​NCAA Tournament Beer Guide: A local brew for every team. Please read responsibly

"The NCAA Tournament is a month’s worth of emotional overload. A bright, shining star we can’t help but stare at. It will consume the universe for the next month. And those who watch along may consume some frosty refreshments. Which brings us to the question we ask every spring: What’s the best beverage to pair with watching every team in the field of 68? That’s right: Welcome to The Athletic’s third-annual men’s NCAA Tournament Beer Guide. For three Marches now, we’ve reached out to local breweries with one question: If you could drink just one of your beers while watching the NCAA Tournament, which would it be? Occasionally, we were able to test the product and provide a mini-review of our own. For journalism. ...”

The Athletic

Southeast Missouri State, The brewery: Many Good Things Brewing, The beer: Frog Bones Imperial IPA

​Albert Camus, Stranger in a Strange Land: New York

"When a boat carrying Albert Camus sailed into New York Harbor in March 1946, he was hailed as a moral emissary from war-ravaged Europe and the glamorous embodiment of a newfangled philosophy known as Existentialism. The American publication of his novel ‘The Stranger’ was celebrated on the roof of the Hotel Astor, and Vogue published a portrait by Cecil Beaton, showing Camus smiling slyly from noirish shadows. But a year later, Camus recalled his three months amid the city’s ‘swarming lights’ and frantic streets with a mixture of awe and bafflement. ...”

NY Times

The Paris Review: Camus’s New York Diary, 1946 By Albert Camus

amazon: Travels in the Americas: Notes and Impressions of a New World

2011 October: Albert Camus on Nihilism, 2014 November: Albert Camus: Soccer Goalie, 2015 May: LISTEN: New Cave And Ellis Soundtrack, 2016 April: Anarchism and Friedrich Nietzsche, 2016 April: Algerian Chronicles (2013), 2017 November: The Stranger (1942), 2018 July: Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (1960), 2019 September: Les Pieds-Noirs: Algeria’s Forgotten Footballers, 2020 March: The Plague (1947), 2020 September: An Animated Introduction to Albert Camus’ Existentialism, a Philosophy Making a Comeback in Our Dysfunctional Times, 2021 October: Albert Camus on the Responsibility of the Artist: To “Create Dangerously” (1957), 2022 May: Albert Camus: The philosopher who resisted despair, 2022 September: Deep Emotion, Plain Speech: Camus’s The Plague

​‘I Live in Hell’: The Psychic Wounds of Ukraine’s Soldiers

"The soldier cannot speak about what happened to him. It’s been a month since ‘the tragedy,’ as he calls it. When the subject arises, he freezes and looks at the floor. He gulps for air. He cannot say it. His doctor, a motherly woman, speaks for him: There were four of them. They were stationed near the front line, in eastern Ukraine, and on that night they shot a Russian drone from the sky. A small victory. Then its wreckage hurtled down, hunks of ragged metal slicing into the men below. He was the only one left standing. In the numb hours that followed, someone came to collect the others — one dead, two wounded — and he was left to hold the position alone through that freezing night and into the next day. ...”

NY Times

Guardian - The body collectors: Ukrainian volunteers search for Russian corpses

Aljazeera: Putin calls Ukraine role in Nord Stream blasts ‘sheer nonsense’ (Video)

The Ukraine Untruths of Disingenuous DeSantis

Inside a psychiatric hospital in Kyiv, the growing mental trauma of the war is written on every soldier’s face.

Composers Find Transcendence, and Inspiration, at the Club

"BERLIN — In 2018, after a visit to Berghain, the storied techno club here, the saxophonist and curator Ryan Muncy called the composer Ash Fure, a friend and collaborator. ‘God spoke to me in the subwoofers,’ Muncy told her. ... She and Muncy went straight to Berghain. ‘I remember so vividly every single detail,’ Fure said in a video interview. She recalled watching as the other club-goers shed their coats and donned futuristic outfits. She explored the labyrinthine architecture, discovering vantage points from which to watch and listen. She got close to the famous Funktion-One sound system, which engulfed her with its volume but never hurt her ears. She stayed for 14 hours. ...”

