A Book Club of Two: The Time I Started a James Joyce Reading Group in College


"I’d bought my copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses at a Barnes and Noble in Manhattan in 1999, the summer before I left for college, along with a stack of other novels that I was convinced my much-smarter classmates would have already read. How I even decided which novels those were, I am still not sure, but I carried that bronze Modern Library copy of Ulysses to college in Baltimore, and then it moved with me from dorm to dorm. In three years, I never opened it once. Then one summer I packed it in a steamer trunk and brought it all the way to Oxford, where I had enrolled in a summer course focused on the works of Joyce… but even then, I failed to read it. Over four weeks in that class, I’d enjoyed Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist and managed to keep up with our Irish professor’s lectures on secular epiphanies and Irish nationalism and unattached third person points of view—and then we turned to the mammoth, 768-page Ulysses. ..."


2011 March: Passages from James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" (1965-67), 2013: Dubliners, 2014 May: The Dead (1987 film), 2014 May: “Have I Ever Left It?” by Mark O'Connell, 2014 July: Digital Dubliners, 2014 September: Read "Ulysses Seen", A Graphic Novel Adaptation of James Joyce’s Classic, 2015 January: The Mapping Dubliners Project, 2015 February: Davy Byrne’s, 2016 January: Port and Docks, 2016 February: Hear James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Read Unabridged & Set to Music By 17 Different Artists, 2016 April: Nassau Street, 2016 May: Stephen’s Green, 2016 October: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), 2016 November: Skerries, 2017 January: Walking Ulysses | Joyce's Dublin Today, 2018 October: Bloomsday Explained, 2020 March: Ireland’s Voices, 2020 June: Stephen Dedalus, 2020 November: The Homeric Parallel in Ulysses: Joyce, Nabokov, and Homer in Maps, 2021 January: The Socialism of James Joyce, 2021 March: Imagining Nora Barnacle’s Love Letters to James Joyce Image, 2022 January:  The Difficult Odyssey of James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’
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New York’s First Black Librarians Changed the Way We Read

In 1925, the New York Public Library system established the first public collection dedicated to Black materials at its 135th Street branch in Harlem, now known as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

"It was a banner day in the history of American libraries — and in Black history. On May 25, 1926, the New York Public Library announced that it had acquired the celebrated Afro-Latino bibliophile Arturo Schomburg’s collection of more than 4,000 books, manuscripts and other artifacts. A year earlier, the library had established the first public collection dedicated to Black materials, at its 135th Street branch in Harlem. Now, the branch would be home to a trove of rare items, from some of the earliest books by and about Black people to then-new works of the brewing Harlem Renaissance. Schomburg was the most famous of the Black bibliophiles who, starting in the late 19th century, had amassed impressive 'parlor libraries' in their homes. ..."






The 135th Street branch in 1938. Catherine Latimer, the first curator of the division of Negro history, literature and prints, sits in the background on the left. 
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RIP Billymark’s


"Billymark’s West was a normal bar. That was its greatest virtue, probably. It had a pool table, a jukebox, booths, a beer-and-shot special. It was a little dingy and dark. There was a TV and, somewhat oddly, a lot of Beatles-themed memorabilia. The prices were not so bad, by New York standards, though drinks weren’t as cheap as they could have been, either. There was graffiti in the bathroom. It was in some ways the Platonic ideal of a bar, such that it might seem familiar to you even if you’d never been. It had its own story, of course: it opened in 1956 and was taken over in 1999 by two brothers, Billy and Mark, one of whom was usually at the bar. They were the kind of guys you would describe as 'characters' in part because they were playing a well-worn role. Billy—whom I saw more often—would call me 'honey' and then charge me a price for my Miller High Life that seemed, each time, to be made up on the spot. ..."

