--------- 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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The Essential Don DeLillo


"... And to ask that of DeLillo, who by the time of that interview had poured out almost a dozen novels in a torrent of productivity, probing his interests in everything from sports to mathematics to the inflection points of the American century … well, no wonder the man had a reputation for being paranoid. In fact, despite all of DeLillo’s fascination with terrorism and death cults and the impotence of the individual swept up in unstoppable social forces, I’ve never considered him to be an especially paranoid writer. Anxious, sure — anxiety being one of his great themes, and one of the reasons he has so often seemed prophetic — but as a stylist he’s too cool and too alert to absurdity to be a true paranoid. I mean cool in every sense of the word: a little chilly, a little detached, and also ironic and knowing and hip, cool like the jazz he has cited as an influence on his sentences.


2021 May: Don DeLillo

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Taking the Lagos train


"For a moment, Pride & Prejudice finally had some sound. For Nigerians familiar with the movie, and who have also taken a train from and/or to Lagos, there’s a particularly unchanging experience that is having a look at the 2005 adaptation of the famous Jane Austen novel. 'Having a look' is perhaps the most appropriate term, as the movie is always shown, without sound, meaning it’s not so much being viewed as it is an item of display. But on this occasion, there was a modicum of sound, hard to make out, but existent because this was in the quiet of the Business Class section of the train. If there’s an element to highlight the disparity of societal position via Nigerian trains; it’s probably this: the quiet that affords one to almost hear what is regularly unheard, a level of moving comfort attained; unlike in the Standard Class, where it’s more congested, there’s less room to sit, and there’s as little possibility as there is interest in whatever audio is coming out of that Joe Wright movie. ..."




Blue line, red line, railway stations and airport
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Revolutionary cinema: ranking the 10 greatest Italian neorealism movies


"... On the opposite end of that spectrum is the Italian neorealism movement of the 1940s and 1950s, a cinematic ideology that protested generations of social oppression. For decades leading up to the start of the Second World War, the cinema industry in Italy was tightly regulated by the government, with Telefoni Bianchi movies, which promoted the prosperity of the country, being the sole type of film being made. Yet, these films simply didn’t reflect the reality of contemporary Italy, with the struggles of the poorest people being seemingly ignored by those in power. ..."

  


"... As Italy struggled to climb out from its ruins in hopes of newfound political stability and redefinition after the era of fascism that had preceded it, the most prominent filmmakers of the country banded together. They created the neorealism movement, a cultural collective that sought to accurately portray the harsh realities of poverty, economic devastation and the personal wreckage that had become of Italy’s inhabitants. Prior to the movement’s origins, the Italian film industry had primarily been comprised of overly sentimental, glossy, Hollywood-like studio-led productions that largely overlooked what had indeed become of Italy during the awful global conflict. By contrast, the films of Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica and Luchino Visconti started to closely examine the hardships of everyday life in Italy, sticking to an ethos of using non-professional actors and shooting on location to capture an unbridled air of authenticity and honesty. ..."





"... By shooting on location and primarily employing non-professional actors, the films of the Italian neorealist movement breathe authenticity, providing an escape from the over-produced studio works of the era and a dedication to weaving narratives just as they would occur in real life. But who exactly are the key figures in the Italian neorealism movement? To answer that very question, we’ve compiled a list of the directors who saw it as their personal goal to push the cinematic efforts of their native Italy into new frontiers by exploring the economic, political and social conditions of the country following World War II. ..."


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Charley Booker


"“Charley Booker (September 3, 1925 – September 20, 1989) was a blues singer and guitarist from the Mississippi Delta, who recorded in the early 1950s for Modern Records. Charley Booker was born in 1925 on a plantation between the Mississippi communities of Moorhead and Sunflower, the son of Lucius Booker. There is some doubt about his date of birth: while the 1925 birth date  was given by Booker in interviews, social security records give the  earlier date of September 3, 1919. He learned to play guitar from his uncle, who had played with Charley Patton, and Booker stated that as a child he had himself seen Patton perform near Indianola. He worked occasionally as a musician from the late 1930s. By the early 1940s Booker had moved to Leland, and in 1947 he moved to Greenville, where he worked with pianist Willie Love, and also met or worked with musicians such as Elmore James, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Little Milton, Ike Turner  and Houston Boines. By 1951 he had his own radio show (possibly on the  WDVM station), and in 1952 he was approached by Ike Turner to record for  Modern Records. …”





