The Sheck Wes story

"Sheck Wes is a 19-year-old chart topping rapper from Central Harlem in New York City. He grew up on 116th Street and Lenox, right in the heart of a neighborhood that has come to be known as 'Le Petit Senegal.' The area has been rapidly gentrifying since the early 2000s, but even today if you walk the area surrounding 116th street you can pass a plethora of stores run by a largely Francophone population of African immigrants, serving Manhattan’s uptown population. African restaurants, tailors, bakeries, Islamic centers and music shops were once regular fixtures in a neighborhood now filling up with condos and coffee shops. Wes’s father is a tailor (who once worked for legendary hip hop stylist Dapper Dan) and his mother a hair braider in the area. Their community’s story is an important lens through which to understand African immigrant culture that is not yet widely recognized. The largest single group in Little Senegal are the Mourides—members of an entrepreneurial branch of Sufi Islam which has its roots in late 19th century colonial French West Africa. ..."
Africa Is a Country
W - Le Petit Senegal
Little Senegal on Harlem's 116th Street shrinks as gentrification takes hold
NY Times: A One-Woman Welcome Wagon in Le Petit Sénégal
NY Times: In Harlem's Fabric, Bright Threads of Senegal
Dapper Dan
How Little Senegal Became Harlem’s West African Hub

Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

"Robert Plant called her his 'favorite singer out of all the British girls there ever were.' But a compliment of her singing alone undercuts the holistic talents of the musician Sandy Denny. To be sure: Her sublime voice stands on its own in the Anglo-folk canon, but her songwriting and lyricism are equally impressive. Both aspects of her talents remain essential to the fabric of the British folk-rock movement of the 1960s and ‘70s. Though the modern music press frequently portrays Denny as a cartoon-ish caricature of a temperamental singing faerie, she in fact endures, 40 years after her death, as an unexampled lyricist and songwriter, and an equally magnetic performer. ..."
Reverb LP (Video)

2009 March: Sandy Denny, 2013 January: "A Sailor’s Life" - Fairport Convention, 2013 May: The North Star Grassman and the Ravens, 2018 March: Like an Old Fashioned Waltz (1974), 2018 April: Seven and a Half Short Notes on Sandy Denny

Songs of the Underground Railroad

John Osler
Wikipedia - "Songs of the Underground Railroad were spiritual and work songs used during the early-to-mid 19th century in the United States to encourage and convey coded information to escaping slaves as they moved along the various Underground Railroad routes. As it was illegal in most slave states to teach slaves to read or write, songs were used to communicate messages and directions about when, where, and how to escape, and warned of dangers and obstacles along the route. One reportedly coded Underground Railroad song is 'Follow the Drinkin' Gourd'. The song's title is said to refer to the star formation (an asterism) known in America as the Big Dipper and in Europe as The Plough. The pointer stars of the Big Dipper align with the North Star. In this song the repeated line 'Follow the Drinkin' Gourd' is thus often interpreted as instructions to escaping slaves to travel north by following the North Star, leading them to the northern states, Canada, and freedom: The song ostensibly encodes escape instructions and a map from Mobile, Alabama up the Tombigbee River, over the divide to the Tennessee River, then downriver to where the Tennessee and Ohio rivers meet in Paducah, Kentucky. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Follow the Drinkin' Gourd
Underground Railroad - Songs
PBS: Coded Spirituals (Video)
YouTube: Steal Away: Songs of the Underground Railroad 16 videos

John Coltrane - YouTube: Song Of The Underground Railroad

Liminal: Sigur Rós

"Liminal is an ‘endless’ Sigur Rós ambient playlist which is live today [May 8, 2018], brought to you by Jónsi, Alex Somers and Paul Corley. It will be built over linear time into a never-finished project. Albums will be released, volumes added to. Liminal, both live and locally, takes the listener to a place neither here nor there; a 'liminal' space. Liminal + Liminal 2 + Liminal 3 = approximately 3 hours of ambient 'chill-out' music from Iceland, both original compositions and remixes of works by this trio and others. ..."
Sigur Rós (Video)
Bandcamp: Liminal, Liminal 2, Liminal 3
YouTube: liminal [Full Album Stream], liminal 2 [Full Album Stream], tónandi liminal
YouTube: Sigur Rós - Route One [Part 1 - 1080p], Route One [Part 2 - 1080p], Route One [Part 3 - 1080p]

1900 - Bernardo Bertolucci (1976)