NY Times

LILLETH

YouTube: HIVE RISE - The Museum of Contemporary Art

The composer Ash Fure performing “Hive Rise,” a work that got its start at the club Berghain in Berlin, at the Geffen Contemporary in Los Angeles.

​Behind the Scenes at Beyond The Streets London / Recap

"Behind the scenes at ‘Beyond the Streets London’ is a hive of activity, with artists deeply focused on installing their work and seeking assistance with tools and equipment. Curators, organizers, and lighting professionals are bustling up and down the stairs, carrying props, or ladders, and communicating with vendors and artists via text message. Salespeople are diligently crafting wall texts to accompany the art pieces. It’s a few hours before showtime, yet everything is somehow accomplished just as the first guests arrive for the preview. ...”

Brooklyn Street Art

AgnesB at Beyond The Streets – London. Saatchi Gallery.

Ukraine war: Life in Mariupol under Russian occupation

"Finding people willing to speak to me from Mariupol was never going to be easy. After 10 months of Russian occupation, fear and distrust are the two most frequent responses I encountered when looking for someone who could tell me how things really are in Mariupol, in Ukraine's south-east. ... Russian forces put the people of Mariupol through a horrific months-long siege, before finally capturing it last May. I eventually found three residents willing to speak to me at length: a local city councillor, a retired pensioner and an engineer. All spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals from the local authorities installed by Russia (who block access to occupied Ukraine by Western journalists). They paint a picture of a massively expensive campaign conducted by Russia to win over the hearts and minds of the people of Mariupol, and rebuild a city damaged beyond recognition by Russia's own troops. ...”

BBC

GRID: Why prosecuting Russian war crimes in Ukraine may be awkward for the US

Rolling Stone: Putin Continues to Terrorize This Ukraine City, Long After His Troops Left

NY Times: International Court to Open War Crimes Cases Against Russia, Officials Say

NY Times - ‘Russia Outside Russia’: For Elite, Dubai Becomes a Wartime Harbor

The invading Russian forces damaged some 90% of residential buildings in Mariupol

Seedings for N.C.A.A. Men’s Tournament Show Wide-Open Field

"When the N.C.A.A. Division I men’s basketball tournament committee members hunkered down in Indianapolis over the weekend, they pored over spreadsheets, stared at a bank of televisions, sharpened their pencils and massaged their temples to figure out how to best seed the 68-team tournament field. They might have saved themselves all that time — and anguish — by picking names out of a hat. This year’s tournament, which was announced on Sunday night, has an on-any-given-Sunday feel, where blue bloods don’t feel so rich, midmajors don’t feel so middling and every team enters with questions — even at the very top. ...”

NY Times

W - 2023 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament

The Athletic - NCAA Tournament Midwest Region analysis: Houston, Texas, Indiana and more, NCAA Tournament West Region analysis: Kansas, UCLA, Gonzaga and more, NCAA Tournament East Region analysis: Purdue, Duke, Kentucky and more, NCAA Tournament South Region analysis: Alabama, Arizona and more

How To Fill Out Your Men's NCAA Tournament Bracket Like A Pro, The College Basketball Storylines You Should Know Before March Madness

The Athletic: However far Alabama goes this NCAA Tournament, questions about tragedy will follow

​Eyre Transmissions XXII: Interview With Hypnagogic Dark Ambient Composer, Ajna

"For the past several years, Ajna has been on fire! The Dark Ambient producer has consistently released great albums spanning sub-genres such as isolationism, drone, hauntology, and other experimental aspects of electronic music. Whatever is on the radar for any particular album, you can rest assure that the results are beyond reproach. Recently I was fortunate to have a few email interactions with the mastermind behind Ajna to get a greater viewpoint of the music, influences, the ardor behind the album artwork and everything in between. The results are embedded in this congenial interview with Ajna and on display is an endless passion for music, photography and spiritual wellbeing. ...”

