DNA - A Taste Of DNA (EP - 1981)

“New York's DNA have had a massive effect on alternative / indie rock around the world, despite the trio never releasing a full-length studio album during their four year tenure (1978-82). Various groups citing them as an influence have included Sonic Youth, Boredoms, Big Black and Blonde Redhead (the latter taking their name from DNA's most-famous song). While the band's explosive live performances captivated audiences, extant recordings captured DNA's dynamic sound and savage economy in songwriting. Originally released in 1981, A Taste Of DNA remains a primary source for No Wave archaeologists. Singer/guitarist Arto Lindsay and drummer Ikue Mori are joined by bassist and Pere Ubu founding-member Tim Wright. Across the EP's six anti-epic tracks, the band charges forward with jagged guitars and dislocated grooves, while Lindsay's guttural screams create a thoroughly personal semantics. ..."
Boomkat
W - A Taste Of DNA
Discogs
YouTube: A Taste of DNA (Full Album)

2009 October: Arto Lindsay, 2012 July: Lounge Lizards, 2015 October: The Golden Palominos - The Golden Palominos (1983), 2015 November: Love Of Life Orchestra ‎– Extended Niceties EP (1980), 2017 October: The Lounge Lizards - Lounge Lizards (1981), 2018 February: Arto Lindsay ... Simply Are

Trump, at Putin’s Side, Questions U.S. Intelligence on 2016 Election

During a press conference with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, President Trump would not say whether he believed Russia meddled with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
"HELSINKI, Finland — President Trump stood next to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Monday and publicly challenged the conclusion of his own intelligence agencies that Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential election, wrapping up what he called a 'deeply productive' summit meeting with an extraordinary show of trust for a leader accused of attacking American democracy. 'They said they think it’s Russia; I have President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia,' Mr. Trump said, only moments after the Russian president conceded that he had favored Mr. Trump in the election because of his promises of warmer relations with Moscow. 'I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be' Russia that was responsible for the election hacking, Mr. Trump added. 'I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.' The 45-minute news conference offered the remarkable spectacle of the American and Russian presidents both pushing back on the notion of Moscow’s election interference, with Mr. Putin demanding evidence of something he said had never been proved, and Mr. Trump appearing to agree."
NY Times (Video)
The Atlantic: Trump Sides With the Kremlin, Against the U.S. Government
NY Times: 12 Russians Charged: Major Highlights of the Indictment and Rod Rosenstein’s Statement (Video)

Balcony Seats to the City

A newly arrived immigrant eats noodles on the fire escape in New York City.
"Even in quickly evolving New York City, there’s something romantic about slowing down, stepping out of the fast currents of foot traffic, and looking up. Few neighborhoods will disappoint. Look up high, especially in Manhattan, and you can see the built history of the big city play out in the architectural details and ornamental facades of buildings, awnings and balconies standing out like grooves in record, ready to reveal the story of each block. Within the skyscraper canyons of Midtown, you can spot the pinnacles of great towers, and the cranes of greater towers in the making. But look a little lower, around the corners and in the alleyways, and you’ll see a structure with a romantic connection to an older New York City, zig-zagging down towards the streets. Fire escapes have a fairly straightforward purpose, designed for the noble role their name implies. But for much of their history, in cities across the world, they’ve served altogether different roles. ..."
Patrick Sisson

Tintin Mural, Brussels. By Chris Brearly

A solstice track from Malta-based Robert Farrugia

"Gossamer lines that go on forever. Layers of tones that never congeal, each left with enough space to retain its own unique quality, its own place in the nonetheless lush, expressive, and expertly choreographed mix. Deep swells, occasionally sudden, that lend drama in the face of stasis. These are just a few of the qualities of 'Transition' by Robert Farrugia. The track is one of eight on Solstice, a new compilation from the Archives label. Also featured on Solstice are the musicians r beny, Steve Pacheco, Pechblende, Mikael Lind, Hotel Neon, Hirotaka Shirotsubaki, and Warmth, the latter aka Agustín Mena, the Valencia, Spain–based head of Archives. Track first posted at soundcloud.com/archives-5. Get the full album at archivesdubmusic.bandcamp.com. More from Farrugia, who is based in Malta, at robertfarrugia.bandcamp.com."
disquiet (Audio)
Out Now! Robert Farrugia – Almost There (Audio)

France, Finally Showing Its Class, Wears World Cup Crown

France’s celebrates after winning the World Cup.
"France’s first goal came off a Croatian’s head. The second was scored with the aid of the Argentine referee, and became the first video-assistant-reviewed goal in World Cup history. But the next two — hard low shots by the young French stars Paul Pogba and Kylian Mbappé — confirmed what everyone knew even before France polished off its 4-2 victory on Sunday: France was the best team in the field this summer in Russia, and for that reason its team — a potent mix of greatness, grit and good fortune — is the world champion again. The title is France’s second and the first since it won on home soil in 1998, and it ended a thrilling run by Croatia. The Croats survived three consecutive extra-time games and two penalty shootouts to reach their first final, and they even had the better of the game on Sunday. ..."
NY Times
Aljazeera: France beat Croatia to win World Cup 2018
Guardian: France 4 - 2 Croatia
YouTube: France vs croatia 4-2 ¶¶ hightlight all goals final