Wikipedia - "1900 (Italian: Novecento, 'Twentieth Century') is a 1976 Italian epic historical drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and featuring an international ensemble cast including Robert De Niro, Gérard Depardieu, Dominique Sanda, Francesca Bertini, Laura Betti, Stefania Casini, Ellen Schwiers, Sterling Hayden, Alida Valli, Romolo Valli, Stefania Sandrelli, Donald Sutherland, and Burt Lancaster. Set in Bertolucci's ancestral region of Emilia, the film chronicles the lives and friendship of two men – the landowning Alfredo Berlinghieri (De Niro) and the peasant Olmo Dalcò (Depardieu) – as they witness and participate in the political conflicts between fascism and communism that took place in Italy in the first half of the 20th century. The film premiered out of competition at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival.  ... Born on the day of the death of renowned composer Giuseppe Verdi – 27 January 1901 – Alfredo Berlinghieri and Olmo Dalcò come from opposite ends of the social spectrum. Alfredo is from a family of landowners led by his populist grandfather (also called Alfredo), while Olmo is an illegitimate peasant. Olmo's grandfather, Leo, is the foreman and peasants' strong man who verbally and spiritually carries out a duel of wits with the elder Alfredo. As Alfredo is somewhat rebellious and despises the falseness of his family, in particular his weak but abusive and cynical father Giovanni, he befriends Olmo, who was raised as a socialist. ..."
Wikipedia
Voice - Between Revolution and Reflection: Bertolucci’s Italian Films Return
NY Times - Screen: ‘1900,’ Bertolucci's Marxist Saga (Nov. 4, 1977)
Guardian - Bernardo Bertolucci: the brilliant last emperor of highbrow cinema
YouTube: "1900-Novecento", Da Novecento, nati lo stesso giorno

2008 July: Bernardo Bertolucci, 2011 November: The Last Emperor (1987), 2016 June: La commare secca (1962)

Manafort, Cohen, and Individual 1 Are in Grave Danger

A protest in Los Angeles, California
Ken White - Attorney and former federal prosecutor: "Federal prosecutors filed three briefs late on Friday portending grave danger for three men: the former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, the former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, and President Donald Trump. In an age when Americans usually get mere squibs of breaking news from Twitter, Facebook, and red-faced cable shouters, many started their weekend poring over complex legal filings and peering suspiciously at blacked-out paragraphs. The documents were stunning, even for 2018. In brief No. 1, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office argues that Paul Manafort breached his cooperation agreement with the government by lying to the FBI and the Special Counsel’s Office in the course of 12 meetings. ..."
The Atlantic
The Atlantic: Mueller’s Memos and the Alleged Lies of the Trump Lieutenants

The Last Chess Shop in New York City

“'I came here to get a Ph.D. in American literature, and here I am, with pictures of American writers on the wall—a chess vendor.' That’s Imad Khachan, the owner of Chess Forum, the only remaining chess shop in New York City. A Palestinian refugee with no family of his own, Khachan has become 'the father of everybody' to a community of chess enthusiasts, those curious to learn more about the game, and those whom Khachan describes as the city’s 'invisible people.' 'When no other place will welcome you, you have a seat [here],' Khachan says in Lonelyleap’s short documentary, King of the Night. The film depicts the chess shop as more than a home for chess players; Khachan’s open-door policy has provided a haven for many patrons who have a difficult home life. According to Brass, some Chess Forum regulars have no home at all. ... In the chess shop’s early days, it was open 24 hours. Khachan, working the graveyard shift, would often take breaks to roam the streets. He still practices the nocturnal habit. ..."
The Atlantic (Video)

2008 October: World Chess Championship 1972, 2009 January: Sicilian Defence, 2009 February: Mikhail Tal, 2009 February: Garry Kasparov, 2009 April: Vasily Smyslov, 2009 August: Chess960, 2009 November: Bent Larsen,2011 November: The Lewis Chessmen, 2012 July: 40 Years Ago Today: Chess Rivals Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky Meet in the ‘Match of the Century’, 2015 September: The Subtext Buried In Seven Great Movie Chess Scenes

Three Places in New England - Charles Ives (1911/14)

Wikipedia - "The Three Places in New England (Orchestral Set No. 1) is a composition for orchestra by American composer Charles Ives. It was composed mainly between 1911 and 1914, although sketches for the work date from 1903, and the latest revisions were made in 1929. The piece is famous for its use of musical quotation and paraphrasing. Three Places consists of three movements in Ives' preferred slow-fast-slow movement order:

1. The "St. Gaudens" in Boston Common (Col. Shaw and his Colored Regiment)
2. Putnam's Camp, Redding, Connecticut
3. The Housatonic at Stockbridge