The Dungeon in Deep Space (Audio)

Soundcloud (Audio)

In Fields Sown With Bombs, Ukraine’s Farmers Risk Deadly Harvest

"BERYSLAV, Ukraine — Oleksandr Hordienko stepped gingerly into a wheat field that had recently served as a Russian tank position, following closely behind an assistant with a metal detector. He stopped when he came to a row of metal disks glinting in the late-winter sun. They were tank mines, hundreds of them, laid out in a checkerboard pattern  across his field and presenting a deadly conundrum before the spring planting season. Farmers who choose to climb into their tractors and work their land risk death or dismemberment by the mines, shells and other ordnance that litter the fields. Those who do not risk an economic crisis: The fighting has already cost the southern Kherson region three harvests, and there is no sign that farming will resume its role as an engine of Ukraine’s economy anytime soon. ...”

NY Times

Guardian: What happened in the Russia-Ukraine war this week? Catch up with the must-read news and analysis

BBC - Ukraine war: Why Bakhmut matters for Russia and Ukraine

Aljazeera: Wagner mercenary chief demands more ammunition for Bakhmut battle (Video)

The Intercept_: Conflicting Reports Thicken Nord Stream Bombing Plot

Piles of wheat rotting in a half-destroyed grain storage facility at a farm complex in the village of a Shyroke, Ukraine, near the city of Kherson in February.

​Long-Lost Letters Bring Word, at Last

"In a love letter from 1745 decorated with a doodle of a heart shot through with arrows, María Clara de Aialde wrote to her husband, Sebastian, a Spanish sailor working in the colonial trade with Venezuela, that she could ‘no longer wait’ to be with him. Later that same year, an amorous French seaman who signed his name M. Lefevre wrote from a French warship to a certain Marie-Anne Hoteé back in Brest: ‘Like a gunner sets fire to his cannon, I want to set fire to your powder.’ Fifty years later, a missionary in Suriname named Lene Wied, in a lonely letter back to Germany, complained that war on the high seas had choked off any news from home: ‘Two ships which have been taken by the French probably carried letters addressed to me.’ None of those lines ever reached their intended recipients. British warships instead snatched those letters, and scores more, from aboard merchant ships during wars from the 1650s to the early 19th century. ...”

NY Times

Cooking with Florine Stettheimer - Valerie Stivers

"The painter and poet Florine Stettheimer should have been easy to cook from. Her poetry, commercially published for the first time in the 2010 collection Crystal Flowers, has a section devoted to ‘comestibles’—including airy tributes to ham, bread, and tomatoes with Russian dressing—and her paintings often portray food. She was born to a wealthy German-Jewish family in New York in the late eighteen hundreds, part of a social circle that included Neustadters and Guggenheims, and she held salons that were a Who’s Who of the New York art world. (Marcel Duchamp, Carl Van Vechten, and Leo Stein were regulars.) ...”

The Paris Review

The Paris Review - Archives: Valerie Stivers

Major Russian missile barrage slams targets across Ukraine

"Russia unleashed ‘a massive rocket attack’ that hit critical infrastructure and residential buildings in 10 regions of Ukraine, the country’s president said Thursday, with officials reporting at least six deaths in the largest such night-time attack in three weeks. Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the barrage that came while many people slept as an attempt by Moscow ‘to intimidate Ukrainians again. The occupiers can only terrorize civilians. That’s all they can do,’ Zelenskyy said in an online statement. The war has largely ground to a battlefield stalemate over the winter. The Kremlin’s forces started targeting Ukraine’s power supply last October in an apparent attempt to demoralize the civilian population. The barrages later became less frequent, with analysts speculating Russia may have been running low on ammunition. The last massive barrage took place on Feb. 16. ...”

NBC News (Video)

Aljazeera: Russia takes east Bakhmut as Ukraine builds up forces (Video)

No, Critics of Western Aid to Ukraine Aren’t Being Silenced

Guardian: Ukrainian forces still trying to hold Bakhmut despite heavy casualties

GRID - Ukraine War in Data: The battle for Bakhmut, by the numbers

Smoke billows after a Russian missile strike in Kyiv on Thursday.

The old brick city by the Atlantic - John Wieners's Boston haunts

"For almost thirty years, John Wieners lived meagerly and humbly in the same apartment in Beacon Hill; 44 Joy Street, Suite 10 as he called it. Joy Street, originally called Belknap Lane, named after the Colonial Apothecary, Dr. John Joy, with its history of livery stables, was his home. Wieners became somewhat more reclusive in his later years, but he was still a fixture on the streets of Beacon Hill, seen often trudging tragic-comically through the streets with his bag draped around his shoulder, and a cigarette in his hand, carrying himself with a certain muted elegance. ... Like a ghost, Wieners can be glimpsed in the emptiness of specific places left behind. There are many places to me where I can conjure up a spark of his spirit just by walking his Beacon Hill streets. ...”

