Postcards from Elizabeth Bishop
"Elizabeth Bishop delighted in the postcard. It suited her poetic subject matter and her way of life—this poet of travel who was more often on the move than at home, 'wherever that may be,' as she put it in her poem 'Questions of Travel.' She told James Merrill in a postcard written in 1979 that she seldom wrote 'anything of any value at the desk or in the room where I was supposed to be doing it—it’s always in someone else’s house, or in a bar, or standing up in the kitchen in the middle of the night.' Since her death in 1979 and the publication of her selected correspondence, Bishop has become known as one of the great modern-day letter-writers. ..."
Lee Scratch Perry - Battle Of Armagideon, 2CD Expanded Edition (1986)
"... In 1985, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry returned to Trojan Records, the celebrated British company which, during reggae’s the formative years, had been instrumental in establishing him on the international scene as one of Jamaica’s most talented, innovative and influential producers. By this time, he was exploring new musical avenues, having teamed up with the Dub Factory, a British band led by rhythm guitarist and synth player Mark Downie. The first evidence of this new union came towards the close of the year when Trojan released Perry’s seasonal single, ‘Merry Christmas, Happy New Year’, on which he was accompanied by London-based singer, Sandra Robinson. The disc provided an indication of his bold, new sound, which effectively blended Jamaican rhythms with rock sensibilities. ..."
Sounds of the Universe (Audio), YouTube: Battle of Armagideon (Millionaire Liquidator) (Expanded Version) 18 videos
Gerry Eastman – Not Just His Brother’s Keeper
"Jazzman Gerry Eastman, 78, cooks harder than ever. Every Friday he gigs fast and mean, nimble and soulful, experimental and tender at the Williamsburg Music Center, which he has owned and operated (and lived in) since he bought the building for $50,000, in 1981. Back then the neighborhood was Black and Puerto Rican, and Eastman, composer and virtuoso electric guitarist, was just one of many musicians who owned their own clubs. Now his is the only Black-owned jazz club in Williamsburg (and one of only a few in Brooklyn). But although the neighborhood’s avant-garde music scene has dissolved since the early 2010s (documented in Pratt Institute professor Cisco Bradley’s heavily reported book The Williamsburg Avant-Garde), Eastman continues to rocket into the jazz stratosphere. ..."
L: Historical artifacts adorn the walls of the Williamsburg Music Center. R: Gerry Eastman, guitar virtuoso.L: Courtesy Gerry Eastman. R: Ben Gambuzza
GQ: Meet Cooper B. Handy, Better Known As LUCY, the Experimental Singer-Songwriter Who's Charmed New York and Baffled TikTok
"In early September of this year, when Cooper B. Handy, who goes by the stage name LUCY, opened for King Krule in Atlanta, Georgia, a concertgoer who uses the TikTok handle @macmandyy filmed six seconds of his performance and posted it with the text overlay: 'when the opener so bad u have to pull up slime videos to zone out.' The video went semi-viral, racking up over 360,000 likes and nearly two and a half thousand comments, which offer a fairly robust summary of the pop musician’s current status. ... Handy, 29, is almost startlingly soft-spoken, dressed head-to-toe in primary colors, and is charmingly prone to blushing, especially when he’s asked to talk about himself. We walked through chapels filled with medieval ephemera, pausing for an extra-long time in front of the unicorn tapestries, which tell the tale of a hunted magical beast. ..."
Stikman “SIGNS” Show Slides into Skewville.
"Stikman always appears to lurk in New York on street signs, slapped on mailboxes, and stuck into doorways. A Gotham stalwart for two decades or so, his stiff amulet self is true to form, an image of sticks awkwardly compiled, sometimes in 2D, sometimes in 3. He appears in scenes where everyone else is fully formed and buxom, where space travel requires a bubble helmut and silver jumper, where jumbled graphics almost erase him, where nothing else is happening except this somewhat lonely guy quietly existing in the dirty chaos of NY street culture. Stikman. ..."