The three movements are ordered with the longest first and the shortest last, and a complete performance of the piece lasts eighteen or nineteen minutes. As he does in his Orchestral Set No. 2, Ives inverts the fast-slow-fast movement order typical of most three-movement works, using instead a slow-fast-slow order. The piece has become one of Ives' most commonly performed compositions. It exhibits most of the signature traits of his style: layered textures with multiple, sometimes simultaneous melodies, many of which are recognizable hymn and marching tunes; masses of sound including tone clusters; and sudden, sharp textural contrasts. Each of the three movements is named for a place in New England. ..."
Wikipedia
Three Places in New England Notes
YouTube: Three Places in New England [Audio + Score], Three Places in New England - Ensemble intercontemporain (Live)

Housatonic River

2008 September: Charles Ives, 2010 December: Holidays Symphony, 2012 August: Symphony No. 2, 2012 December: Decoration Day, 2014 March: Central Park in the Dark (1906)

New Pedal at Dusk

"This elegant, beautiful video tracks from various angles a test drive by one member of the act Lullatone on a newly acquired reverb pedal. As the sun sets, the pedal is put through its initial paces, segments played on a keyboard and then through the reverb, all set to layer as loops. Those individual layers are barely distinguishable from each other, so peacefully do they accrue as a singular, solitary spaciousness. At times the high notes bring to mind Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois’ production for U2. Throughout, both the video and the performance it documents are marvels of simplicity. This is the latest video I’ve added to my YouTube playlist of recommended live performances of ambient music. Video originally posted at YouTube channel. More from Lullatone, the duo of Shawn James Seymour and Yoshimi Tomida, who are based in Japan, at lullatone.com and lullatone.bandcamp.com."
disquiet (Video)

Windows to the World: At WS Merwin’s Old French Farmhouse

Dordogne River from of the Castle of Beynac
"... Nearly 70 years ago WS Merwin, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and translator, was exploring the south of France when he came across a derelict stone farmhouse in the Midi Pyrenees region between Toulouse and Bordeaux. The rustic building, which was being used for drying tobacco, caught his attention less for its condition than for its location perched high above the Dordogne river, with views to the north and west across the broad valley below. This building and its surroundings would significantly influence his writing—and by extension much of American poetry—for decades to come. The life he started building here offers a model of an alternative literary life perhaps unavailable now. Over the past several years I’ve been incredibly fortunate to spend time at this home, moving for days among its artifacts and old buildings, its gardens, wandering pastures and paths. ..."
LitHub

Paris Burning

People protesting in Paris on Saturday.

"The violent protests of the 'yellow vests' in France have inevitably prompted comparisons with insurrections past, most notably the unrest of 1968 that effectively shut down the French government, and the tribulations of presidents from Charles de Gaulle through François Hollande who have fallen victim to street uprisings. There are similarities, partly expressed in the stereotype that the French favor change in the abstract but abhor it in practice. But it is the differences with the past that pose the major challenge as President Emmanuel Macron tries to find a way to defuse the anger without abandoning his needed reforms. One difference is Mr. Macron himself, who was not yet 40 when he was elected 18 months ago to a five-year presidential term. His own victory and the host of deputies he brought into the National Assembly were the product of a popular discontent with all established parties of right and left. ..."

NY Times
NY Times: How France’s ‘Yellow Vests’ Differ From Populist Movements Elsewhere
NY Times: France Suspends Fuel Tax Increase That Spurred Violent Protests (Video)
Al Jazeera: Hundreds arrested in Paris as 'yellow vest' protests turn violent (Video)
NY Times: Macron’s Moment of Truth***
YouTube: Raw footage as Paris' Yellow Vest protest turns violent

Tear gas surrounds riot police as they clash with “yellow vest” protesters near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on Saturday.

RIP Jean Karakos

"On February 24, 1988, the film To the Extreme hit the cinemas in France – an artificially stylized thriller surfing on the ’80s trend of 'cops in blue jeans.' The movie was hardly a classic and would have quickly been forgotten if the critics had been less harsh. Journalists were already well acquainted with its director, though. Olivier Lorsac had previously been a much-feared press officer with a bad reputation. Journalists had been privately sharpening their claws, waiting for their moment to strike back. When he put down his copy of Libération that day, Lorsac knew he would never make another full-length feature. Crucified in its pages, his dreams of motion picture glory were over. He could only think of one solution to this situation: He was ready to blow his brains out. Before putting his plan into practice, he called up an old friend, Jean Karakos, a man with whom he had worked on projects like the legendary Amougie music festival 20 years beforehand. Karakos, head of New York label Celluloid and a man who had also fallen upon hard times, suggested Lorsac join him in Brazil, where he was looking for artists for a new imprint called Breziloïd. ..."
Red Bull Music Academy Daily (Video)
W - Jean Karakos