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Fatboy Slim - Role Model (Official Video)


"Fatboy Slim has dropped a new music video to accompany his single, 'Role Model'. You can watch the clip below. Directed DX and rxr314, the piece uses digital manipulation to make it look like hig- profile 20th and 21st Century celebrities are singing the track's lyrics. Bill Murray, David Bowie, John Lennon, Blondie, Jimi Hendrix, George Clooney, Jeff Bridges as The Big Lebowski, Iggy Pop, and Bob Marley all feature. ... 'Role Model' was originally unveiled last month on digital and physical format, with a limited 500-pressing run also available on special edition acid-print vinyl. The release coincides with 30 years of Fatboy Slim's own Southern Fried Records, the label carrying the single. ..."


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Paris Vagabond – Jean-Paul Clébert (1954)

 

“So many books about Paris are concerned with the rich, matronly capital city, but this one, originally published in French in 1952, is about the postwar Paris of the poor and their not always successful efforts to eat, drink and stay warm. It’s a picture of a bohemian Paris that has now all but disappeared, though I say ‘bohemian’ advisedly since Jean-Paul Clébert (who was born in 1926 and died in 2011) had a horror of the picturesque. A middle-class boy, Clébert ran away from a Jesuit boarding school at 17 and joined the French Resistance. After World War II, he decided to live rough, scribbling notes about the things he observed and stuffing them away for safekeeping. Then one day he sat down to write. This method produced a remarkably vivid, detailed book that seems to have been composed with no method, its narrative marked by a chaotic and cheerfully self-acknowledged spontaneity. ..."

NY Times

Google: Paris Vagabond – Jean-Paul Clébert

W – Jean-Paul Clébert

amazon

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57 Sandwiches That Define New York City


"You can tell a lot about a city by the sandwiches it keeps. Not just its tastes or its vices — cured meats — but also its fascination with myriad cultures, its appreciation for stellar ingredients and its desire for delicious convenience. Over the last three months, the New York Times Food staff has crisscrossed all five boroughs in search of heroes, bodega icons, inspired crossovers, meatless wonders and more. This list isn’t a ranking — though every one of these sandwiches is marvelous to eat, with one hand or two — but a way of surveying New York as the culinary destination it is. Why sandwiches? Well, what other food item could be as dynamic, diverse and entertaining as New York City itself? ..."
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Florida Funk: Funk 45s from the Alligator State


"Funk45 label boss Jazzman Gerald and obsessive collector Malcolm Catto present 21 rare and unreleased slices of heavy funk from the Alligator State! Having spent the past 3 years travelling the length and breadth of Florida - trekking through the everglades, sampling the dubious delights of 'swamp deer' and snatching rare 45s from the jaws of 20ft gators - they escaped back to the UK with an amazing selection of music that highlights Florida as one of the funkiest states in the USA! From driving percussive instrumentals by obscure small-town groups, to heartfelt slabs of soul; from tropical Latin grooves to funk so raw that James Brown himself gave his personal blessing, Florida has a little bit of everything! All the tracks have been fully licensed from the original artists, and the CD (and double gatefold vinyl) come with previously unpublished photos and meticulous, in-depth liner notes from 100% original research telling the story of funky soul music in Florida."

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‘Fite Dem Back’: How Linton Kwesi Johnson used poetry as a “cultural weapon”


"For as long as the written word has existed, poetry and prose have been used by various writers to challenge authority and injustice. Racism and prejudice permeated virtually every aspect of society during the 1970s in Britain, reflecting a rise in far-right hate groups and political parties around the same time. Hence, it was only a matter of time before a generation of radical new writers and musicians emerged to challenge these prejudices, with poets like Linton Kwesi Johnson pioneering styles of anti-fascist poetry. Having relocated from his birthplace in Jamaica to Brixton as a young man in the 1960s, Johnson was able to witness the horrors of fascism and widespread racist attitudes in the UK firsthand. The nostalgic image of 1960s London suggests that the entire city was some kind of utopia, populated by modernists, Mini Coopers and exciting new art movements. ..."