Classic Performances - Pet Shop Boys
"The Pet Shop Boys do ballet. If you spent a large portion of the 80s singing 'West End Girls' into a hairbrush, then get ready for a surprise - the Pet Shop Boys composed the music for their first ever ballet in 2011. Entitled 'The Most Incredible Thing', it's based on a Hans Christian Andersen story and premiered at the Sadler's Wells theatre in London. ..."
YouTube: Pet Shop Boys: HD Remastered 43 Videos
Hania Rani Nancy Jazz Pulsations 2023
"Hania Rani has a gift in creating moments of intimate communion with her audience using only her fingertips, one reason why this Polish pianist is seeing her star rise in the neoclassical world. Her liberated, graceful playing defies codes and labels, while her startling melodies captivate and transport audiences. For this unmissable concert, Hania Rani performs alongside Ziemowit Klimek. ..."
YouTube: Nancy Jazz Pulsations - ARTE Concert
2021 April: Live from Studio S2 (2021), 2022 January: Hania Rani, 2022 March: Music for Film and Theatre (2021), 2023 January: Esja (2019), 2023 June: Invalides, in Paris, France for Cercle
It’s a working Thanksgiving for this late 19th century streetcar driver
"It’s hard to imagine a time when mass transit meant taking a horse-drawn streetcar. But stepping into an unheated, weakly lit car that glided along steel tracks embedded in the street was one way New Yorkers got around in the 19th century. By 1860, Manhattan had 14 horse-drawn streetcar lines carrying 38 million passengers a year, according to The Wheels That Powered New York. This was in addition to 29 omnibus lines, which arrived in the early 19th century. (An omnibus was similar to a streetcar, but the wheels didn’t align with steel runners in the street—making it a bumpier, more hazardous ride.) Hundreds of car drivers were employed by the many private streetcar companies that plied the avenues of Manhattan and Brooklyn. ..."
Egyptology’s Eloquent Eye: Mohammedani Ibrahim
"Behind the lens was Mohammedani Ibrahim, one of the first Egyptian-born archeological photographers and one of the most skilled. Ibrahim’s photos of the statue identified as depicting Lady Sennuwy of Asyut, wife of Djefaihapi of Asyut, and dated to the 12th dynasty of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom between 1971 and 1926 BCE, were later shipped with the statue to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. ... The only reason anyone knows Ibrahim’s name, despite leaving behind more than 9,000 photographs, is thanks largely to Reisner. Ibrahim, who spent more than 30 years documenting fragments of bygone eras of his homeland, has remained nonetheless almost as obscure as the long-ago architects, masons, sculptors and painters whose works he recorded on film. ..."
In Ukraine’s Slowed-Down War, Death Comes as Quickly as Ever
"The agony came in waves as the wounded Ukrainian soldier in the back of the ambulance slipped in and out of consciousness. The driver, hurtling past cratered fields on roads thick with mud, was racing to escape Russian artillery fire north of the city of Avdiivka, while hoping he was not spotted by drones. ... Russian forces have been staging fierce assaults around Avdiivka for more than a month and have recently launched simultaneous offensives across eastern Ukraine in what military analysts say is a bid to regain the initiative as winter approaches. Ukrainian forces are resisting furiously, while probing for openings in a southern counteroffensive and conducting river crossings near the southern port city of Kherson. ..."
Bowery Ballroom
"The Bowery Ballroom is a New York City live music venue located at 6 Delancey Street in Manhattan's Boweryneighborhood. The venue has enjoyed a fabled reputation among musicians as well as audiences. In 2013, industry insiders polled by Rolling Stone magazine named it the best club in America, describing it as 'both intimate and grand, with consistently great sound and sightlines, and touches of old-school class.' It has a capacity of 575 people. The Bowery Ballroom was founded in 1998 by Michael Swier, Michael Winsch, and Brian Swier, who still own and operate the business. The club was the team's second music venue after The Mercury Lounge. ... Patti Smith performed New Year's Eve at the Bowery Ballroom for fourteen consecutive years. ..."
