the very beginning. But that image of Maidan filled with European flags remained a point of reference and a symbol of the change we sought. ...”
A destroyed Russian tank lies near a church in the city of Sviatohirsk, Donetsk
Christina Vantzou’s “Unsettled” Electroacoustic Compositions
"Composer and sound artist Christina Vantzou first attracted attention via her role in The Dead Texan, a side project of Stars of the Lid‘s Adam Wiltzie. And while it would be another seven years before Vantzou emerged as a solo artist in her own right, the album anticipated a tantalizing aspect of her subsequent work. Her music might be ambient and classically rooted at its core, but drift along with it for a while and you’ll soon encounter elements that feel unsettling and disruptive—as if the music is following a dream logic. ...”
Wayne Shorter, Innovator During an Era of Change in Jazz, Dies at 89
"Wayne Shorter, the enigmatic, intrepid saxophonist who shaped the color and contour of modern jazz as one of its most intensely admired composers, died on Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 89. His publicist, Alisse Kingsley, confirmed his death, at a hospital. There was no immediate information on the cause. Mr. Shorter had a sly, confiding style on the tenor saxophone, instantly identifiable by his low-gloss tone and elliptical sense of phrase. His sound was brighter on soprano, an instrument on which he left an incalculable influence; he could be inquisitive, teasing or elusive, but always with a pinpoint intonation and clarity of attack. ...”
2015 December: JuJu (1964), 2015 December: Art Blakey - Paris Jam Session (1959), 2019 August: Night Dreamer (1964), 2019 July: Blue Note Records at 80: Can a Symbol of Jazz’s Past Help Shape Its Future?, 2020 August: Mr. Gone - 10 CD (The Best Of The Early Years)
Wayne Shorter emerged in the 1960s as a tenor saxophonist and in-house composer for Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and the Miles Davis Quintet.
In an Epic Battle of Tanks, Russia Was Routed, Repeating Earlier Mistakes
"Before driving into battle in their mud-spattered war machine, a T-64 tank, the three-man Ukrainian crew performs a ritual.The commander, Pvt. Dmytro Hrebenok, recites the Lord’s Prayer. Then, the men walk around the tank, patting its chunky green armor. ... Their respect for their tank is understandable. Perhaps no weapon symbolizes the ferocious violence of war more than the main battle tank. Tanks have loomed over the conflict in Ukraine in recent months — militarily and diplomatically — as both sides prepared for offensives. Russia pulled reserves of tanks from Cold War-era storage, and Ukraine prodded Western governments to supply American Abrams and German Leopard II tanks. ...”
Street food
"Street food is food or drinks sold by a hawker or vendor on a street or at other public places, such as markets, fairs, parks, and clubs. It is often sold from a portable food booth, food cart, or food truck and is meant for immediate consumption. Some street foods are regional, but many have spread beyond their regions of origin. Most street foods are classified as both finger food and fast food and are typically cheaper than restaurant meals. The types of street food widely vary between regions and cultures in different countries around the world. ...”
Street food in New York City
The Night - Tom Verlaine & Patti Smith (1976)
"The Night, Tom Verlaine & Patti Smith, published 1976. Front & back covers, plus two inside pages. Even numbered poems are by Tom, odd numbered by Patti. The rear cover has a pic of 19th century poet Arthur Rimbaud & a poem by Patti. The book is entitled The Night, at least partly ‘cause Tom & Patti reportedly wrote the whole book(let) in one night. I’ve scanned & uploaded all pages from my copy of The Night. ...”
‘If you don’t burrow in you die pretty quickly’: the relentless battle for Bakhmut
"Oleh Bendyk showed off a video taken in Ukraine’s eastern forests. It shows a group of soldiers from Bendyk’s 103rd brigade sheltering in a sandy trench. Around them a battle rages. There are explosions, booms, and the rattle of small arms fire. A grad missile crashes down among the pine trees, in a large orange fireball. ... Bendyk and his fellow Ukrainian soldiers have been holding off a surging Russian offensive west of Kreminna, a city that Moscow captured last year. Further along the same front, Ukrainian soldiers are doggedly defending the town of Bakhmut, once home to 70,000 people. Fighting has gone on there for months. ...”