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An Ode to Luby's and the Southern Cafeteria

"Luby’s Cafeteria holds a special place in the hearts of Texans, including my own. When I was a child in the 1990s, the cafeteria option was always open when my Chinese American family  went out to eat. Everybody could choose what they wanted. Prices were reasonable. Wheeled high chairs enabled parents to roll their babies along the serving line. Cafeterias – where workers put food on customers’ plates for them – took off  in the United States soon after Henry Ford invented the assembly line. The two are kin, but instead of a car rolling past stationary workers, the diners slide their trays down the line to receive a slice of prime rib, chicken fried steak or even trout almondine. A diner can watch as somebody on the other side scoops up green beans or squash casserole at one station and another tongs cornbread muffins or yeast rolls onto your plate. It’s an assembly line at its finest, a monument to the idea of early-20th-century progress. The cafeteria made dining more efficient while maintaining the quality and variety of foods that paying customers expected. ..."

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How is Uefa trying to make Euro 2024 more sustainable?


“‘The most sustainable European Championship of all time.’ It is a big statement, but that is Uefa’s aim for this summer’s tournament in Germany. To be the ‘most sustainable’ is, of course, difficult to quantify, with many factors involved. It is also hard to make comparisons because of the historical growth of the tournament. But, however Uefa defines it, European football’s governing body and German football are making big strides to reduce the impact of Euro 2024. What is being done? Sustainability has been an integral part of Euro 2024 since the 2018 bidding process, with its strategy focusing on environmental, social and governance pillars. …”

BBC
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How Q Became Everything


"You can track QAnon’s arc, like most things in America, through its relationship with corporate brands. Although the conspiracy movement emerged out of fringe imageboards in 2017, its first viral successes came on Facebook and YouTube, where its lore envisioning Donald Trump fighting an elite cabal of liberal pedophiles was honed and refined. When Covid came in 2020, QAnon ballooned under lockdowns, putting it in the mainstream, but leaving it short of actually being mainstream. Call it the Wayfair era. In July 2020, followers of QAnon began spreading a particular pedophilic panic: the absurd notion that the online furniture retailer was selling children for sexual abuse via armoire orders. Non-Q masses took the bait: 'Mentions of Wayfair and trafficking have exploded on Facebook and Instagram over the past week,' the Associated Press wrote at the time, noting that related TikTok hashtags 'together amassed nearly 4.5 million views.' A national human trafficking hotline issued a press release warning that a flood of calls about the conspiracy had distracted them from genuine work. ..."



A QAnon conspiracy theory button sits affixed to the purse of an attendee of the Nebraska Election Integrity Forum on Saturday, Aug. 27, 2022, in Omaha, Neb. Former President Donald Trump is increasingly embracing and endorsing the QAnon conspiracy theory, even as the number of frightening real-world incidents linked to the movement increase. On Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2022, using his Truth Social platform, Trump reposted an image of himself — wearing a Q lapel pin — overlaid with the words “The Storm is Coming."
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Supreme Court Upholds Access to Abortion Pill

The decision will most likely fuel efforts to restrict access to abortion pills in other ways.

"The Supreme Court on Thursday maintained access to a widely available abortion pill, rejecting a bid from a group of anti-abortion organizations and doctors to unravel the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the pill. In a unanimous decision, written by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, the court held that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the F.D.A.’s actions. Justice Kavanaugh wrote that the groups could instead seek greater regulatory or legislative restrictions on the drug, mifepristone, and noted that doctors who oppose abortion are shielded by so-called conscience protections in federal law, which mean they are not required to provide treatment that would 'violate the doctors’ religious beliefs or moral convictions.' ..."




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Glacis ~ Perseverance (2024)


"In December 2015 I moved with my family to the Scottish Borders. Having lived my entire life in cities this was my first time living in the countryside. It was remote, living in a cottage on a farm up a single track road. Out the front window was an old farmhouse, looking down on these quaint workers' cottages. Out the back window were endless fields along with the sound of silence. And yet the countryside is never silent. We simply cannot hear the incredible noise made by animals and plants that exist all around us. One of the first things I did when we moved to the Borders was source and purchase an upright piano. I’d not had access to one since I lived at my parents house in Dundee. Overstrung. The only choice. It took time to source one and to ensure that it was capable of being tuned. It was a beautiful creature too. Simple on the outside but when the front was removed the inner detailing was like a snakeskin - something that my piano tuner commented he had never seen before. ..."