Sun Ra: The Philadelphia Years
"In the fall of 1961, jazz pianist, composer and future-seer Herman Poole Blount, AKA Sun Ra, moved his Arkestra from Chicago to New York. Since World War II, New York had been an epicenter of modernity, the launching point for many major advancements in art, music and literature – from the Abstract Expressionism of the ’40s and the Beat poets of the ’50s, to Warhol’s Factory in the ’60s. For most of the latter decade Sun Ra and his Arkestra lived in New York, navigating 'high art' cultural circles while struggling against the constant threat of poverty that many black experimental musicians have come to know so well. During this time, Sun Ra came into contact with the poet and activist Amiri Baraka and the cadre of young poets and artists that formed what would come to be known as the Black Arts Movement. ..."
Ancestry as guide to character in Tolkien’s legendarium
"In Tolkien's legendarium, ancestry provides a guide to character. The apparently genteel Hobbits of the Baggins family turn out to be worthy protagonists of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Bilbo Baggins is seen from his family tree to be both a Baggins and an adventurous Took. Similarly, Frodo Bagginshas some relatively outlandish Brandybuck blood. Among the Elves of Middle-earth, as described in The Silmarillion, the highest are the peaceful Vanyar, whose ancestors conformed most closely to the divine will, migrating to Aman and seeing the light of the Two Trees of Valinor; the lowest are the mutable Teleri; and in between are the conflicted Noldor. Scholars have analysed the impact of ancestry on Elves such as the creative but headstrong Fëanor, who makes the Silmarils. Among Men, Aragorn, hero of The Lord of the Rings, is shown by his descent from Kings, Elves, and an immortal Maia to be of royal blood, destined to be the true King who will restore his people. Scholars have commented that in this way, Tolkien was presenting a view of character from Norse mythology, and an Anglo-Saxon view of kingship, though others have called his implied views racist. ..."
Bilbo's and Frodo's ancestry analysed by geography of the Shire and Hobbit family character. Bilbo inherits bourgeois Baggins and adventurous Took, suiting him both for life in the Shire and for the adventure described in The Hobbit.
Chaucer goes digital as British Library makes works available online
"The entire collection of Geoffrey Chaucer’s works held by the British Library is being made available in digital format after the completion of a two and a half year project to upload 25,000 images of the often elaborately illustrated medieval manuscripts. In a 'major milestone' for the library, which holds the world’s largest surviving collection of Chaucer, it is hoped the digital platform will enable new research into the 14th-century poet, courtier, soldier, diplomat, and MP who is most famous for his Middle English epic, The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer, who died in 1400, was proclaimed by his contemporary poet Thomas Hoccleve as the 'firste fyndere of our fair language' and is widely regarded as the father of English poetry. He was, in essence, the first poet laureate, being rewarded by Edward III with a gallon of wine daily for an unspecified task, thought to be for poetic work or works. He was also the first to be buried in what became Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. The British Library holds more than 60 items related to his works and life, and has now digitised them all. ..."
A detail from The Canterbury Pilgrims in a medieval edition of the book by Chaucer.
Inside Man: How FIFA Guided the World Cup to Saudi Arabia
“As the world reeled from the coronavirus crisis in the fall of 2020, the president of soccer’s global governing body, Gianni Infantino, headed to Rome for an audience with Italy’s prime minister. Wearing masks and bumping elbows, Mr. Infantino, the president of FIFA, and the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, greeted each other in front of journalists before disappearing with the president of the Italian soccer federation into one of the ornate state rooms of the 16th-century Palazzo Chigi, the Italian leader’s official residence. …”
Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, with Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, at the 2022 World Cup.
Well Charged – Vital Dub (1976)
"... Ok, back to the topic at hand: the riddims that are on this classic Dub-Set from 1976 are, with one exception, from the undisputed masterpiece of the Mighty Diamonds: 'The Right Time" aka 'I Need A Roof' and this connection alone has earned the reputation of 'Vital Dub' reasoned. Although no band is named on the album cover, a quick look at the line-up (despite some aliases) and it's obvious that the rhythms of this work were recorded by the early revolutionaries: drummer Sly Dunbar, bassist 'Ranchie' McLean ( partial replacement for Robbie Shakespeare), keyboardist Ansel Collins and all the other usual suspects are mentioned. Joseph 'Jo Jo' Hookim and keyboardist Ossie Hibbert sat at the mixing desk. The mix is mostly a straight-through of the rhythms that are still unparalleled to this day. The solid production is a remarkable instrumental collection Dubs. ..."