YouTube: Material - I'm The One, Memories (Hugh Hopper, Whitney Houston, Archie Shepp), Bad Cat Records

2010 June: Celluloid Records

State of the Slice, Part 2: The 27 Pizza Spots That Define New York Slice Culture

".... I wrote that in November of 2002 in the New York Times. The title of the story said it all: 'The State of the Slice.' A few months ago, I started wondering about the state of the slice in 2018. So much has changed in the last 16 years. While we've certainly witnessed a revival of the New York slice, you could also argue that it's been reinvented, all because of five perhaps inseparable factors. ... Take Frank Pinello, who may be one of the best examples of this convergence of most, if not all, of the points above. When he opened Best Pizza in 2010, it set the standard for what I and my like-minded pizza obsessives have come to call the 'revival slice shop'—that is, an establishment that specializes in selling pizza by the slice, the old-school way, but with particular attention paid to the ingredients used and the techniques employed. ..."
Serious Eats

2014 June: Pizza, 2014 October: Viva La Pizza! The Art of the Pizza Box (NYC), 2016 July: Q&A: Antoinette Balzano and Cookie Cimineri of Totonno’s, 2017 September: The Pizza Show, 2017 November: A Priceless Pizzeria in Brooklyn

And the Beat Goes On

Hundreds gather on Sundays at the Branch Brook Roller Skating Center in Newark, N.J.
"NEWARK — 'Clear the floor,' said Nile Ahmid, a D.J. at the Branch Brook Roller Skating Center in New Jersey. It was around midnight on a recent Sunday, and he had been spinning house and hip-hop tracks for the past three hours. 'The next skate is for trains only,' he added. The lights came on, and 400 skaters brought their wheels to a halt. On cue, they linked arms in prearranged groups of three to 10 rollers to form so-called trains, a hallmark of the skating style specific to New York and New Jersey. Rollers ranged in age from late teens to 60s, and were both gay and straight. But in terms of race, about 95 percent were African-American, a demographic that has both defined and given historical context to similar adult-night skating events in scores of cities nationwide. ..."
NY Times
YouTube: The Whispers - And the Beat Goes On (Official Music Video)

Jack (playing card)

Wikipedia - "A jack or knave is a playing card which, in traditional French and English decks, pictures a man in the traditional or historic aristocratic dress generally associated with Europe of the 16th or 17th century. The usual rank of a jack, within its suit, plays as if it was an 11 (that is, between the 10 and the queen). As the lowest face (or "court") card, the jack often represents a minimum standard — for example, many poker games require a minimum hand of a pair of jacks ("jacks or better") in order to continue play. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts, Bob Dylan
Soundcloud: Lily Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts (Original New York Session)
YouTube: Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts

The Great Pretender: Fela Kuti

"IT'S AS HOT as hell in here. The heat is on, 12 floors up, mid-80s. A gaggle of colourfully clad-women stare at me, amused by my sweaty pinkness. It could be sun-stroke Lagos, anywhere typically tropical, but it's Paris in October. A big-eyed, very naughty, very small boy continually punches me in the leg; his sister giggles at my discomfort. As if this wasn't enough, the man next to me is wearing only red and blue underpants. Apart from spiritual blasts on his saxophone and scratching his scrotal sac, he assures me he will soon be the President of Nigeria. He is, how you say, a hero; a celebrated musician of some 50 albums; a world famous political dissident; a man who married 27 women in one day; the possessor of a legendary libido. In layman's terms he's a cross between Robin Hood and Bob Marley – a Nigerian James Last, a bandleader whose fame has risen above and beyond the category 'superstar'. For nearly two years, until April 24, he languished in Kirkiri gaol; found guilty of a trumped-up charge of currency smuggling. No jury, no appeal. He was released when the judge, who sentenced him to over five years, admitted the trial was rigged. His detention was politically motivated. ..."
Music Aficionado - 25 October 1986 (Video)