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See Inside the Last Original Artist Lofts in New York


"It wasn’t uncommon for artists to afford rent without wealthy patrons before developers and high-rises took a chokehold of Manhattan. They gleefully lived and worked where they slept, mostly in lofts, even if it was technically illegal. A new book is opening the curtains to the last creative residential sanctuaries left in the city. Photographer Joshua Charow’s Loft Law: The Last of New York City’s Original Artist Lofts, newly released on Damiani Books, captures a fading way of life. Since the 20th century, as manufacturers departed neighborhoods such as Soho and the Bowery, artists moved into these industrial spaces. They set up homes and studios in these spaces illegally, while building vibrant communities. In 1982, loft-living was widespread enough that city enacted the Loft Law, recognizing their occupants as legal tenants, with the bonus of regulated rent. ..."




Carmen Cicero, Bowery
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Beja Power! Electric Soul & Brass from Sudan's Red Sea Coast - Noori & His Dorpa Band (2022)


"... A soundtrack of Sudan's revolution and the first ever international release of the Beja sound, performed by Noori and his Dorpa Band, an unheard outfit from Port Sudan, a city on the Red Sea coast in eastern Sudan and the heart of Beja culture. Electric soul, blues, jazz, rock, surf, even hints of country, speak fluently to styles and chords that could be Tuareg, Ethiopian, Peruvian or Thai—all grounded by hypnotic Sudanese grooves, Naji's impeccable, haunting tenor sax, and of course, Noori's tambo-guitar, a self-made unique hybrid of an electric guitar and an electric tambour, a four-string instrument found across East Africa. ..."




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The Secret History of the Original Deep-Dish Crust

From March 1945, the only known image of Richard Riccardo and the deep-dish pizza he created. 

"Chicago deep-dish pizza was first created at Pizzeria Uno, and its essence lies in its distinctive crust.  It turns out there was not just one Uno’s crust, but several as it changed over time. What’s been lost — until now — is the original recipe. The most surprising part of the original dough is how different it is from what we expect deep-dish pizza to be like today. In 2013, I discovered what I believe to be the original deep-dish dough recipe created by Pizzeria Uno’s founder, Richard Riccardo. The recipe, detailed in this article for the first time since 1945, produces a thinner, lighter, vaguely cake-like golden-brown crust that’s distinctly different than the thicker, heavier biscuit-like crust now served at deep-dish pizzerias such as Pizzeria Uno, Gino’s East, and Lou Malnati’s. ..."





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The Battle for the Streets of New York


"On a recent morning, the intersection of East 77th Street and Lexington Avenue presented a vivid illustration of the tumult. A taxi trying to make a left turn had to maneuver around a Verizon crew digging up the asphalt. A box truck was parked in the bus lane, and the M102 bus, with its accordionlike belly, was forced to change lanes and snake around it. Dozens of people streamed out of the subway and into the crosswalk. A man pushing a double stroller navigated between the subway entrance and a sidewalk compost box. A woman’s shopping cart wheels got stuck in a crack in the sidewalk. CitiBikes and delivery bikes whizzed by. A cargo bike stopped in front of a FedEx truck that was unloading packages next to a bike lane. Lively, energetic streets make city living attractive — people to watch, windows to browse, benches to sit on, trees for shade. ..."

 
This scene of Park Avenue near 57th Street was typical of 1930s traffic. Over 10 million cars went through the Holland tunnel in 1930.
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Scandal Brought Reforms to Soccer. Its Leaders Are Rolling Them Back.

Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, center, in Washington in April. He has overseen the weakening of changes he championed as a candidate for the position.