YouTube: Vital Dub 9 video
ModularGuitarFields I-VI - Zimoun (2023)
"... Zimoun is a multi-disciplilnary Swiss artist who is best recognized for his immersive and site-specific installations with cardboard, DC motors and other industrial objects to create large-scale installations of orchestrated noise and movement. His mechanized environments have been shown in prestigiuos museums and galleries worldwide. On his latest musical release, ModularGuitarFields I-VI is entirely based on the sounds of a Tenor Baritone Guitar, combined with select elements of a Modular Synth and a vintage 1960s Magnatone Amp. ModularGuitarFields I-VI encompasses expansive and atmospheric realms, showcasing Zimoun’s passion for raw, warm sounds, as well as minimalist concepts and approaches. ..."
John Luther Adams – Darkness and Scattered Light (2023)
"'Darkness and Scattered Light' is an album of composer John Luther Adams’s darkly beautiful, mesmerizing, virtuosic music for double bass (two solos and a bass quintet), performed by the late bassist extraordinaire Robert Black (1956–2023). This is one of the most beautiful albums I have heard in years. And so emotional. It seems strange that an album about the vastness of nature should be so human, and so emotionally resonant. As the music goes deeper into exploring the stark, mysterious slowness of the natural world it becomes clear just how little this world cares about what we think about it. Nature doesn’t need us – the majesty of this music reflects our smallness back to us. It is a humbling, devastating kind of beauty. ..."
Dissenting in Style: How Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Collars Became Political Signifiers
"When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took her seat on the Supreme Court bench on August 10, 1993, she became the second female to serve on the country’s highest court, joining Justice Sandra Day O’Connor(nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1981). In the court’s group portrait from RBG’s first term, the nine justices, posed in front of red velvet curtains, wear flowing black judicial robes. The uniform is a simple but powerful symbol: concealing the individual’s body, it conveys impartiality and the somber, collective responsibility to uphold the Constitution. Justices Ginsburg and O’Connor flank the seven male justices. There isn’t a dress code for Supreme Court justices—the black robe has been worn over the years out of tradition. ..."
‘Fear of Flying’ Is 50. What Happened to Its Dream of Freedom Through Sex?
"Fifty years ago last month, Erica Jong published a debut novel that went on to sell more than 20 million copies. 'Fear of Flying,' a book so sexually frank that you may have found it hidden in your mother’s underwear drawer, broke new ground in the explicitness of writing by and for women. Jong’s heroine, Isadora Wing, was a live wire. She was also a dead end, certainly for Jong, and maybe for feminism, too.
Born in 1942 to a family of freethinkers in Manhattan, Erica Mann, who became Erica Jong, belonged to a generation 'raised to be Doris Day,' as she later wrote. Her Barnard yearbook photos showcase the full early-1960s checklist: velvet headband, twin set, pearls. Jong was gifted and ambitious. But even as a literature major at one of the country’s most distinguished women’s colleges, she had read vanishingly little work by female authors. ..."
Erica Jong published “Fear of Flying” “during that fleeting moment when sex struck some feminists as the thing that would set us once and forever free.”
‘All Mod Cons’: How The Jam Outstripped Punk To Enter The Mainstream
"Unlike contemporaries such as Sex Pistols and The Clash, The Jam initially spent several years honing their craft on the small club circuit, so when they burst onto the scene early in 1977, they blazed with passion and purpose. In just five short years, with albums the likes of In The City, All Mod Cons and Sound Affects, the group spearheaded a mod revival that still reverberates today. Seemingly at odds with punk’s “Year Zero” mentality, the Rickenbacker-wielding, Surrey-based trio didn’t immediately slot in with their peers. Though acceptably loud and aggressive, the band’s music openly betrayed their collective love of mod-inclined forbears The Who and The Kinks, while their sharp black stage suits were anathema to young punks sporting safety pins, ripped T-shirts, and bondage trousers. ..."