A lawyer-turned-artist’s moody Greenwich Village

"Until recently, I’d never heard of Greenwich Village painter Anthony Springer. But I’ve found myself captivated by his colorful, textural images of a less dense, less luxurious Village and other surrounding neighborhoods. Born in 1928, Springer, a native New Yorker, worked as a lawyer before deciding to make painting his vocation at the age of 40, according to friend and fellow artist Robert Holden in 2013 on his blog, Painting Life Stories. 'Tony was a wonderful, quietly mysterious kind of guy, who played poker all night long, slept until the late morning, and then grabbed his half-box French easel and 16×20 inch stretched linen canvas to go paint the narrow side streets of the Village in the dusty afternoon light, a habit he kept up for 20 years or more,' wrote Holden. ..."
Ephemeral New York
ArtNet

BlacKkKlansman - Spike Lee (2018)

Wikipedia - "BlacKkKlansman is a 2018 American biographical comedy-drama film directed by Spike Lee and written by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott, and Lee, based on the 2014 memoir Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth. The film stars John David Washington as Stallworth, along with Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, and Topher Grace. Set in 1970s Colorado Springs, the plot follows the first African-American detective in the Colorado Springs police department, who sets out to infiltrate and expose the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. The film is produced by Lee, Raymond Mansfield, Shaun Redick, Sean McKittrick, Jason Blum, and Jordan Peele. Redick purchased the film rights to the book in 2015, and Lee signed on as director in September 2017. Much of the cast joined the following month, and filming began in New York State. BlacKkKlansman premiered on May 14, 2018, at the Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d'Or and won the Grand Prix. ..."
Wikipedia
New Yorker: Spike Lee Does Battle with “BlacKkKlansman”
NY Times: Spike Lee’s ‘BlacKkKlansman’ Journeys Into White America’s Heart of Darkness by A.O. Scott (Video)
Vanity Fair - BlacKkKlansman: The True Story of How Ron Stallworth Infiltrated the K.K.K.
Slate: What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in BlacKkKlansman (Video)
YouTube: BLACKkKLANSMAN - Official Trailer

2009 January: Spike Lee, 2014 June: Do the Right Thing (1989), 2016 June: Clockers (1995)

Unless they’re true

A thoroughfare in Venice
"For nearly four decades I’ve kept what is known as a commonplace book – a bound notebook, and later a long computer file, passed from desktops (1990s) to laptops (2000s) to my cell phone, into which I’ve poured verbal delicacies, 'blasts of a trumpet', as Emerson put it, and bits of scavenged wisdom from my life as a reader. Yea, for I am an underliner, a destroyer of books, and maybe you are, too. Commonplace books are not so uncommon. John Locke kept one, as did Virginia Woolf. W. H. Auden published his, as did the poet J. D. McClatchy. E. M. Forster’s was issued after his death. ..."
Times Literary Supplement

Jon Gibson – Two Solo Pieces (1977), Arnold Dreyblatt and The Orchestra of Excited Strings – Propellers in Love (1986)

"A founding member of both Steve Reich and Phillip Glass’ ensembles, and an early collaborator with Terry Riley and LaMonte Young, Jon Gibson is a seminal figure in the 20th century American avant-garde. Long dedicated to realizing the work of others, and subsequently lingering in the shadows of his famous peers, during the 1970’s he released two albums on Phillip Glass’ tiny imprint Chatham Square, the second being the stunning Two Solo Pieces – an effort of constrained elegance, featuring single sided works for organ and flute. ... Arnold Dreyblatt is one of the great architects of the second wave Minimalism. A student of Pauline Oliveros, La Monte Young, and Alvin Lucier, and a close friend and collaborator of Ellen Fullman, the bassist and composer was a definitive voice among the early 1980’s New York avant-garde, before relocating to Berlin in 1984. Recording shortly after his arrival and released by the Künstlerhaus Bethanien’s imprint for radical efforts in sound, his second album Propellers In Love stands as one of the most important works of its era – entirely rethinking the meaning and approaches of Minimalism. ..."
on jon gibson’s two solo pieces and arnold dreyblatt and the orchestra of excited strings’ ...  (Video)
Discogs - Two Solo Pieces (Video)
Discogs - Propellers in Love (Video)

Rectangle after Rectangle

Squaring the scroll. Wooden writing tablet made in Byzantine Egypt, ca. 500–700 AD.
"This is about the dominance of the rectangular format in a certain tradition of picture making, a dominance that still holds today and extends well beyond the medium of painting. The book, the photographic print, the screen, and the museum—which has tended to favor this format—all guarantee that we encounter most pictures in rectangular frames. A picture that comprises figure and ground requires an enclosed field. Without an enclosure, the space around its figure(s) will not necessarily read as part of the picture; enclosure is, therefore, the originary act that gives rise to the picture but also limits it. Nothing says this enclosure needs to take the shape of a rectangle, but the history of Western art, at least, makes the rectangle look like a virtually inescapable anatomical limit. What follows are three episodes in the longue durée of this rectangle, each a moment in which the rectangular format moves into an ascendant position over one curvilinear format or another. ..."
Cabinet Magazine