Henry Singleton, "The Storming of the Bastille."
"Today people all over the world celebrate the 1789 storming of the Bastille Saint-Antoine — a dramatic popular rebellion that sparked the French Revolution. But what was the French Revolution, how did it reshape Europe and the world, and what relevance does it have to the workers’ movement today? Here’s a short primer, lovingly compiled by Jacobin to mark the occasion. What was the French Revolution? The French Revolution was one of the most dramatic social upheavals in history. In 1856, French sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville reviewed the so-called “grievance books” — lists of demands made by the various social layers of France in anticipation of the Estates-General, the assembly that would undermine Louis XVI’s reign and lead ultimately to revolution. What he discovered startled him. ..."
Jacobin: A Guide to the French Revolution
Jacobin: Yes, the French Revolution Was Necessary
The Nation - ‘The Social Ladder Is Broken’: Hope and Despair in the French Banlieues
The France of No Tomorrow

Dealing with Creative Block? A Deck of Cards Might Help

Ricardo Cavolo, from the series “Tarto Del Fuego,” 2016. Courtesy of Station 16 Gallery.
"Geeta Dayal was stuck. Back in 2007, the music journalist was working on a book about Brian Eno’s 1975 album Another Green World, but ideas and drafts kept piling up with little forward progress. The project, she wrote later, had started to weigh on her 'like a ten-thousand-pound albatross.' So she picked up an Oblique Strategies deck—a set of instruction-based cards written by Eno and artist Peter Schmidt to help overcome creative block—and let them guide her. 'Work at a different speed,' one commanded. Dayal jotted down her ideas without hesitating or overthinking. 'Make a sudden, destructive unpredictable action; incorporate.' She ripped up the chapter she had been working on. 'Take a break.' She stopped writing for a while—long enough to take up cycling and read both volumes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. ..."
artsy

Around the World in 51 Soccer Movies

“Péle: Birth of a Legend”
"I started off intending to write an article about soccer and cinema, but I wound up writing just as much about poverty, tyranny, and war. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Football has always been tied up with politics, revolution, and social change. It’s the world’s most popular sport, and practically every country — no matter how small its film industry — has a movie about it. Sometimes these are triumphant tales of overcoming great odds: little kids whose dreams come true, or downtrodden nations finding success at the World Cup. Sometimes they are stories about how even soccer can’t defeat forces of violence and hate; indeed, sometimes the football is a weapon wielded by those very forces. The Beautiful Game can just as often be the ugliest one. ..."
Voice

Markets of Paris - Dixon Long & Marjorie R. Williams (2012) / The Markets of Paris - Emile Zola (1873)

"The food scene in Paris has changed dramatically since 2006, when Markets of Paris was first published. Yes, the same markets are held in the same locales as always—literally, for centuries—but many have undergone a remarkable transformation led by a young generation of purveyors focused, even more than their predecessors, on local and organic ('bio') produce. Markets of Paris, 2nd Edition revisits and updates the entire market scene in Paris, with new entries, including Virtual Markets and Market Streets, Markets Open on Sunday, Artisan Bakers and Artisan Foods, Getting Along in the Food Markets, Brocante Fairs, and more. Updates focus on the most interesting vendors and most unique and enticing offerings to be found at each locale, including prepared food that can be eaten on the spot. One of the biggest changes in the Paris market scene in recent years has been the spike of interest in organic, reflected in the popularity of the Raspail organic market. Often it’s referred to as 'Le Marché Bio,' and many claim it’s the crème de la crème of all Paris’s markets. ..."
NYRBooks
The Belly of Paris by Émile Zola - On Bookes
W - Le Ventre de Paris
The markets of Paris - Zola, Émile

The Square in front of Les Halles by Victor Gabriel Gilbert, 1880.