2009 March: The Jam, 2012 November: "Going Underground", 2013 January: In the City, 2013 February: This Is the Modern World, 2013 July: All Mod Cons, 2013 November: Setting Sons, 2014 January: Sound Affects (1980), 2014 December: Live At Bingley Hall, Birmingham, England 1982, 2015 March: "Town Called Malice" / "Precious", 2015 September: "Strange Town" / "The Butterfly Collector" (1979), 2016 April: "Down In The Tube Station At Midnight" (1979), 2017 January: Absolute Beginners EP (1981), 2017 March: David Watts / "A" Bomb In Wardour Street (1978), 2017 December: The Gift (1982), 2018 May: Peel Session, 2022 November: Revisiting The Jam's riotous performance of 'In The City' from 1977
2023-24 College basketball preseason rankings: Kansas, Duke lead top 25
"It's that time of year — we're rolling out our FOX Sports preseason college basketball rankings. Before we unveil my projections for the 2023-24 season, let's look at last year's preseason poll to provide some needed context. The top-ranked team in last year's preseason poll, North Carolina, failed to make the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2010. Meanwhile, the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament, Alabama, wasn't ranked in the top 15 of the preseason AP poll. With Zach Edey leading the way, Purdue wasn't even ranked heading into last season. The Final Four — UConn, San Diego State, Florida Atlantic University and Miami — only had one team that was ranked in the preseason with the Aztecs clocking in at No. 19. With that being said, the following is the definitive and undisputed FOX College Hoops Top 25, and it cannot be argued. ..."
Sweeping Raids, Giant Camps and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump’s 2025 Immigration Plans
"Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025 — including preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled.
The plans would sharply restrict both legal and illegal immigration in a multitude of ways.
Mr. Trump wants to revive his first-term border policies, including banning entry by people from certain Muslim-majority nations and reimposing a Covid 19-era policy of refusing asylum claims — though this time he would base that refusal on assertions that migrants carry other infectious diseases like tuberculosis.
He plans to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport people by the millions per year.
To help speed mass deportations, Mr. Trump is preparing an enormous expansion of a form of removal that does not require due process hearings. ..."
The Tunnels of Gaza: How the subterranean maze below the Gaza Strip works.
"The Gaza Strip has all the harrowing pitfalls soldiers have learned to expect from urban warfare: high-rise ambushes, truncated lines of sight and, everywhere, vulnerable civilians with nowhere to hide.
But as Israeli ground forces inch their way forward in Gaza, the bigger danger may prove to be underfoot.
The Hamas militants who launched a bloody attack on Israel last month have built a maze of hidden tunnels some believe extend across most if not all of Gaza, the territory they control.
And they are not mere tunnels. Snaking beneath dense residential areas, the passageways allow fighters to move around free from the eye of the enemy. There are also bunkers for stockpiling weapons, food and water, and even command centers and tunnels wide enough for vehicles, researchers believe. ..."
Fight The Power: The Politics Of Hip-Hop
"Since its earliest days, hip-hop has been inherently political – a powerful vehicle to deliver messages society needs to hear. Through the spoken word, its MCs have often conveyed the politics of hip-hop even more directly than those of their rock and folk predecessors. Whether it’s Boogie Down Productions’ KRS-One breaking down the journey of the cow from the slaughterhouse to your dinner plate, or Doug E Fresh (and, later, Common) speaking about the sensitive topic of reproductive rights, hip-hop has always been the genre where no subject is off-limits. ... Hip-hop as a genre can be traced back to militant spoken-word groups such as The Last Poets and The Watts Prophets; just as they reflected the realities of their surroundings, modern day hip-hop would deliver its own missives from the frontline, becoming, as Public Enemy frontman Chuck D put it, 'black America’s CNN.' For a better part of a decade, much of the politics of hip-hop revolved around and reacted to the policies of then President Ronald Reagan, who served in office from 1981 through 1989. ..."
Jill Stein Announces Third-Party Bid for President
"Jill Stein, who ran unsuccessfully for president on the Green Party ticket in 2012 and 2016, will run again in 2024, she announced on Thursday — adding yet another name to the field even as the two major parties appear almost certain to nominate the same two candidates who ran in 2020. ... The group of third-party candidates could significantly complicate what looks likely to be a rematch between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump. Some of Mr. Biden’s allies, worried that third-party candidates could siphon support from him in swing states and make a Trump victory more likely, have been working aggressively to undermine those campaigns. ..."