Jacket2

2008 July: John Wieners, 2009 December: John Wieners - 1,  2011 May: John Wieners: June 21, 1959, 2012 May: Behind the State Capitol: Or Cincinnati Pike, 2012 August: John Wieners - 707 Scott Street, 2013 January: Mass: John Wieners, 2013 October: Measure (1957-1962), 2015 November: Stars Seen in Person: Selected Journals of John Wieners (2015), 2016 January: Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners

​The Brave Women Who Saved the Collected Texts of Hildegard of Bingen

"11 March 1948 – Eibingen Monastery, Wiesbaden, Germany: A brave, frightened women is risking her life in a daring res­cue mission. In these post-war years, medieval scholar Margarete Kühn is not dealing with spies and Nazis: instead, she has kidnapped a book. Assisted by her friend Caroline Walsh, an American military spouse, Margarete has secured the manuscript’s safe passage across 400 miles, traversing the wildest and most hostile parts of Germany’s war-ravaged landscape to a secluded monastery high above the banks of the Rhine. ... From her childhood as an enclosed nun with just a handful of companions, to her rise on the international stage as a leading scholar, theo­logian, visionary, musician, linguist, artist and scientist, the remarkable life of Hildegard of Bingen (1098– 1179) has been celebrated for centuries. ...”

LitHub

2018 June: Experience the Mystical Music of Hildegard Von Bingen: The First Known Composer in History (1098 – 1179)

​Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say

"New intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials suggests that a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines last year, a step toward determining responsibility for an act of sabotage that has confounded investigators on both sides of the Atlantic for months. U.S. officials said that they had no evidence President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine or his top lieutenants were involved in the operation, or that the perpetrators were acting at the direction of any Ukrainian government officials. The brazen attack on the natural gas pipelines, which link Russia to Western Europe, fueled public speculation about who was to blame, from Moscow to Kyiv and London to Washington, and it has remained one of the most consequential unsolved mysteries of Russia’s year-old war in Ukraine. Ukraine and its allies have been seen by some officials as having the most logical potential motive to attack the pipelines. ...”

NY Times

GRID: Why joining NATO and the EU are life or death issues for so many Ukrainians

NBC News: Russian troops 'forced to fight with shovels' as ammo shortage undermines Bakhmut advance (Video)

NY Times: Opinion | Ukraine’s Soldiers Know That Our Enemy Is in Shock

Aljazeera: Will Russia sanctions dethrone ‘King Dollar’?

Liverpool 7 Manchester United 0: Gakpo, Nunez and Salah run riot as Ten Hag’s men wilt

"Two goals each from Cody Gakpo, Darwin Nunez and Mohamed Salah helped Liverpool power to a record win over Manchester United. Gakpo, the Netherlands forward signed from PSV Eindhoven in January, produced his best performance for Jurgen Klopp’s team, scoring two exquisite goals either side of Nunez’s 47th-minute header. Salah got in on the act with a fourth before Nunez got his second and the Egypt star completed his own double. Roberto Firmino, who confirmed this week he will be leaving at the end of the season, came off the bench to complete the rout. …”

The Athletic

The Athletic: Ten Hag has used ruthlessness and running but this Man Utd humbling needs a new response (Video)

Guardian: Ten Hag accuses Manchester United of being ‘unprofessional’ in Liverpool rout

BBC: Bruno Fernandes a ‘disgrace’ & Manchester United ‘eaten alive’ in Liverpool thrashing

Guardian: Salah and Liverpool make history with seven-goal rout of Manchester United

Hear De La Soul’s Highly Acclaimed & Influential Hip-Hop Albums Streaming Free for the First Time

"If you don’t listen to rap, you’ve heard the same questions over and over in response to that confession. One of the most common is ‘But have you heard De La Soul?’ — which in recent years was easier said than done, at least on streaming platforms. ... One complication had to do with sampling, a standard hip hop practice conducted in such a far-reaching, freewheeling, and elaborate manner by De La Soul that the prospect of renegotiating each and every sonic snippet they’d cleared in the CD-and-tape era inspired untold corporate intransigence. ...”