"The 12-page report was intended to save soccer’s governing body, FIFA, in its moment of existential crisis. Filled with reform proposals and drawn up by more than a dozen soccer insiders in December 2015, the report was FIFA’s best chance to show business partners, U.S. investigators and billions of fans that it could be trusted again after one of the biggest corruption scandals in sports history. In bullet points and numbered sections, the report championed high-minded ideas like accountability and humility. It also proposed concrete and, for FIFA, revolutionary changes: transparency in how major decisions were reached; term limits for top leaders and new limits on presidential power; and the abolition of well-funded committees widely viewed as a system of institutional graft. ..."


A deal negotiated in secret by the South American soccer confederation will allow it to host several matches in the 2030 World Cup.
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Sincerely, Detroit - Apollo Brown (2019)


"... Detroit has an indelible legacy in hip-hop. From artists like J Dilla to Black Milk, from Denaun Porter to Apollo Brown, Detroit's music has a sound unlike any other. When Apollo Brown set out to create the tribute to his home, he knew he needed to do the city justice. Featuring over fifty Detroit artists, Apollo Brown’s new double disc album, 'Sincerely, Detroit,' is a love letter to the culture. From different eras and different walks of life, veterans and newcomers alike lend their styles and deliveries to the twenty-one track album. Featuring artists like Royce Da 5’9”, Black Milk, Trick Trick, Elzhi, Slum Village and many, many more, 'Sincerely, Detroit' is a nearly comprehensive look at the styles and flavors of Detroit. While the world watches Detroit for influence, Apollo is back to remind people that Detroit sets a standard for others to follow and is a creative haven for Hip-hop. ..."





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The Squirrel: Joe Strummer’s favourite pub in London


"The streets of London have been weathered by a countless array of historical events. From the days when William Blake detailed the 'chartered streets' of the city, to the recent years of skyscrapers and gentrification, the city never lost its penchant for one thing: drinking. There is scarcely a street in the city that has not, at one point, housed an honest London boozer – some more honest than others. The drinking holes of the city have provided a home to a variety of notable characters over the years, including the punk rock icon Joe Strummer.  It should come as no real surprise that Strummer held a deep appreciation for the pub. ..."


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Mid-Afternoon Map: Pick Your Palestine Monopoly


"In recent weeks, student protests over the war in Gaza have generated an increasingly outraged debate, pitting people who are so outraged by the protestors’ rhetoric that they refuse to be outraged by the war against people who are so outraged by the war they refuse to be outraged by the protestors’ rhetoric. Much as voicing any criticism of Israel apparently makes you a Hamas supporter, suggesting that protests might be more effective with fewer actual Hamas supporters now makes you complicit in genocide. Walking by a pro-Palestine rally in Dupont Circle several months ago, the very first thing I heard was the chant 'We don’t want no two-state / We want ’48.' As a historian, I’m always glad to hear people shouting about history. But as someone who still thinks that two states represent the least impossible of the good solutions to the current catastrophe, I was outraged to hear it rejected so emphatically for a more impossible, more problematic alternative. ..."


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May 2024 solar storms


"The solar storms of May 2024 are a series of powerful solar storms with intense to extreme solar flare and geomagnetic storm components that have been ongoing since 10 May 2024 during solar cycle 25. The geomagnetic storm was the most powerful to affect Earth since 2003, and produced aurorae at far lower latitudes than usual in both northern and southern hemispheres. On 8 May 2024, a solar active region which had been assigned the NOAA region number 3664 produced an X1.0-classand multiple M-class solar flares and launched several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) toward Earth. On 9 May, the active region produced an X2.25- and X1.12-class flare each associated with a full-halo CME. ..." 



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From Then 'Til Now - Roots Architects


"... Bringing together over 50 of Jamaica's greatest session musicians, whose work spans from the birth of reggae in the late 1960s until today, Roots Architects is the largest gathering of Jamaican musical talent on one all-instrumental album. Never before have so many veterans, who helped create the immortal rhythms that made reggae internationally successful, been assembled to play on new material without vocals. This album aims to celebrate and pay tribute to the unsung heroes of reggae music: the rhythm builders or Roots Architects. ..."