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Madge Gill: The artist whose brush was guided by a ghost


"Any decent artist will be all too aware that inspiration can strike at the most unexpected moments. Throughout history, artists have drawn inspiration from countless unexpected avenues, from the childhood hallucinations of Yayoi Kusama to L.S. Lowry’s penchant for factory towers and smog. Even the mysterious supernatural plane has acted as inspiration for the world of painting, but none more so than Madge Gill, the celebrated outsider artist who was helped along by the spirit world. The realm of outsider art is as broad and varied as the artistic medium itself. Generally, the term can be applied to any artist who was not classically trained in the art world, meaning that a lot of outsider art is made by self-taught visionaries willing to push the boundaries of what can be considered profound art. Madge Gill’s work is particularly beloved within the realm of outsider art, managing to capture a complex range of emotions and themes through various different mediums. ..."

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Read Your Way Through New Orleans


"New Orleans is a tourist destination frequented as much for its local dishes (gumbo, jambalaya, among others) as for the spectacle that is Mardi Gras — where you may run into drunk college students on spring break, but could also bump into the Grammy Award-winning artist Jon Batiste. By some counts, it’s one of the most festive cities in America, with a party or two happening almost every week. Behind all the festivities, though, is a rich and dark history. The city is an eclectic mix of Caribbean, French, Spanish and Native American cultures, and, depending on which neighborhood you encounter, you may feel a sense of disorientation. ... The literature of New Orleans is an important supplement to your experience of the city. These books are both a compass to guide you through its many different influences and a celebration of the free spirit that has made the city a haven for itinerant artists, writers and travelers in search of a new perspective. ..."

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Crosshatching the City: ‘Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies’ Overheard the Voices of New York


"In 1974, illustrator and cartoonist Stan Mack found himself asking the graphic arts virtuoso Milton Glaser, who had just taken over as design director of the Village Voice, if he could do a piece in which he would essentially 'wander the city, listening to people and sketching them.' Glaser upped the ante, telling Mack to 'do it as a weekly comic strip. They’re circulation builders: people turn to them first before going on to the serious stuff.' Mack rose to the challenge, and for more than 30 years he took pencils, pens, and sketchbooks to bars, restaurants, art galleries, movie queues, sex clubs, parks, and anywhere else New York’s denizens gathered. Now, 50 years later, hundreds of Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies have been transmuted from yellowed newsprint into big glossy pages between hardcovers. ..."




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Teddy's Bar & Grill


"The most distinctive feature of Teddy’s Bar at 96 Berry Street is the projecting wood and sheet-copper corner storefront with a beautiful decorative-glass transom reading 'Peter Doelger’s Extra Beer'. Portions of the storefront were rebuilt after a car crashed into it about 10 years ago, but most of it – and all of the decorative glass - dates to at least 1907. That stained-glass transom is the source of much of the mythology that surrounds 96 Berry, tying it to a 19th-century beer baron and a 20th-century Hollywood icon. The odds that either ever set eyes on the building are practically nil. What actually happened at 96 Berry Street is far less glamorous than movie stars and beer barons, but it tells the story of Williamsburg and Brooklyn in the decades surrounding the turn of the 20th century, one of shifting populations and changing capitalist landscapes. And at the very least, this story is true. ..."




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Cut UP. Deconstructing W. S. Burroughs - Various Artists


"... Between the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, the literary and stylistic technique of William S. Burroughs (Saint Louis 1917-Lawrence 1997) influenced an entire generation that was, in those years, in direct collision with the social system. A somewhat controversial and brilliant figure, a man on the fringes of civilization. From his mind emerged the creative writing technique that burst onto the scene under the name of Cut-Up. This procedure was previously introduced by the Dadaist poet Tristan Tzara, involving cutting words from an existing text to generate a new meaning by mixing the various words in a different order. Burroughs took this technique to the extreme, making it very popular and influencing every artistic realm, particularly the field of rock and experimental music. The list of his disciples in the musical domain is extensive, including names like David Bowie, Patti Smith, Frank Zappa, Sonic Youth, Bob Dylan, and Throbbing Gristle, to name just a few. It is from this devotion to the technique and the persona of this legendary writer that the homage by the Unexplained Sounds Group and the musicians involved in the project is born, paying tribute to the great American writer. ..."