Robert Mueller and His Prosecutors: Who They Are and What They’ve Done

"Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, has marshaled prosecutors, F.B.I. agents and other lawyers to investigate Russia’s 2016 election interference and whether any Trump associates conspired. The team has secured indictments against dozens of people and three companies, one trial conviction and a handful of guilty pleas in the highest-profile political inquiry in a generation. This week alone, Mr. Mueller and his prosecutors accused Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, of breaching his plea deal, and secured a guilty plea from Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer. Each of the core prosecutors has a specialty, like political corruption, hacking or money laundering, many of which have featured in indictments. They come from familiar places: the Justice Department’s criminal division, federal prosecutors’ offices in New York and around Washington and a law firm where Mr. Mueller worked. ..."
NY Times

Listen To An Unheard Raw Studio Mix Of John Lennon’s ‘How Do You Sleep?’

"A previously unheard 'raw studio mix' of John Lennon recording ‘How Do You Sleep?’ has been released. Stripped to the raw recording, with no effects like reverb or echo, it brings the listener into the studio during the recording of a classic Imagine track. ... Present at the session were George Harrison, playing electric slide on Lennon’s pale blue Fender Strat; Rod Lynton with Ted Turner from Wishbone Ash, on twelve string acoustic guitars; Lennon and Harrison’s old friend Klaus Voormann on his hand-painted Fender Precision bass; Alan White on drums; John Tout, from Renaissance, on the Steinway upright piano; and Nicky Hopkins improvising on the red-top Wurlitzer Electric Piano, literally days before he leaves for Nellcôte to play on Exile On Main St with The Rolling Stones. Listening to the outtake is like being in the room as the track is captured. ..."
udiscovermusic (Video)

2009 September: John Lennon - Live in New York City (Madison Square Garden 1972), 2014 January: Michael Rakowitz - The Breakup, 2014 April: "Jealous Guy" (1971), 2014 May: Mind Games (1973), 2014 July: Out of the Blue, 2014 December: Double Fantasy - John Lennon/Yoko Ono (1980), 2015 August: John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970), 2016 October: "Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)" (1970), 2017 January: Cold Turkey (1969)

The Slave Ship - J. M. W. Turner (1840)

Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhoon coming on (1840)
Wikipedia - "The Slave Ship, originally titled Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhoon coming on, is a painting by the British artist J. M. W. Turner, first exhibited in 1840. Measuring 35 3/4 x 48 1/4 in. in oil on canvas, it is now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In this classic example of a Romantic maritime painting, Turner depicts a ship, visible in the background, sailing through a tumultuous sea of churning water and leaving scattered human forms floating in its wake. J.M.W. Turner was inspired to paint The Slave Ship in 1840 after reading The History and Abolition of the Slave Trade by Thomas Clarkson. In 1781, the captain of the slave ship Zong had ordered 133 slaves to be thrown overboard so that insurance payments could be collected. This event probably inspired Turner to create his landscape and to choose to coincide its exhibition with a meeting of the British Anti-Slavery Society. Although slavery had been outlawed in the British Empire since 1833, Turner and many other abolitionists believed that slavery should be outlawed around the world. Turner thus exhibited his painting during the anti-slavery conference, intending for Prince Albert, who was speaking at the event, to see it and be moved to increase British anti-slavery efforts. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Zong massacre
[PDF] "Turner's Slave Ship: The Victims of Empire"
John Ruskin on J.M.W. Turner’s The Slave Ship
Khan Academy: Turner, Slave Ship (Video)

French, A. M., Slavery in South Carolina and the ex-slaves; or, The Port Royal Mission. (1862) 

November 2007: J. M. W. Turner, 2009 April: Turner & Italy, 2011 June: J. M. W. Turner - 1, 2014 June: In Which We Find His Theory Of Color Implausible, 2014 September: The EY Exhibition: Late Turner – Painting Set Free, 2015 May: Mr. Turner (2014)

The Politics of Food in Venezuela

Photo credit: "overview of food and nutrition security in Latin America and the Caribbean."
"Few countries and political processes have been subject to such scrutiny, yet so generally misunderstood, as Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution. This is particularly true today, as the international media paints an image of absolute devastation in the country, wrought by failed policies and government mismanagement. At the same time, the three national elections of 2017 demonstrated a strong show of support for the continuation of the revolution under its current leadership. This seeming paradox, we are told, can only be attributed to government tendencies of co-optation and clientelism, along with a closing of democratic space. Such messages are reproduced many times over, both in the media and in certain intellectual circles. ..."
Monthly Review
Reactionary Misinterpretations of the Venezuela Crisis
The Nib: What Happened to Venezuela Isn’t So Simple

In the Footsteps of Marcel Proust

The train station at Illiers-Combray, in north central France, which Marcel Proust immortalized in his novel “In Search of Lost Time.”