2016 August: Jill Stein, 2016 September: “The Spoiler” Speaks, 2016 September: Jill Stein’s Ideas Are Terrible. She Is Not the Savior the Left Is Looking For
Jill Stein will be running to the left of President Biden and is joining a group of third-party candidates who are making some Democrats fearful that they could siphon support from his re-election bid.
The George Floyd Uprising - Vortex Group (2023)
Thinking Was for Later; Movement Was for Now: On the Vortex Group’s “George Floyd Uprising”: "In the final shots of Jordan Peele’s horror film Us (2019), a cavalcade of ghouls join hands across a burning landscape in a gesture inspired by the Reagan-era charity stunt Hands Across America. This scene comes as the denouement of a story in which a mistreated underclass created by a shadowy 'them' escapes the underworld to take revenge on their unwitting upper-world doppelgängers. As we find out from the film’s final big twist, there’s no difference between us and them, at least not at birth: the same child can become a well-to-do college graduate or a zombie-like monster. After a lifetime of underground torment, the shadow people lack the capacity for anything but violence. Once they’ve done away with the upper-world doubles, they become primitive imitations of them. One does not get the sense that the ghouls are going to build a new world to replace the one they’ve destroyed. Their revolution spells the end of civilization. This apocalyptic vision mirrors the way many Americans think about proletarian insurrection. ..."
"I kind of missed the George Floyd uprising. I was in the United States, but in jail at the time, so I don’t have firsthand experience of what went on in the streets. Of course, we knew about it in jail, and followed it as closely as we could. It was impossible not to hear about the rebellion that summer, or get drawn in by it. Even people who tended not to be very interested in politics soon found themselves marching in the streets for Black lives and against the police amid looted businesses and the looming husks of burned-out cruisers, paddy wagons, and even precincts. The multiracial everyperson quality of the crowds who carried out the uprising is a major theme of Vortex Group’s The George Floyd Uprising, an anthology that offers a transporting account of the revolutionary strategies used during the uprisings, and published largely anonymously. ..."
Best Tribute Albums: 40 Classic Albums Honoring Great Artists
"Tribute albums have been inspiring musicians and delighting fans for decades. In 1950, only a couple of years after the first 33rpm LPs were made, Oscar Peterson honored the great Duke Ellington with a whole album of his music. There have since been thousands of tribute albums – more than 50 alone devoted to The Beatles – and the best tribute albums find artists paying homage while making their inspirations’ music their own. And they just keep coming. In 2017, for example, there were fine tribute albums from jazz singer Gregory Porter (Nat 'King' Cole & Me); Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen (The Source, a tribute to Art Blakey); and jazz drummer Louis Hayes (his Horace Silver tribute, Serenade For Horace). Here’s our selection of 40 of the best tribute albums of all time. Let us know in the comments section if you have any other favorites. ..."
Red Desert - Michelangelo Antonioni (1964)
"Red Desert (Italian: Deserto rosso) is a 1964 drama film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and starring Monica Vittiwith Richard Harris. Written by Antonioni and Tonino Guerra, it was Antonioni's first color film. The story follows a troubled woman (Vitti) living in an industrial region of Northern Italy following a recent automobile accident. ... In 1965, a reviewer for TIME lauded Red Desert as 'at once the most beautiful, the most simple and the most daring film yet made by' Antonioni, and stated that the director 'shows a painterly approach to each frame'. ..."
Red Desert: In This World - "Red Desert came out in 1964, almost twenty years after the end of the war, by which time Italy had recovered from the devastation caused by that catastrophic event and was on the way toward modern prosperity; the years stretching from 1954 to 1964 were those of the 'economic miracle.' Particularly vigorous in the recovery was the contribution of the country’s petrochemical industry: the companies SAROM and ANIC, which we hear mentioned in the film (their plants form the background of the opening scenes), began refining operations around Ravenna in the 1950s, in the process transforming the sleepy estuarine landscape south of the Po into the vast industrial waste ground that the movie so strikingly dramatizes. Michelangelo Antonioni’s attitude toward the cultural and economic changes affecting his country appears to have been complex and ambivalent. ..."