Left Politics Can Win All Over the Country

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, May 26, 2018.
"The Democratic establishment is clearly flustered by the stunning upset victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over the person who was considered to be the likely next Democratic leader of the House, Congressman Joe Crowley. Former DCCC Chair Steve Israel, in a quote I found entertaining as a former Iowan who has knocked on a lot of doors in Brooklyn, Iowa, opined that 'What sounds good in Brooklyn, New York, doesn’t work in Brooklyn, Iowa.' Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth, who is at least a Midwesterner, said in response to Ocasio-Cortez’s victory that a political platform 'too far to the left' could not win in the Midwest. Other Democratic insiders are insisting that this upset isn’t that big a deal, making the case that Ocasio-Cortez’s ideas are actually no different than mainstream Democratic Party stuff, she just wraps it in the label 'socialism.' ..."
The Nation

Ikebe Shakedown - Hard Steppin' (2016)

"Ikebe Shakedown's debut release is as heavy as an angry herd of elephants! Recorded at Dunham Studios in Brooklyn with the help of members of The Budos Band, these tracks are rough and tough to be sure and offer a variety of different sounds from the band. Ikebe seamlessly blends the raw emotion and passion of '70s African Funk with the danceable horns and rhythms of American soul music! Ikebe Shakedown is Brooklyn-based, eight-piece instrumental juggernaut that incorporates the sounds of '60s and '70s African Funk and American Soul Music for a totally fresh sound. Featuring dynamic horns backed by a hard-hitting rhythm section, Ikebe Shakedown (pronounced ee-kay-bay) will get you out of your seat and onto the dance floor! With obvious influences from legendary groups such as The J.B.'s and The Meters, Ikebe Shakedown is also looking to make their own mark on the Brooklyn scene in the vein of more contemporary groups like The Budos Band, Antibalas, and The Menahan Street Band."
Underground HipHop
Discogs
iTunes
YouTube: Ikebe Shakedown - Hard Steppin' [FULL ALBUM STREAM]

The Burning House

David Wojnarowicz with Tom Warren, Self-Portrait of David Wojnarowicz (detail), 1983–84
"I was reading Close to the Knives in Mexico, where David Wojnarowicz spent significant amounts of time—Oaxaca, mainly, and Mexico City and the border towns—though I didn’t know that then. I was staying at an expensive resort, which was in a state of constant repair, as those kinds of resorts always are: stucco was being smoothed and repainted, bright clouds of bougainvillea were being trimmed, concrete was being resurfaced. It was an ultimately futile tussle between man and nature, one frustrating and poignant to watch; it took teams of people, and their collective diligence, to try to undo what nature would keep doing. One day, the resort would close, and within months or weeks or days, all of those years of vigilance would mean nothing—the rains would rust the metal lanterns, the sun would leach the color from the walls, the hibiscus would grow stalky and shaggy. ..."
The Paris Review

Agnès Varda - Vagabond (1985)

"Unapologetically transgressive, righteously bleak and infused with a uniquely feminist sensibility, Vagabond proved to be one of Agnès Varda’s most essential films, winning the Golden Lion at the 1985 Venice Film Festival and a best actress César for Sandrine Bonnaire. Set against the frigid winter landscape of rural France, it follows Mona, a complex and contradictory drifter, who survives on handouts and ephemeral liaisons with strangers. We begin at the end, with the discovery of her corpse in a ditch. Then, through flashbacks and interviews with people who came into contact with her, Varda’s film attempts to reconstruct the final days of her life. Here are five reasons Vagabond deserves your attention. ..."
Five reasons to watch Vagabond, Agnès Varda’s austerely beautiful masterwork
W - Vagabond
Portrait of a Vagabond: An Appreciation of Agnès Varda
NY Times: Archives | 1985
amazon
DailyMotion: Trailer: Vagabond (Sans Toit ni Loi)

Agnès Varda directs Vagabond

August 2010: Agnès Varda, May 2011: The Beaches of Agnès, 2011 December: Interview - Agnès Varda, 2013 February: The Gleaners and I (2000), 2013 September: Cinévardaphoto (2004), 2014 July: Black Panthers (1968 doc.), 2014 October: Art on Screen: A Conversation with Agnès Varda, 2015 September: Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), Plaisir d’amour en Iran (1976), 2017 April: Agnès Varda’s Art of Being There, 2017 April: AGNÈS VARDA with Alexandra Juhasz, 2017 August: Agnès Varda on her life and work - Artforum, 2017 October: Agnès Varda’s Ecological Conscience, 2018 March: Faces Places - Agnès Varda and JR (2017)

August Wilson - Pittsburgh Cycle

A scene from the August Wilson play “Jitney” on Broadway at the Friedman Theater.
Wikipedia - "Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle, also often referred to as his Century Cycle, consists of ten plays—nine of which are set in Pittsburgh's Hill District (the other being set in Chicago), an African-American neighborhood that takes on a mythic literary significance like Thomas Hardy's Wessex, William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, or Irish playwright Brian Friel's Ballybeg. The plays are each set in a different decade and aim to sketch the Black experience in the 20th century and 'raise consciousness through theater' and echo 'the poetry in the everyday language of black America'. He was fascinated by the power of theater as a medium where a community at large could come together to bear witness to events and currents unfolding. ..."
Wikipedia
August Wilson’s Pittsburgh. As soon as you emerge from the Fort Pitt Tunnel in Pittsburgh the city’s impressive skyline appears, with the 44-story Art Deco Gulf Tower and the glassy, neo-Gothic PPG Place accentuating the view. Those two buildings tell the tale of the city. Once defined by its production of iron and steel, along with the ensuing smog, Pittsburgh now has self-driving cars being tested on its streets and rapid gentrification in many of its historically blue-collar neighborhoods. It may seem as if the city is changing at an unparalleled pace but Pittsburgh has been steadily evolving for generations. August Wilson, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, poet, scholar and native son knew this firsthand. Change was something that Wilson brilliantly captured in what is known as the Century Cycle, his collection of 10 plays that reveal the broad African-American experience for each decade of the 20th century. ..."
NY Times
NY Times - August Wilson on Broadway: A History
The Hill District
11 Things You Should Know About August Wilson (Video)