The stamp depicting Banksy’s mural of a child judoka throwing a grown man. Guardian: Ukraine issues Banksy mural postage stamp
Mikey Dread – Beyond World War III (1981)
"Mikey Dread has long stood among reggae's most multi-faceted artists, and this album shows him in all his guises: DJ, mixer, producer, and toaster. Like many fellow producers from his home country of Jamaica, Dread is equally comfortable behind the board or in front of it, which further blurs the line between artist and producer. That's not a problem for someone boasting such nimble talents. The assertive opener ‘Break Down the Walls’ gets the proceedings off to an authoritative start. ... Dread marshals his musical artillery to unsettling effect on the title cut, which matter-of-factly ticks off man's march to a global reckoning. A cutoff in mid-sentence provides a powerful closing note for an album that sounds as fresh and innovative as it did 20 years ago. ...”
Murdoch Acknowledges Fox News Hosts Endorsed Election Fraud Falsehoods
"Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the conservative media empire that owns Fox News, acknowledged in a deposition that several hosts for his networks promoted the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald J. Trump, and that he could have stopped them but didn’t, court documents released on Monday showed. ‘They endorsed,’ Mr. Murdoch said under oath in response to direct questions about the Fox hosts Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo, according to a legal filing by Dominion Voting Systems. ...”
Moments of reflection from a year of war
"As Russia launched its full-scale invasion on the night of 24 February 2022, life for Ukrainians went underground - to basements, bunkers, bomb shelters, metro stations. BBC teams set up a makeshift, round-the-clock operation in a car park beneath the streets of Kyiv. Lyse Doucet was among them. Did we have enough food and water to last, perhaps, for weeks? Were we ready to remain in a city where Russian troops could, possibly, be on the streets? We lived and worked, mattress-to-mattress, with Ukrainians who asked the same questions. Our neighbours included Liana, her teenage son Rustam and her mother Vera. Their Maine Coon cat Tyson never lived up to his namesake, the champion boxer; he hid under a bed above ground. ...”
Russian travelers arriving at the Vaalimaa border crossing between Finland and Russia. Its emptiness speaks of new European division.
The French Like Protesting, but This Frenchman May Like It the Most
"A human tide swept through Paris last month for the type of event France knows only too well — a protest. Union leaders led the march, awash in a multicolored sea of flags. Demonstrators shouted fiery slogans. Clashes with the police erupted. And, as in every protest, there was Jean-Baptiste Reddé.He held a giant placard over his head that read, ‘Tax evasion must fund our pensions.’ Its distinctive colorful capital letters stood out in the dense crowd.Signs like that have been Mr. Reddé’s trademark since he retired from his teaching job a decade ago and dedicated himself nearly full time to protesting. He has since become a personal embodiment of France’s enduring passion for demonstration, rooted in a culture that sees change as a prize to be won, and defended, in the streets. ...”
Jean-Baptiste Reddé with one of his traditional posters last month. He was on his way to a demonstration in Paris against the French government’s proposed pension overhaul.
Forms of woundedness
"James Baldwin and Chinua Achebe only met once in their lifetime. ... Baldwin’s father, like Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart, was a troubled man who wrestled with his times the best way he knew how. In the process, both men harmed those they loved. Watching August Wilson’s 1985 play, Fences—currently running at the Joburg Theatre in South Africa as part of Black History Month programming—I was reminded of this conversation between Baldwin and Achebe, because the protagonist, Troy Maxson, battles with his times, inadvertently harming those he loves. Like Baldwin’s encounter with Things Fall Apart, many Africans know everyone in Fences. ...”
2017 July: Fences (2016), 2017 August: The Ground on Which I Stand, a Speech on Black Theatre and Performance (1992), 2018 July: Pittsburgh Cycle, 2018 August: August Wilson in St. Paul: A MN Original Special, 2020 May: August Wilson's Blues Poetry, 2020 July: On Lessons From August Wilson’s Jitney, 2020 December: August Wilson, American Bard, 2021 December: The Art of Theater No. 14
Here’s what to know on the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
"President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine vowed on Friday that his country would defeat Russia, as the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion prompted shows of solidarity from around the world and a mix of anxiety and resolve in Ukraine. ‘We will be victorious,’ Mr. Zelensky of Ukraine told reporters at a lengthy news conference in Kyiv. He said that Ukraine could win the war this year as long as its allies remain united “like a fist” and continue delivering weapons. There will be no negotiations with Russia, Mr. Zelensky said, until Moscow stops bombing Ukrainian cities and killing Ukrainian people. ‘Go ahead and stop doing all of that, and only after that we’ll tell you what form will be used to diplomatically put an end to it,’ Mr. Zelensky told reporters, on a day when allies rallied around Ukraine with new pledges of weapons and shows of support. ...”