"I married Jeanne Moreau in 1977 at a town hall in Paris. Moreau was one of the most revered actresses of her generation, and we were attended by a notable group: Jacques Chirac, the city’s soon-to-be mayor, spoke, and our witnesses were the film director Alain Resnais, who had introduced me to Jeanne, and his wife, Florence Malraux, daughter of the writer André Malraux. After sips of Champagne and a brief ceremony, of which I did not comprehend one word, Jeanne and I took a long walk in the Tuileries Garden accompanied by a cluster of paparazzi. It was my first marriage, her second. I’ve seen pictures of myself on our wedding day and I appear shell-shocked and confused. That first year we spent the summer at her chateau in La Garde-Freinet, a medieval village, on 150 acres of farmland in the hills behind St.-Tropez. ..."

NY Times

The bedroom where the young Proust stayed at his aunt’s house in Illiers.

2008 June: Marcel Proust, 2011 October: How Proust Can Change Your Life, 2012 April: Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu, 2013 February: Marcel Proust and Swann's Way: 100th Anniversary, 2013 May: A Century of Proust, 2013 August: Paintings in Proust - Eric Karpeles, 2013 October: On Reading Proust, 2015 September: "Paintings in Proust" - View of the Piazza del Popolo, Giovanni Battista Piranes, 2015 September: In Search of Lost Time: Swann's Way: A Graphic Novel, 2016 January: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (1919), 2016 February: Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C.K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy and Translator, 2016 May: The Guermantes Way (1920-21), 2016 August: Marcel Proust’s Search for Lost Time — Patrick Alexander, 2016 October: My Strange Friend Marcel Proust, 2017 March: Sodom and Gomorrah (1921-1922), 2017 August: Letters To His Neighbor by Marcel Proust; translated by Lydia Davis, October: Proust's À la recherche – a novel big enough for the world, 2017 October: Proust Fans Eagerly Await Trove of Letters Going Online, 2017 December: The Prisoner / The Fugitive (1923-1925), 2018 May: Time Regained (1927), 2018 September: Céleste Albaret
 

INTL BLK #6: The state of the Afropean union

"We’re back with INTL BLK radio after a few months hiatus. This episode opens with a mix of Afrobeats and Zouk, and then we review some of the musical cross-overs happening across the Black Atlantic. In the 2nd hour we have an interview with Lamin Fofana, electronic music producer and DJ of Sierra Leonean descent based in Berlin. We discuss his latest album Brancusi Sculpting Beyonce, the phenomenon of negrophilia in 1920s European modernist art, and what’s behind the current moment of the popularity of African culture in Europe. Listen below or on iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher."
Africa is a Country (Audio)
Mixcloud (Audio)

An Echo Of Owls: watching repeats of Twin Peaks eleven years later

"A far-off Smalltown. The heavy branches of an ocean of trees, swaying pale green in dim daylight. A lonesome foghorn across the lake. A dead girl, washed up in the morning, wrapped in plastic, lips turned blue. Her Prom-Queen portrait bright in the high school trophy cabinet. A policeman who cries like Stan Laurel. The lights in the morgue sputtering. A tiny scrap of paper beneath her fingernail. Her mother’s screams. Her grieving father, clicking his fingers to Glenn Miller. A sweater girl dancing by herself in a diner. Sultry cartoon jazz. Coffee, hot and black. Cherry pies. Chocolate bunnies. A woman in an eye-patch, obsessed with her curtain rail. A stag’s head on a table. A llama. Cocaine. A fish in the coffee. Wayward teens, barking in jail. A lady with a log. Logging trucks rolling always out of sight. The trees again. A burned out train-wreck, miles from town. A traumatised girl, what’s left of her clothes in grimy tatters, crossing a lonely bridge, dwarfed by the girders. The unconcerned mountains. Torchlight in a forest at midnight. A dwarf in a red suit, dancing in a room of red velvet curtains. A solitary traffic light at night, suspended over a deserted intersection, buffeted by the wind, changing to red against a pitch black sky. ..."
Damien Love