2017 July: Fences (2016), 2017 August: The Ground on Which I Stand, a Speech on Black Theatre and Performance (1992)

The Soul Of Spanish Harlem / El Barrio: Sounds from the Spanish Harlem Streets

"The mid-to-late 60s produced an explosion of Latin soul, emanating a few blocks east of Harlem's Apollo Theater in East or Spanish Harlem. This compilation features the sweet harmony sounds of artists from the area - including Joe Bataan, Ralphi Pagan, the Lebron Brothers and a host of unknowns who recorded for labels such as Fania, Cotique and Speed. It also includes rare 45s by Parrish and 125th Street Candy Store. It gathers up some of the rarest and most sought after recordings of the era, including three-figure singles by Frankie Nieves, Tony Middleton and Harvey Averne which are collected by dancers, as well as Olivieri and Ralphi and the Latin Lovers which are sought-after by vocal group fans. ..."
Holland Tunnel Dive
amazon: The Soul Of Spanish Harlem
YouTube: THE TERRIBLE FRANKIE NIEVES (TRUE LOVE), TITO RAMOS ( HEAVEN), RONNIE MARKS (SOME LONELY HEART)
Juno: The Soul Of Spanish Harlem (Audio)
"Awesome new installment in the essential 'El Barrio' series of compilations from the great Fania salsa label. Fania is to salsa as Motown is to soul or Studio One is to reggae and this compilation picks fifteen killer tracks from the Fania 'family' of labels that included Tico and Allegre. There's a good mixture of 'classic' tracks alongside well chosen obscurities from some of the rarer releases. Explosive New York latin music that incorporates elements of soul and rock from the 1960s and 1970s with intense percussion, fiery singing, and explosive horns. ..."
Holland Tunnel Dive
amazon: El Barrio: Sounds From Spanish Harlem Streets
YouTube: Roberto Roena y su Apollo Sound - Consolacion, Pete Rodriguez Y Su Conjunto - Here come the judge, Tito Puente - Safari, Eddie Palmieri = Chocolate ice cream

All the Roman Roads of Italy, Visualized as a Modern Subway Map

"At its peak around the year 117 AD, the mighty Roman Empire owned five million square kilometers of land. It ruled more than 55 million people, between a sixth and a quarter of the population of the entire world. The empire, as classicist and historian Christopher Kelly describes it, 'stretched from Hadrian's Wall in drizzle-soaked northern England to the sun-baked banks of the Euphrates in Syria; from the great Rhine-Danube river system, which snaked across the fertile, flat lands of Europe from the Low Countries to the Black Sea, to the rich plains of the North African coast and the luxuriant gash of the Nile Valley in Egypt.' All that power, of course, originally emanated from Italy. The builders of the Roman Empire couldn't have pulled it off without serious infrastructural acumen, including the skill to make concrete that lasts longer than even the modern variety as well as the forcefulness and sheer manpower to lay more than 400,000 kilometers of road. ..."
Open Culture

Funky Destination ‎– Revolution Is Only Solution (2013)

"Funky Destination a.k.a Vladimir Sivc returns with a brand new release for Timewarp. Already counting one album and numerous ep's & singles during the past four years, he finally presents his next, highly anticipated, full length album! 'Revolution Is Only Solution' presents 11 new well made funk tunes and songs plus two remixes on the song 'The Inside Man' from great funksters Soopasoul and Valique. This great album presents Funky Destination's musical skills that blend funk, soul, house and breaks with great party feeling and easy going funk grooves. Plus we agree with him regarding what the album title states: 'Revolution Is Only Solution'. All songs mastered by Angelos Timewarp Stoumpos (except Valique remix). ..."
Timewarp Music (Audio)
Discogs
iTunes
YouTube: The Inside Man (Soopasoul remix), Hollywood Jollywood, Such A Good Feeling, The Inside Man

For the Sake of the Song - Townes Van Zandt (1968)