Palanca, Moldova, March - A young life packed up in pink
Egg cream
"An egg cream is a cold beverage consisting of milk, carbonated water, and flavored syrup (typically chocolate or vanilla), as a substitute for an ice cream float. Despite the name, the drink contains neither eggs nor cream. It is prepared by pouring syrup into the tall glass, adding milk, lightly stirring it with a spoon, then streaming soda water into the glass, mixing the other ingredients. Ideally, the glass is left with 2/3 liquid and 1/3 foamy head. The egg cream is almost exclusively a fountain drink. ... The egg cream originated among Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jewish immigrants in New York City, so one explanation claims that egg is a corruption of the Yiddish echt 'genuine or real', making an egg cream a ‘good cream’ ..."
Eddie's Sweet Shop's egg cream is made with a homemade chocolate syrup.
Trash and Vaudeville
"Trash and Vaudeville is a store located at 96 East 7th Street between Avenue A and First Avenue in East Village in Manhattan, New York. The store is associated with the clothing styles of punk rock and various other counter culture movements, and has been a leading source of fashion inspiration since its inception by owner and founder Ray Goodman in 1975. HistoryRay Goodman founded Trash & Vaudeville in 1975 at 4 Saint Marks Place, New York, NY. The store occupied two floors within the historic Hamilton-Holly House building on St. Mark's Place from 1975 to February 2016. The basement formerly housed a pinball parlor directly below the upstairs, which was accessed by an iron staircase. Although physically separated as two stores, they were regarded as one entity. ...”
How Russia's 35-mile armoured convoy ended in failure
"Three days into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a huge 10-mile (15.5km) line of armoured vehicles was spotted by a satellite in the north of the country. The very same morning in Bucha, just outside Kyiv, 67-year-old Volodymyr Scherbynyn was standing outside his local supermarket when more than a hundred Russian military vehicles rolled into town. Both Volodymyr and the satellite were witnesses to a key part of President Vladimir Putin's plan for a quick and overwhelming victory. They were also witnesses to its failure. The western media called it a convoy. In reality, it was a traffic jam and a major tactical blunder. Forty-eight hours after that first satellite photograph, on 28 February 2022, the line of vehicles had grown to a colossal 35 miles (56 km) long. The vehicles were stalled for weeks. Then finally they retreated, and seemingly disappeared overnight. What happened? Why did such a massive force fail to reach Kyiv? ...”
Satellite images of the convoy captured last year
Ezra Pound, The Art of Poetry No. 5 (1962)
Interviewed by Donald Hall : "Since his return to Italy, Ezra Pound has spent most of his time in the Tirol, staying at Castle Brunnenburg with his wife, his daughter Mary, his son-in-law Prince Boris de Rachewiltz, and his grandchildren. However, the mountains in this resort country near Merano are cold in the winter, and Mr. Pound likes the sun. The interviewer was about to leave England for Merano, at the end of February, when a telegram stopped him at the door: 'Merano icebound. Come to Rome.' Pound was alone in Rome, occupying a room in the apartment of an old friend named Ugo Dadone. It was the beginning of March and exceptionally warm. The windows and shutters of Pound’s corner room swung open to the noises of the Via Angelo Poliziano. The interviewer sat in a large chair while Pound shifted restlessly from another chair to a sofa and back to the chair. ...”
2020 April: The Cantos, 2021 April: A Walking Tour In Southern France
New Age Steppers – Stepping Into A New Age 1980 - 2012
"... An anthology set of the group that launched the On-U Sound label with the first album and single, New Age Steppers were a collective with an evolving line-up, built around the driving forces of Ari Up (The Slits) and producer Adrian Sherwood. Their records featured contributions from several singers and players from the UK post-punk vanguard such as the Pop Group, The Raincoats and The Flying Lizards; colliding with established movers from the reggae world such as Bim Sherman, Style Scott and George Oban. Contains the following discs: New Age Steppers (1981), Action Battlefield (1981), Foundation Steppers (1983), Love Forever (2012), Avant Gardening (a new compilations of rare dubs, version excursions and unreleased tracks from the vault) plus 32 page book containing photos, ephemera and a new sleevenotes by Oli Warwick that trace the history of the group via conversations with Adrian Sherwood and other contributors. ...”