Open Culture (Video)

NY Times: De La Soul’s Music Is Finally Back. It’s a Bittersweet Victory.

From left: Posdnuos (Kelvin Mercer), Maseo (Vincent Mason) and Trugoy the Dove (David Jolicoeur) in the early 1990s.

Race to get last children out of Bakhmut as city becomes ‘hell on earth’

"War breeds euphemism and metaphor. In the battle for the Donbas city of Bakhmut, threatened with a closing encirclement by Russian forces after seven months of bitter fighting, there are ‘White Angels’ and ‘Dark Angels’, the ‘road of life’ (the Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway, which is anything but) and the ‘Invincibility Centre’. The White Angels, a police evacuation group, scour the lethal districts of the shell-ruined city to evacuate children and the elderly.Their counterparts, the Dark Angels, take out the dead. The Invincibility Centre is where the few thousands of civilians who remain can find water and hot food cooked by the volunteers who have stayed in the city, even as in the past fortnight it has faced an increasing threat of finally being overrun. ...”

Guardian

****NY Times: This Is What Trench Warfare on the Front Line Is Like

NY Times: Whirring Into Action in Ukraine’s Skies

Aljazeera - Russia-Ukraine live: Russia attempting ‘to encircle’ Bakhmut (Video)

NY Times: With Ukraine Under Pressure in Bakhmut, Fight Becomes a Battle Over Roads

BBC - Bakhmut: Fighting in the street but Russia not in control - deputy mayor

Bakhmut has lost 95% of its pre-war population since the start of the Russian invasion

Ironweed - Héctor Babenco (1987)

"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. ...”

Wikipedia

Cult Movie: Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep shine in underrated Depression-era drama Ironweed

NY Times: 'Ironweed,' From Hector Babenco

YouTube: IRONWEED (Eureka Classics)

​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. ...”

Ephemeral New York

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. ...”

Guardian

NY Times: As Fighting Intensifies, Ukraine Says Its Forces Are Holding On in Bakhmut

GRID: Why Russia’s manpower advantage may not be enough to win the war in Ukraine

The Ukraine War Has Transformed Europe—for Good

BBC - Ukraine war: Images show devastated towns near front line

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. ...”

Bandcamp (Audio)

W - Christina Vantzou

Bandcamp: Video (Video)

​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. ...”

NY Times

udiscover: Wayne Shorter, Giant Of Jazz Saxophone, Dies At 89

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. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: Ukraine says it’s sending reinforcements to the embattled city of Bakhmut.

W - Battle of Bakhmut, W - Bakhmut

BBC: Drone crash near Moscow was failed attack, governor says

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. ...”

Wikipedia

YouTube: What Street Foods Look Like 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. ...”

Hermesacat

[PDF] The Night, Tom Verlaine & Patti Smith, 1976

​‘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. ...”

Guardian (Video)

Aljazeera: Europe leaps towards energy autonomy as sanctions undercut Russia (Video)

Vanity Fair: Vladimir Putin’s Inhumane Blueprint to Terrorize Civilians in Chechnya, Syria—And Now Ukraine

Guardian: War Diary of the Ukrainian Resistance review – extremely loud and incredibly close

NBC News - 2022: Calendar of War

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. ...”

allmusic (Audio)

Discogs (Video)

YouTube: World War III (FULL Album from Vinyl)  55:45

​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. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: What Fox News Hosts Said Privately vs. Publicly About Voter Fraud

NY Times: Read What Murdoch Said in His Deposition in the Fox-Dominion Case

​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. ...”

BBC

NY Times: Deadly Russian Artillery Strikes Reported in Ukraine’s East and South

New Left Review: Ukrainian Voices?

Some MAGA Republicans Break with Fox Over Ukraine

GRID - World in Photos: From Ukraine and Beyond, One Year of War

NY Times: War in Ukraine Has Changed Europe Forever

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. ...”

NY Times

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. ...”

Africa Is a Country

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