Wikipedia - "For the Sake of the Song is the debut album by country singer/songwriter Townes Van Zandt, released in 1968. The majority of the songs, including the title track, 'Tecumseh Valley', '(Quicksilver Daydreams of) Maria', 'Waiting 'Round to Die', and 'Sad Cinderella', were re-recorded in more stripped-down versions for subsequent studio albums. For the Sake of the Song would be the flagship release on Poppy Records, a label operated by Keven Eggers, with whom Van Zandt would have a long and complex professional relationship. ... Clement, who had been an engineer for Sam Phillips at Sun Records and an established songwriter himself, offered to produce the album with Jim Malloy. ..."
Wikipedia
Townes Van Zandt: For the Sake of the Song
allmusic
amazon
YouTube: For The Sake Of The Song [Full Album] 36:54

2018 Tour de France

Wikipedia - "The 2018 Tour de France is the 105th edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's three Grand Tours. The 3,351 km (2,082 mi) race started from Noirmoutier-en-l'Île, in the Vendée department, on 7 July and will finish with the Champs-Élysées stage in Paris, on 29 July. A total of 176 riders across 22 teams are participating in the 21-stage race. The Tour is the shortest of the millennium and will be the fifth time a tour has set out from the Vendée department. ... Defending champion Chris Froome (Team Sky) was generally considered the main favourite for victory. He had won four out of the last five editions, and was also the current defending champion at both other Grand Tours, the Vuelta a España and the Giro d'Italia. However, Froome's participation was cast into doubt when he returned a urine sample at the 2017 Vuelta a España, which contained twice the allowed amount of the asthma drug salbutamol. ... The sprinters considered favourites for the points classification and wins on the flat or hilly bunch sprint finishes are Peter Sagan, Fernando Gaviria, Dylan Groenewegen, Arnaud Démare, Marcel Kittel, Michael Matthews, Mark Cavendish, André Greipel, Alexander Kristoff, Sonny Colbrelli, Nacer Bouhanni, John Degenkolb. ..."
Wikipedia
Le Tour (Video)
Guardian (Video)
Telegraph (Video)
Telegraph - Tour de France 2018: Full starting list and remaining teams and riders (Video)
BBC (Video)
Steephill (Video)
Cycling
twitter, facebook
YouTube: The Route in 3D - Tour de France 2018

2008 July: Tour de France 2008, 2009 July: Tour de France 2009, 2010 July: Tour de France 2010,  2011 July: Tour de France 2011, 2012 July: 2012 Tour de France, 2015 July: 2015 Tour de France, 2015 July: Tour de France 2015: Team Time Trial Win Bolsters American’s Shot at Podium, 2015 July: Tour de France: Chris Froome completes historic British win, 2016 July: 2016 Tour de France, 2017 July: 2017 Tour de France, 2018 May: 2018 Giro d'Italia

First Album, First Song: The 150 Best Lead-Off Tracks

"Over the years, some bands who've released recording debuts have launched their careers with a single from the album that, in many cases, was the first song on the first side of their record. In the business, these songs are called 'lead-off tracks,' denoting the first in a series of songs on an album. Many of these tracks spawned major hits: from Beyoncé's 'Crazy In Love,' 'Chuck E's In Love' by Rickie Lee Jones and Norah Jones' 'Don't Know Why,' to Foo Fighters' 'This Is A Call' and 'Suite: Judy Blue Eyes' by Crosby, Stills & Nash. Still others, while not major radio hits, have had lasting influence on pop music. 'Radio Free Europe' by R.E.M., 'Illegal Smile' by John Prine, 'Push It Along' by A Tribe Called Quest and 'Sunday Morning' by The Velvet Underground come to mind. From rock and soul to R&B and rap, we've collected 150 of these lead-off tracks into one playlist. Listen below."
NPR (Audio)

The Exquisite Catalog of a Crow Fair

"When Dr. Denene De Quintal arrived at the Denver Art Museum as a curatorial fellow in 2016, one of her first assignments was to dig into the extensive, old-school card catalog that documents objects in the museum’s Native Arts department—a seemingly ordinary task. But De Quintal was greeted by something she describes as both unusual and fascinating. On the backs of the cards were small, exquisitely-detailed watercolor paintings of native objects—baskets, spears, shoes, clothes and more, all rendered in painstaking realism down to the pattern and texture. The volume of the card catalog is staggering: There are over 20,000 artworks in the Native Arts department; of those, 15,000 have illustrated cards. ..."
Topic

The Black and White Cookie at the End of the World

"Last weekend, after 116 years of serving Yorkville’s sweet-toothed populace, Glaser’s Bake Shop permanently closed its doors. Beloved in particular for its lavishly frosted black and whites — perhaps the most iconic example of New York City’s most iconic cookie — the bakery was most recently owned and operated by brothers Herb and John Glaser, the third generation to run the family business. And on Sunday, July 1, it served its final cookie. I’d never been before, despite my twin interests in mom-and-pops (or, as the case may be, sibling-and-siblings) and all things sugar. I woke up early on Saturday morning, Glaser’s second-to-last day in existence, and took the train to the Upper East Side. I expected there might be a line, and if so, I was prepared to wait up to, I don’t know, half an hour? I had no idea what was in store for me. The bakery opened at 7 a.m.; I arrived around 8:15. ..."
Voice
W - Black and white cookie
NYC's Black & White Cookies, Ranked
YouTube: Seinfeld - Black and White Cookie

Holden Caulfield: Egotistical Whiner or Melancholy Boy Genius?