2010 October: Ari Up (17 January 1962 – 20 October 2010), 2012 July: Subatomic Sound System meets Lee Scratch Perry & Ari Up of the Slits (7″ vinyl), 2014 September: Live in Cincinnati and San Francisco 1980, 2015 August: Return Of The Giant Slits (1981/2007), 2016 July: "Man Next Door" - Berlin 1981, 2021 April: Avant Gardening - New Age Steppers (2021), 2022 September: Typical Girls/I Heard It Through The Grapevine (1979)
Biden Visits Kyiv, Ukraine’s Embattled Capital, as Air-Raid Siren Sounds
"President Biden made a surprise trip to the embattled capital of Ukraine on Monday, traveling under a cloak of secrecy into a war zone to demonstrate what he called America’s ‘unwavering support’ of the effort to beat back Russian forces nearly a year after they invaded the country. Mr. Biden arrived early Monday morning to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky, and the two stepped out into the streets of Kyiv even as an air-raid siren sounded, a dramatic moment that underscored the investment the United States has made in Ukraine’s independence. ... Mr. Biden promised to release another $500 million in military aid in coming days, mentioning artillery ammunition, Javelin missiles and Howitzers, but he did not talk about the advanced arms that Ukraine has sought. ...”
Guardian - ‘This is a part of history’: Kyiv citizens delighted by Joe Biden’s surprise visit (Video)
President Biden traveled to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky in a demonstration of America’s support nearly a year into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
2023 Winter Music Preview ~ Ambient & Drone
"Starting today, we delve more deeply into the winter release schedule, which already includes hundreds of titles: a boon for those who have packed away their 2022 playlists and are looking for something new.Our earliest 2023 submissions arrived in late summer, a sign that some artists really have their act together ~ or were ready to put last year behind them before it was over. We’ve been playing some of these albums for more than a season, and now we’re finally able to share them with you! This winter’s musical slate is already enthralling, one of the finest in years. ...”
Everthus the Ether - Tristan Eckerson
How Hell’s Kitchen got its rough and ready name
"There used to be a lot of hell in New York neighborhood names. Hell’s Hundred Acres was the early to mid-20th century moniker for today’s SoHo, thanks to all the fires that broke out in the cast-iron buildings then used for manufacturing. Hellgate Hill was an East 90s enclave named for the narrow East River channel separating Queens from Ward’s Island, where perilous rocks and currents sunk many ships. Let’s not forget Satan’s Circus, the Gilded Age vice district that straddled the Chelsea-Flatiron-Midtown borders, and Spuyten Duyvil, the northern Bronx enclave that translates into ‘spite of the devil’ or ‘spouting devil’ due to its treacherous waters. ...”
The War’s Violent Next Stage
"For much of the winter, the war in Ukraine settled into a slow-moving but exceedingly violent fight along a jagged 600-mile-long frontline in the southeast. Now, both Ukraine and Russia are poised to go on the offensive. Russia, wary of the growing Ukrainian arsenal of Western-supplied weapons, is moving first. Using tens of thousands of new conscripts in the hope of overwhelming Ukraine, its forces are attacking heavily fortified positions across bomb-scarred fields and through scorched forests in the East. They are looking for vulnerabilities, hoping to exploit gaps, and setting the stage for what Ukraine warns could be Moscow’s most ambitious campaign since the start of the war. ...”
When Russian troops rushed Kyiv, a woman joined its defense.
A Wiser Sympathy - Mary Kuhn
"In 1870 the American Independent ran an article from Charles Dickens’ magazine All the Year Round titled ‘Have Plants Intelligence?’ The provocative question in the title was designed to spark intuitive negative responses, but the paragraphs that follow rehearse a clear argument in the affirmative. ... Emily Dickinson was, by all accounts, a skillful and dedicated gardener. Throughout her isolation at her parents’ house on Main Street in Amherst, Dickinson continued to raise plants, arrange bouquets, and send cuttings to distant friends. As a student she scouted for new flowers to press into her bound herbarium, and in winter, to keep plants warm, she brought them into the conservatory built against the southeastern wall of the house. ...”
2016 December: Studies in Scale - Excerpts by Emily Dickinson and Jen Bervin, 2018 April: A Quiet Passion - Terence Davies (2016)
Page from Emily Dickinson’s herbarium, c. 1840.