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Tintin inspired away kit homage to cartoonist Hergé


"... adidas and the Royal Belgian Football Association (RBFA) proudly present the new home and away kits for Belgium’s national teams. The new home kit features a luxurious dark shade of red, stand-out gold details and a fashion inspired graphic pattern that has been embossed in the jersey. The away kit is a homage to Belgian cartoonist Hergé and the comic character he is most known for: Tintin. Fitting the outfit Tintin was most featured in, the away kit for the Belgian Red Devils features a blue jersey with characteristic white collar, brown shorts, and white socks. The home and away jersey share a fashion inspired graphic pattern that has been embossed in the jersey, giving it a luxurious look, and making the jerseys’ appearance slightly different as light hits it. ..."

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Patti Smith Reads Her Final Letter to Robert Mapplethorpe, Calling Him “the Most Beautiful Work of All”


"If you go to hear Patti Smith in concert, you expect her to sing 'Beneath the Southern Cross,' 'Because the Night,' and almost certainly 'People Have the Power,' the hit single from Dream of Life. Like her 1975 debut Horses, that album had a cover photo by Robert Mapplethorpe, whom Smith describes as 'the artist of my life' in Just Kids, her memoir of their long and complex relationship. A highly personal work, that book also includes the text of the brief but powerful goodbye letter she wrote to Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS in 1989. If you go to hear Smith read a letter aloud, there’s a decent chance it’ll be that one. ..."

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During Impassioned Defense of Trump, Congressman’s 6-Year-Old Steals the Spotlight


"Fresh back from a weeklong recess, Representative John W. Rose, Republican of Tennessee, was fired up and among the first to speak on the House floor on Monday, when he used his five minutes of floor time to castigate the criminal conviction of former President Donald J. Trump. ... As Mr. Rose intoned the familiar lines of attack that rank-and-file Republicans have recited during television appearances and social media posts in the days since Mr. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts, entering them into the Congressional Record, his son Guy, age 6, was putting on a performance of his own. ..."

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Ancient Moroccan mountain music entrances festival crowd


"A hypnotic drum beat blends with ancient Sufi-inspired tunes in a tent in a Moroccan mountain village where local musicians regroup once a year when they don't play the world's top stages. The Master Musicians of Joujouka draw on centuries of local tradition with a hypnotic sound that captivated the 1950s Beatniks, the Rolling Stones' Brian Jones and fans everywhere since. The Joujouka collective has performed at top global venues from Paris's Pompidou Centre to Britain's Glastonbury Festival. But every spring, they like to play to a more intimate audience of only about 50 devotees in their village located 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of Tangier. Rolling Stone magazine once dubbed the tribal trance festival 'the oldest, most exclusive dance party in the world'. ..."




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Yuri Rozhkov’s photomontages for the Mayakovsky poem “To the Workers of Kursk” (1924)


"In 1924, the self-taught artist Iurii Nikolaevich Rozhkov created a series of photomontages inspired by Vladimir Maiakovskii’s poem 'To the Workers of Kursk' and the geological discovery of the Kursk Magnetic Anamoly (KMA). Rozhkov’s series for Maiakovskii’s ode to labor is both an example of the political propaganda of the reconstruction period of the NEP era and a polemical answer to all those who relentlessly attacked Maiakovskii and criticized avant-garde art as alien to the masses. The article introduces Rozhkov’s less-known photomontage series as a new model of the avant-garde photopoetry book, which offers a sequential reading of Maiakovskii’s poem and functions as a cinematic dispositive of the early Soviet agitprop apparatus (dispositif). Aleksandar Bošković argues that the photopoem itself converts into an idiosyncratic avant-garde de-mountable memorial to the working class: a dynamic cine-dispositive through which the the early agitprop apparatus is realized in lived experience, reproduced, and transformed, thus delineating its shift towards the new dispositif of the late 1920s — socialist realism. ..."