"Here are some things we’ve been talking about in the Literary Hub office lately: Is Holden Caulfield a tragic hero or an unbearable whiny teen? Is he misunderstood? Is he relevant to youth today? Is The Catcher in the Rye even any good? Does it matter, if it has meant something to generations of readers? Do we only like it because our parents did? Why do we talk about it so much more than Nine Stories, which is objectively superior? (To each his own, is my take—but I, having never liked The Catcher in the Rye or its deeply phony narrator, also don’t think we should keep things in the canon just because they’ve always been there.) If nothing else, we can all at least agree that Holden Caulfield is still (though decreasingly) a cultural touchstone in this country, in part because parents keep giving the book to their children and in part because so many students are still required to read it in school. ..."
LitHub

Discovering Black Outsider Art in a Whitewashed World

Margaret’s Grocery by Reverend Dennis
"Their abilities don’t come from any artistic establishment. They didn’t have any formal training and they were not influenced by other mainstream artists. Hailing from places like Mississippi, Tallapoosa, and other rural pockets of the deep south, they’re the African American Outsider and Folk artists whose voices and colour palettes explored a world that wasn’t really documented, but whose legacies have often been pushed to the wayside by history. Their work explores everything from the painful legacy of slavery, to segregation; from the need for intersectional feminism, to the power of a simple gesture of love. And their work is as unique as it comes… ..."
Messy Nessy Chic (Video)

Messy Nessy Chic

The Ballot and the Break

A portrait of Floyd B. Olson, the Farmer-Labor Party governor of Minnesota.
"The oldest political dispute inside the US left isn’t going away anytime soon. Revelations about the Democratic National Committee’s pro–Hillary Clinton intrigues and local victories for leftists in the November elections have added fuel to the fire of that age-old question: how should socialists confront the two-party system? On one side, supporters of 'realigning' the Democratic Party insist that given the constraints of the US political system, transforming the party is the sole viable strategy for progressive politics. On the other side, advocates of a clean break from the Democrats and Republicans see any involvement within capitalist parties as an unprincipled dead end. Proponents of each stance can rightly point to the practical failures of their rivals’ approaches over the past century, especially at the national level. But both sides have ignored the example of the most electorally successful workers’ party in the history of the United States — the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party (FLP). ..."
Jacobin
W - Floyd B. Olson
Who was Floyd Olson?

2018 World Cup Predictions

"The World Cup is back, and so is another edition of FiveThirtyEight’s World Cup predictions. For those of you familiar with our club soccer predictions or our 2014 World Cup forecast, much of our 2018 forecast will look familiar. We show the chance that each team will win, lose or tie every one of their matches, as well as a table that details how likely each team is to finish first or second in their group and advance to the knockout stage. This year, we’ve added a few features to our interactive graphics. We have a bracket that illustrates how likely each team is to make each knockout-round match that it can advance to, as well as its most likely opponents in those matches. ..."
FiveThirtyEight
Metafilter: it's coming to someone's home. (Video)

Dancing plague of 1518

Medieval villagers performing a nose dance during a celebration. In 1518, a dancing plague hit Strasbourg, France.
Wikipedia - "The dancing plague (or dance epidemic) of 1518 was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace, in the Holy Roman Empire in July 1518. Around 400 people took to dancing for days without rest and, over the period of about one month, some of those affected collapsed or even died of heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion. The outbreak began in July 1518 when a woman, Mrs. Troffea, began to dance fervently in a street in Strasbourg. This lasted somewhere between four and six days. Within a week, 34 others had joined, and within a month, there were around 400 dancers, predominantly female. Some of these people would die from heart attacks, strokes, or exhaustion. One report indicates that for a period, the plague killed around fifteen people per day. However, the sources of the city of Strasbourg at the time of the events did not mention the number of deaths, even if there were fatalities. ..."
Wikipedia
Guardian - Keep on moving: the bizarre dance epidemic of summer 1518
Mass-anxiety in Strasbourg: what was the dancing plague of 1518?

Dancing fever … people affected by St Vitus Dance.