5 Quirky Queens House Trends
"Queens is New York City’s most diverse borough, both culturally and in terms of its residential architecture. Throughout the borough, you can find amalgamations of different architectural styles, personal touches, and cultural influences from all over the world resulting in houses that are truly unique. In his book, All the Queens Houses, Spanish-born Queens-based architect and artist Rafael Herrin-Ferri creates an architectural portrait of the borough that captures how the homes reflect the diversity of their residents.
Moscow’s Military Capabilities Are in Question After Failed Battle for Ukrainian City
"As Moscow steps up its offensive in eastern Ukraine, weeks of failed attacks on a Ukrainian stronghold have left two Russian brigades in tatters, raised questions about Russia’s military tactics and renewed doubts about its ability to maintain sustained, large-scale ground assaults. The battle for the city of Vuhledar, which has been viewed as an opening move in an expected Russian spring offensive, has been playing out since the last week of January, but the scale of Moscow’s losses there is only now beginning to come into focus. Accounts from Ukrainian and Western officials, Ukrainian soldiers, captured Russian soldiers and Russian military bloggers, as well as video and satellite images, paint a picture of a faltering Russian campaign that continues to be plagued by battlefield dysfunction. ...”
Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties - Mike Davis and Jon Wiener (2020)
"Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties is a book by Mike Davis and Jon Wiener about Los Angeles in the 1960s. The authors combine archival research and personal interviews with their own experiences in the civil rights and anti-war movements to tell the social history or, as the authors term it, ‘movement history’ of this transformative decade. The book’s purpose is not to present a comprehensive history of 1960s Los Angeles but to dispel the mythology surrounding this era and replace it with the neglected history of the populist social and cultural movements that shifted power away from an entrenched elite and opened up opportunities for radical egalitarian change. ...”
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The Ascent - Larisa Shepitko (1977)
"The Ascent (Voskhozhdeniye, Larisa Shepitko, 1977) is a Second World War drama set in an unidentified area of German-occupied Belarus during the bitterly cold winter of 1942. Not a film for the faint hearted, The Ascent is a harrowing, gut-wrenching portrayal of the suffering experienced by two members of a Soviet partisan group: a stolid, grizzled, battle-hardened veteran, Rybak (Viadmir Gostyukhin), and a former schoolteacher turned soldier, the pale, slight and sickly Sotnikov (Boris Plotnikov, making his film debut). ... When The Ascent was released in 1977, it garnered Ukrainian-born director Larisa Shepitko much-deserved international recognition, winning the prestigious Golden Bear Award at the 27th Berlin International Film Festival that year. ...”
Guided Missile Killed U.S. Aid Worker in Ukraine, Video Shows
"Roughly a minute after an American paramedic, Pete Reed, and a team of aid workers began tending to a wounded civilian in the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on Feb. 2, they were attacked. Mr. Reed, a former U.S. Marine volunteering on the war’s front lines, was killed, and several of his colleagues were wounded. Volunteers at the scene initially attributed the strike to indiscriminate Russian shelling. But a frame-by-frame analysis of a video taken at the location — and shared with The New York Times — shows that Mr. Reed, who was unarmed, died in a targeted strike by a guided missile almost certainly fired by Russian troops. ...”
The mosaic in the Africa Institute in Moscow
Stand By for Failure: A Negativland Documentary
"Above is the opening of my review of the new Negativland documentary, Stand By for Failure, directed by Ryan Worsley, which is in the new issue of The Wire (the one with the Necks on the cover). I’ll post the full text in a month, once the subsequent issue is out. In the interim, some thoughts I had while writing the review that didn’t make the assigned length. ... I wanted to talk a bit more about the group in the context of American pop surreality, notably the Firesign Theater and the Church of the SubGenius (J. R. ‘Bob’ Dobbs), neither of which are mentioned in the documentary, or industrial music like Consolidated and Ministry. ... In the review I mention how some of the material will be confusing to unfamiliar viewers. I didn’t have space to include the moments of American Top 40 host Casey Kasem cursing. ...”
2009 March: Negativland, 2012 January: Negativland (sound collage), 2012 December: No Other Possibility (1989), 2013 November: No Business (2005), 2021 November: Negativland Is Still Culture Jamming and Taking on Our Masters
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