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Dirk Serries


"Dirk Serries is an established sound artist. This Belgian-based artist has experimented with music on the border between avant-garde, industrial, experimental, and ambient for more than 30 years. He released his earliest work (1984) behind the pseudonym vidnaObmana up to 2007, with which he gained worldwide praise when he closed the book on this project (realizing an extensive discography). Other projects like Fear Falls Burning and his Microphonics series made him collaborate with several key players like Steven Wilson, Justin K. Broadrick, Cult Of Luna, Steve Roach, and toured extensively on the sides of Jesu, MONO, Low, My Bloody Valentine, and Cult Of Luna. ..."




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--------- TRUMP GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS--------


"Donald J. Trump was convicted on Thursday of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened to derail his 2016 presidential campaign, capping an extraordinary trial that tested the resilience of the American justice system and will reverberate into November’s election. Mr. Trump was convicted on all 34 counts of falsifying business records by a jury of 12 New Yorkers, who deliberated over two days to reach a decision in a case rife with descriptions of secret deals, tabloid scandal and an Oval Office pact with echoes of Watergate. The former president sat largely expressionless, a glum look on his face, after the jury issued its verdict. His sentencing was scheduled for July 11. The jury found that Mr. Trump had faked records to conceal the purpose of money given to his onetime fixer, Michael D. Cohen. The false records disguised the payments as ordinary legal expenses when in truth, Mr. Trump was reimbursing Mr. Cohen for a $130,000 hush-money deal the fixer struck with the porn star Stormy Daniels to silence her account of a sexual liaison with Mr. Trump. The felony conviction calls for a sentence of up to four years behind bars, but Mr. Trump may never see the inside of a prison cell. ..."




 
 
***NY Times: Extraordinary Circumstances, Ordinary Due Process
 
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Zelda Fitzgerald on the importance of materialism in womanhood


"Being overshadowed by your husband isn’t unknown in the realm of American art and literary history, but Zelda Fitzgerald was much more than just a muse. Although she reaped the rewards of a life born to privilege and had a beauty and charm that rivalled even the warm glow of a setting sun, celebrating womanhood was a fast track to being branded outlandish. In the 1920s, Zelda’s marriage to F. Scott Fitzgerald catapulted the pair into the public eye. Due to her excessive partying, Zelda quickly earned a reputation as a flapper. To be a flapper was largely frowned upon, especially by the older generations, who regarded the entire subculture as made up of women who weren’t very intelligent or aspirational. ..."


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Joseph Mitchell – Up in the Old Hotel

"On and off over the 20-odd years that I have been trying to write journalism, I have carried around in my bag Joseph Mitchell's book, Up in the Old Hotel. Mitchell grew up in rural North Carolina at the beginning of the last century, came to New York as a young man to work as a crime correspondent in Harlem, and subsequently became known at the New Yorker magazine as the pioneer of a particular kind of reporting that owed something to Mark Twain: extended portraits of people and places at the margins of the city, told with all the patience of a novelist, and the precision of a newspaperman. Up in the Old Hotel collects all of the stories Mitchell wrote in this manner, for The New Yorker, from between 1943 and 1964. ..."

Guardian – Joseph Mitchell: mysterious chronicler of the margins of New York

NY Times: This Was New York. It Was.

NY Times: My Ears Are Bent – Joseph Mitchell

W – Joseph Mitchell

amazon

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Ed Herrmann


"Equally at home with free improvisation, analog electronics, and invented instruments, Ed Herrmann has composed music for dance, theater, and broadcast; created site specific sound installations; produced and hosted radio, podcasts, and audio tours. After studying music composition and learning analog synthesis on an Emu modular and EMS Synthi, a three panel Serge system became the primary instrument; decades later adding eurorack, Moog, and acoustic instruments. San Francisco, later Chicago, now Missouri, splitting time between studio and garden. ..."