Free Associations: Collages - Janet Malcolm, with Hilton Als

Temperature of World Cities, 2011.
"Janet Malcolm: Last winter, I came into possession of the papers of an émigré psychiatrist who practiced in New York in the late 1940s and 1950s. The archive included a collection of manila envelopes, around six by ten inches, stuffed with folded sheets of thin paper covered with single-spaced typing: the notes the psychiatrist made after seeing patients (many of them fellow émigrés) in his office. As I studied the sheets with their inky typewriting and 60-year-old paper clips holding them together and leaving rust marks on the surface, my collagist’s imagination began to stir. I began to 'see' some version of the collages on view here. The scraps of paper I collect are largely black and white (preferably yellowing white) and have an archaic and melancholy air about them. They hark back to the 19th century and its technological and scientific vernacular. The case studies, with their sad old appearance, were of a piece with this backward-looking aesthetic. Further, in their sometimes almost parodic Freudian interpretations, they summoned a period in psychiatry that is as remote from today’s practice as the manual typewriter is from the Macintosh computer. These collages arose—I’m not sure how—from this encounter with the past. ..."
NYBooks

The Sun with Spots Big Enough to Swallow the Earth, 2011.

Poet of the People: The partisan world of Pablo Neruda

"The poet Pablo Neruda was born in 1920 at the age of 16. It was in October of that year, anyway, that a young man whose unsuspecting parents had baptized him Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto first signed with the name Neruda the poems that he felt he existed in order to write. Already, at 15, Neftalí (as his familiars addressed him until he escaped to college in the big city) had described himself, in excited drafts, not just as a poet but the poet, Mark Eisner points out in his new biography, Neruda: The Poet’s Calling. A sonnet titled 'The Poet Who is Neither Bourgeois nor Humble' alluded to his potent, unknown poet-ness: 'The men haven’t discovered that in him exists / the poet who as a child was not childish.' Neruda as an adolescent poet amounted almost to a parody of the type, worryingly thin, melancholy and shy, and got up, unlike other local boys, all in black. Sickly and frail, he was unsuited to the physical labor done by most of his neighbors, and, a lazy pupil at school, he did not suggest a country doctor or lawyer in the making. He appreciated the splendors of the natural world and mooned over pretty girls but otherwise showed little aptitude or interest for anything outside of books. Among the men who didn’t recognize his promise was the poet’s own father, a former dockworker with a hard demeanor. ..."
New Republic
Pablo Neruda’s Extraordinary Life, in an Illustrated Love Letter to Language

Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People

February 2009: Pablo Neruda, 2011 November: 100 Love Sonnets, 2015 November: The Body Politic: The battle over Pablo Neruda’s corpse, 2015 December: In Chile, Where Pablo Neruda Lived and Loved, 2016 May: Windows that Open Inward - Pablo Neruda. Milton Rogovin, Photographing., 2018 March: What We Can Learn from Neruda’s Poetry of Resistanc

Kamasi Washington - Heaven and Earth (2018)

"The line last Thursday to see Kamasi Washington perform at Leimert Park’s the World Stage wasn’t just around the block. It was the block. Organizers for the sort-of secret show, dubbed the Heaven and Earth Block Party in honor of Washington’s new album, roped off the entire back-alley entrance and parking lot of the saxophonist and composer’s old home-base nightclub. They set up couches and an outdoor projection screen for the hundreds of fans who couldn’t fit inside the tiny jazz venue’s main room. Washington, commanding yet gentle at center stage, led his band of best friends and L.A.’s jazz elite through two different two-hour sets, drawing from his quadruple-LP 'Heaven and Earth,' which was released June 22. The crowd was a mix of veteran L.A. jazz heads, curious hipsters and Leimert Park locals who grew up alongside Washington and this scene. It was sweaty and slammed cheek-to-cheek in a way no one minded. ... The show made the case not just for the continued vitality of L.A. jazz, which has melded with hip-hop, funk and the avant-garde. It was a model for music as the centerpiece of a community. A physical space, but also a mental and spiritual one. That’s the 'Heaven and Earth' of Washington’s album, and in a time when so much of American life seems isolated or irredeemably fractured, it’s a place for hope as well. ..."
LA Times: Kamasi Washington's ‘Heaven and Earth’ proves jazz's vitality and political power
Pitchfork
Kamasi Washington Earns Every Minute of Heaven and Earth (Audio)
amazon, iTunes
YouTube: ''Street Fighter Mas" live on KCRW, "The Space Travelers Lullaby'' live on KCRW


2015 December: The Epic - Kamasi Washington (2015), 2016 December: Throttle Elevator Music featuring Kamasi Washington (2016), 2017 April: Harmony of Difference (EP - 2017), 2017 June: "The Rhythm Changes", 2017 August: What's in my Bag?, 2017 August: Harmony of Difference EP (2017)

Opening a fire hydrant is a city summer tradition

"The first fire hydrant in New York was installed in 1808 at William and Liberty Streets downtown. By the end of the 19th century, city streets were dotted with iron hydrants, the kind we’re used to seeing today. The hydrants were certainly important when it came to fighting the deadly fires that beset the city in those days. But it didn’t take long for residents of the tenement districts to start wrenching open hydrants during heat waves and using the high-pressure spray for cooling off in blistering heat. Who led these activities? New York kids, of course. ..."
Ephemeral New York