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Power Before Petroleum


"Wind, bones, and other historical energy sources"

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You Are Being Lied to About Gaza Solidarity Camps by University Presidents, Mainstream Media, and Politicians

Between salah and shabbat prayers, students at Columbia’s encampment listen to a speaker at sunset. April 19.

"Saturday was a gloriously beautiful spring day in Chicago, and as I wandered into the 'Liberation Zone' which has taken over DePaul University’s quad, a kind lady asked me if I would like some lunch. I declined because I was headed to a BBQ in a couple of hours, but I took her up on some coffee, thanked her, and asked her if she was affiliated with the Vincentian Catholic university. 'No,' she told. 'I’m just Palestinian.' I recognized her from previous visits to that particular Gaza Solidarity Encampment, one of four I have visited over the last few weeks: Columbia University’s (where, as a PhD student at NYU, I once took some classes), Northwestern University’s (where I am on the faculty and am a member of Educators for Justice in Palestine), and the University of Chicago’s (where, like at DePaul, I was there to observe and to offer faculty de-escalation support if needed). The lady had been at DePaul every day, serving free food (often donated by Palestinian restaurants) to hundreds of people. She, like everyone there that day, was extremely welcoming. ..."




Student demonstrators from Columbia University form a human chain in front of Broadway and West 116th Street after five campus buildings were cleared of protesters on April 30, 1968.
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Democracy is losing the propaganda war - Anne Applebaum


"On June 4, 1989, the Polish Communist Party held partially free elections, setting in motion a series of events that ultimately removed the Communists from power. Not long afterward, street protests calling for free speech, due process, accountability, and democracy brought about the end of the Communist regimes in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. Within a few years, the Soviet Union itself would no longer exist. Also on June 4, 1989, the Chinese Communist Party ordered the military to remove thousands of students from Tiananmen Square. The students were calling for free speech, due process, accountability, and democracy. Soldiers arrested and killed demonstrators in Beijing and around the country. Later, they systematically tracked down the leaders of the protest movement and forced them to confess and recant. Some spent years in jail. Others managed to elude their pursuers and flee the country forever. ..." 


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A Monumental Legacy

An aquatint by English landscape painter Thomas Daniell depicts the Taj Mahal. Daniell traveled India with his nephew William Daniell, drawing scenes from across the country and later publishing them in a multivolume collection, Oriental Scenery, 1795 and 1808.

"... Artist Sita Ram’s 1815 chalk-and-watercolor-on-paper piece is as exquisite as its magnificent subject: the world’s most famous Islamic mausoleum. Visible are a tender gray-white sky and a swaying garden of lush mango trees. Between these layers of gray and green, like a creamy floating cloud, stands the Taj Mahal. 'The Taj Mahal by moonlight' is one of more than 200 surviving works that the Indian painter created on a yearlong trip with his employer, Warren Hastings, an official with the British East India Company, which at the time was the equivalent of the world’s biggest trading corporation. The inspiration for the art that has transcended time corresponds to Hastings’ nightly visit to the Taj Mahal in 1815, which he describes as a once-in-a-lifetime experience, adding an epithet to the monument as 'uncommonly striking.' He also confessed how the visit left an 'impression of gratification' for him. ..."


“Reminiscences of Imperial Delhi” consists of 89 folios containing approximately 130 paintings of Mughal and pre-Mughal monuments of Delhi, as well as other contemporary material, and accompanying text written by Sir Thomas Theophilus Metcalfe, the governor-general’s agent at the imperial court (1795-1853). 

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Jean-Michel Basquiat, Flyboy in the Buttermilk - Greg Tate (1989)

 

"In these scant lines, Frederick Douglass succinctly describes the ongoing crisis of the Black intellectual, that star-crossed figure on the American scene forever charged with explaining Black folks to white folks and with explaining Black people to themselves — often from the perspectives of a distance refracted by double alienation. If you want to hide something from a negro put it in a book. Douglass knew from experience the compound oppression of being poorly fed and poorly read, but also of having to stand Black and proud in isolated situations where nobody else Black was around to have your back. When the windchill factor plummets that low, all that can steady you is the spine of cultural confidence and personal integrity. ..."



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