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Vulgarity and violence: unpacking Nick Cave’s ‘Stagger Lee’


"A guitar chugs like metal scrapping. A discordant piano smacks down on something close to a chord. The drums sound more like doors being kicked down or glasses being smashed. Then, as Nick Cave’s voice kicks off, he barely sings a note. From start to finish, on every level and in every texture, ‘Stagger Lee’ isn’t interested in being a song. Every element serves the story, building a world for this one despicable figure, 'that bad motherfucker called Stagger Lee'. Cave’s early works were always immersed in storytelling. In fact, it seemed that as a writer, he was utterly uninterested in writing about himself or dealing with relatable emotions. ... Across Murder Ballads, a cast of characters come up like Henry Lee, Kylie Minogue’s Eliza Day, or the drinkers at O’Malley’s Bar. But none of them has ever taken on quite as thorough of a form as ‘Stagger Lee’ or has captured Cave’s fans in quite the same way. ..."

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Taking a stand - Maher Mezahi


"In North Africa, there’s a time-honored saying: 'When it comes to football, the spectacle is not on the pitch but in the stands.' Over the past two decades, the region has produced some of the football world’s most electrifying atmospheres at matches, despite attempts by some countries to sanitize the game. This is largely thanks to the ultra groups that have emerged from Morocco to Egypt in the 21st century. According to Martino Simcik, an expert on global fan culture, being part of an ultra group is about 'living your passion for your team 24/7.'  Ultras engage 'in certain rituals that [distinguish them] from the average fan.' As Simcik explains, these actions include choreography, singing, making graffiti, and often physical confrontation and violence. ..."

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NYC Manhole Covers: History and How They're Made

NYC’s oldest manhole cover dates to 1862 and sits across from the Port Authority Bus Terminal

"How many manhole covers are there in New York City? How are they made? Where do they lead to? In an episode of The Untapped New York Podcast we go over manhole covers 101 and discuss why New Yorkers find them to be such curious objects. We speak with Lisa Frigand, the former Manager of Cultural Affairs at the NYC Department of Environmental Protection, Natasha Raheja, an anthropologist at Cornell University who made the film Cast in India about how manhole are made, and with Justin Rivers, Untapped New York’s Chief Experience Officer, who will talk about his personal experience going down into a manhole. We’ll also look at a unique manhole cover art project that popped up in Greenwich Village. By the end of the episode, you’ll also have the answer to that famous interview question, why are manhole covers round? ..."


2013 May: W - Manhole

On Minetta Street, a NYC Sewer Made in India manhole cover sits next to a more old-school DPW manhole cover
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Stalker - Music inspired by Andrej Tarkowskij's movie - Various Artists (2024)


"... 'Stalker' is Eighth Tower's tribute to the cinematic masterpiece 'Stalker' (1979) by Russian director Andrej Tarkowskij. Tarkowskij 's second science fiction film after Solaris, 'Stalker' is based on a novel by the Strugackij brothers, Arkadij and Boris, renowned authors of Soviet science fiction. ... The Zone is primarily the interior of a rural territory that has been disrupted by an unspecified event, perhaps the fall of a meteorite or the passage of an extraterrestrial spacecraft. Within it, strange and mysterious events occur, and many people have disappeared. ... The world of 'Stalker,' filmed in Estonia, Russia, and Tajikistan, is a science fiction of inner space, reminiscent of Ballard, a dreamlike space. Leaning light poles, debris, abandoned huts. The film's world is heavily degraded and contaminated by trash, debris, and wreckage. A damp world, flooded, with puddles and rain. ..."


2012 May: Solaris, 2018 October: Andrei Rublev (1966), 2020 December: Bruegel as Cinema, 2022 December:  Mirror (1975), 2023 January: Stalker (1979), 2023 July: Zones: Post-industrial aesthetics and environments after Stalker

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The Storyteller - A Musical Tribute to Yusef Lateef by The Nat Birchall Quartet (2019)


"... With 20 years passing since his first foray into recorded jazz, Nat Birchall now ranks as one of the premier saxophonists of his generation. With several highly acclaimed albums in the locker, he now returns with his most ambitious project yet – a tribute to the legend that is Yusef Lateef. ... Lateef was such a colossus of music, and his scope so broad, that I couldn't hope to begin to cover his musical universe. He was a master of the tenor saxophone, a master of the flute, a master ballad player, a master blues player. Not to mention his skills as a composer and arranger and of course his exploration and use of musical methodology and instruments from all over the world. ..."






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