Broadcasting from Home - Penguin Cafe Orchestra (1982)

"The Penguin Cafe Orchestra is as eclectic as prog gets, way beyond the usual parameters of the genre, far removed from bubbly Moog runs, blistering Rickenbacker bass rumbles, laser-guided electric guitar solos and thrashing Hammond organ. Quite the opposite, PCO was formed in that glorious period of 1973, when music from all genres were actively incorporated into the progressive fold, a laboratory of incredible adventure (and stamina) , still ear-friendly in the 21st Century. Not really surprising as the classically trained young 70s musicians flocked to the Rock idiom en masse, wanting to be part of this youthful exuberant cultural movement that had taken over the artistic world. Simon Jeffes was a gifted composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist who wished to put into music the dreams he slept through, very much in a neo-classical mode using an array of stringed instruments (violin, viola, cello) as well as the rare and bizarre such as Harmonium, Spinet, Ukulele, Cuatro, Soloban, Dulcitone, Omnichord etc'..."
Progarchives
W - Broadcasting from Home
amazon
YouTube: White Mischief & In the Back of a Taxi, Music by Numbers, Heartwind, Now Nothing, Isle of View (Music for Helicopter Pilots)

Jorge Amado

Wikipedia - ""Jorge Leal Amado de Faria (10 August 1912 – 6 August 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the modernist school. He remains the best known of modern Brazilian writers, with his work having been translated into some 49 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands in 1978. His work reflects the image of a Mestiço Brazil and is marked by religious syncretism. He depicted a cheerful and optimistic country that was beset, at the same time, with deep social and economic differences. ... On his return to Brazil in 1954, Amado abandoned active political life, leaving the Communist Party one year later. From that period on he dedicated himself solely to literature. His second creative phase began in 1958 with Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon, which was described by Jean-Paul Sartre as 'the best example of a folk novel'. Amado abandoned, in part, the realism and the social themes of his early works, producing a series of novels focusing mainly on feminine characters, devoted to a kind of smiling celebration of the traditions and the beauties of Bahia. ..."
Wikipedia
The 12 Best Books By Jorge Amado You Must Read
amazon: Jorge Amado

What It Costs to Be Smuggled Across the U.S. Border

Mr. Cruz crossed into Guatemala legally with his national identity card.
"MATAMOROS, Mexico — Shortly before dawn one Sunday last August, a driver in an S.U.V. picked up Christopher Cruz at a stash house in this border city near the Gulf of Mexico. The 22-year-old from El Salvador was glad to leave the one-story building, where smugglers kept bundles of cocaine and marijuana alongside their human cargo, but he was anxious about what lay ahead. The driver deposited Mr. Cruz at an illegal crossing point on the edge of the Rio Grande. A smuggler took a smartphone photograph to confirm his identity and sent it using WhatsApp to a driver waiting to pick him up on the other side of the frontier when — if — he made it across. The nearly 2,000-mile trip had already cost Mr. Cruz’s family more than $6,000 and brought him within sight of Brownsville, Tex. The remaining 500 miles to Houston — terrain prowled by the United States Border Patrol as well as the state and local police — would set them back another $6,500. It was an almost inconceivable amount of money for someone who earned just a few dollars a day picking coffee beans back home. But he wasn’t weighing the benefits of a higher-paying job. He was fleeing violence and what he said was near-certain death at the hands of local gangs. ..."
NY Times

"Habibi Funk 001 Mix" by Jannis of Jakarta Records (Mix of Arabic 60s & 70s)

"Thru the "Sawtuha" project and Blitz The Ambassador playing quite some shows in Morocco I've had the pleasure to travel North Africa quite frequently lately and whenever possible I did some record shopping. This is a selection of some of the finds, music from the 60s and 70s from Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. Some known, some not yet. Here is the tracklist: 01. Assa'd Khoury - Al Gaba 02. Sabah - Dek El Kaff 03. Karim Shourhy & Andrea Rayder - Take Me Back To Cairo 04. Fadoul - Sid Redad (Papa's Got A Brand New Bag)* 05. Ziad Rahbani - Intro Instrumental 2 06. Sharifa Fadel - Mawal El Ashak 07. Salah Ragab and The Cairo Jazz Band - Egypt Strut 08. Golden Hands - Take Me Back 09. Elias Rahbani & His Orchestra - Moonlight Melody 10. Mahmoud Megri - Tefham 11. Elias Rahbani - Dance Of Maria 12. Abdou El Omari - Rajaat Laayoun ..."
YouTube: "Habibi Funk 001 Mix"
Soundcloud: "Habibi Funk 001 Mix"

2017 June: Ahmed Malek and Other Treasures From Habibi Funk’s North African Crate - Digging Expeditions, 2017 July: Lebanon: Various artists - Jakarta Radio 010 Mix, 2017 December: From the Counter: Beirut