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Historical Primers That Help Explain the Century-Long Conflict
"On October 7th, Hamas invaded Israel and brutally massacred 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians. On a per capita basis, the attack amounted to twelve 9/11s (per The Economist). It also marked the single bloodiest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. Faced with an existential threat, Israel has launched its own devastating invasion of Gaza, with the goal of destroying Hamas leadership. Already, the assault has left 9,000 civilians dead and tipped the population into a humanitarian crisis. Barring a ceasefire, the casualties will almost certainly mount from here. This explosion of violence represents the latest chapter in a century-long struggle between Jews and Arabs in the region. ..."
A Beginner’s Guide to Looking at the Universe
"... Nearly a million miles away, the James Webb Space Telescope just took a picture. Since transmitting its first data in late 2021, Webb has made stunning discoveries, including a plume of water spanning 6,000 miles in our solar system and a galaxy that formed only 390 million years after the Big Bang, or more than 13 billion years ago. The telescope is an engineering marvel: Its massive mirror makes it possible to collect light from the faintest objects. It has multiple ways of blocking and dissecting that light, giving us detailed portraits of distant galaxies and close neighbors alike. And its position, orbiting the sun and using Earth as its shield, allows it to take pictures around the clock, sending us up to 57.2 gigabytes of data — the equivalent of tens of thousands of standard iPhone photos — every day. What’s it telling us about our past — and the future of cosmology? ..."
Invite - Trio Chemirani (2011)
"Perhaps one of problems with mixing jazzers and folk musicians is that, though they may borrow some ideas across the musical borders, they don't seem to fully embody the element of the other. In some cases, the mix creates a tendency to negate each other's best attributes. The resultant feeling is that, rather than truly integrating on all levels, the musicians are actually on separate sides of a fence playing roughly the same kind of tune. Jazzers can have a (sometimes inappropriate) tendency to turn folk music into a 'jam track,' and some folk musicians seem to play limitedly: tonally locked into a jazz arrangement's tetrachords or other western sensibilities about music. Invite is a rare gem of an album, especially because it is not that type of album. ..."
Merchant's House Museum
"The Merchant's House Museum, also known as the Old Merchant's House and the Seabury Tredwell House, is a historic house museum at 29 East Fourth Street in the NoHo neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Built by the hatter Joseph Brewster between 1831 and 1832, the house is a four-story building with a Federal-style brick facade and a Greek Revival interior. It served as the residence of the Tredwell family for almost a century before it reopened as a museum in 1936. The Merchant's House Museum is the only nineteenth-century family home in New York City with intact exteriors and interiors. ..."
The Black Album - Prince (1987)
"The Black Album is the sixteenth studio album by American recording artist Prince. It was re-released with re-mastered audio (and a few song title revisions) on November 22, 1994, by Warner Bros. Records after its original release on December 8, 1987, as the follow-up to Sign o' the Times and was to appear in an entirely black sleeve with no title or even a credit to Prince; hence it was referred to as The Black Album. Dubbed The Funk Bible by preceding press releases, and in a hidden message within the album itself, the work seemed to be a reaction to criticism that Prince had become too pop-oriented. It was his attempt to regain his Black audience. ..."
2020 September: Prince's Sign O' The Times: An oral history, 2022 April: 'Prince And The Revolution: Live' Set For Multi-Format Reissue
Paris’s First Underground Soundsystems
2016: "Didier Vacassin’s instinct was perfectly right, at least in one regard: 'I knew we were doing something that had never been done before.' Five mythical evenings at the rue des Panoyaux chapel didn’t exactly go down in music history, but the MC – who went by the name Ras Gugus – had the foresight to document what would be the birth of Parisian soundsystems, lovingly annotating each one of the photographic artifacts he and then-girlfriend Marie Vanetveelde (who passed away in 2008) took over 33 years ago. Today, the fastidiously organized collection can be perused in his apartment, which is lined from floor to ceiling with an equally methodical collection of reggae and dub 45s, competing for scarce square meters with an impressive archive of books and magazines. ..."
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