2008 September: Twin Peaks, 2010 March: Twin Peaks: How Laura Palmer's death marked the rebirth of TV drama, 2011 October: Twin Peaks: The Last Days, 2014 October: Welcome to Twin Peaks, 2015 June: David Lynch: ‘I’ve always loved Laura Palmer’, 2015 July: Twin Peaks Maps, 2016 May: Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played..., September: Twin Peaks Tarot Cards For The Magician Who Longs To See Through The Darkness Of Future Past, 2014 September: David Lynch: The Unified Field, 2014 December: David Lynch’s Bad Thoughts - J. Hoberman, 2015 March: Lumière and Company (1995), 2015 April: David Lynch Creates a Very Surreal Plug for Transcendental Meditation, 2015 December: What Is “Lynchian”?, 2017 March: Anatomy of a Fascinating Disaster: Fire Walk With Me, 2017 April: Trading Card Set of the Week – Twin Peaks (Star Pics, 1991), 2017 April: Your Complete Guide to Rewatching "Twin Peaks", 2018 February: Twin Peaks: The Return, or What Isn’t Cinema?, 2018 March: Twin Peaks VR Lets You Live Inside A Dream

In Buenos Aires, a Rivalry Stretches Passions to the Limit

Boca Juniors and River Plate tied in the first leg, 2-2. River Plate hosts the second game on Saturday afternoon. As at the first, visiting fans will be barred.
"BUENOS AIRES — No matter what happens, Leonardo Uranga’s tone will remain soft and steady. He will choose his words carefully. He will enunciate them clearly and slowly. At moments of the highest drama, the most exquisite tension, he will keep his head, even as all around him are losing theirs. As half of Argentina erupts in delight and the other sinks into the deepest despair, Uranga will keep his emotions in check. At the culmination of the biggest game of his long broadcasting career, he will not so much as raise his voice. For much of Saturday evening, then, he may well be unique. When the Buenos Aires archrivals River Plate and Boca Juniors meet in the second leg of the final of the Copa Libertadores — the most important game in South American club soccer — Uranga may well be the only calm person in Argentina. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: For Copa Libertadores at a Crossroads, a Weekend to Forget

River Plate fans clashed with the police on Saturday outside the stadium before the final soccer match of the Copa Libertadores between River Plate and Boca Juniors in Buenos Aires was scheduled to begin.

The Impossibly Cool Album Covers of Blue Note Records: Meet the Creative Team Behind These Iconic Designs

"If you stepped into a record store in the 1950s and 60s, you would likely be drawn almost immediately to a Blue Note release—whether or not you were a fan of jazz or had heard of the artist or even the label. 'If you went to those record stores,' says Estelle Caswell in the Vox Earworm video above, 'it probably wasn’t the sound of Blue Note that immediately caught your attention. It was their album covers.' Now those designs are hallowed jazz iconography, with their 'bold typography, two tone photography, and minimal graphic design.' Of course, it should go without saying that the sound of Blue Note is as distinctive and essential as its look, thanks to its founders’ musical vision, the faultless ear of producer and engineer Rudy Van Gelder, and the roster of unbelievably great musicians the label recruited and recorded. ..."
Open Culture (Video)

1876 Ellen Harding Baker's "Solar System" Quilt

"This 'Solar System' quilt was made by Ellen Harding Baker of Cedar County, Iowa, in 1876. The wool top of this applique quilt is embellished with wool-fabric applique, wool braid, and wool and silk embroidery. Included in the design is the appliqued inscription, 'Solar System,' and the embroidered inscriptions, 'E. H. Baker' and 'A. D. 1876.' The lining is a red cotton-and-wool fabric and the filling is of cotton fiber. The maker, Sarah Ellen Harding, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio,June 8, 1847, and married Marion Baker of Cedar County, Iowa, on October 10, 1867. ... Astronomy was an acceptable interest for women in the nineteenth century and was sometimes even fostered in their education. ..."
SI
W - Ellen Harding Baker
Solar System Quilt

The Mystery Font That Took Over New York

Ichi Sushi at 2040 86th Street in Brooklyn.
"Stand just about anywhere on Broadway, or on Canal Street with its sprightly neon and overstuffed souvenir shops, or the long stretch of restaurants, hardware stores, pharmacies, bars, realtors, barber shops, groceries and auto shops that extends through Fifth Avenue in South Brooklyn, and you’ll find a surplus of vibrant and overstated signage — a cacophony of typography. Steven Heller, a co-chairman at the School of Visual Arts’ M.F.A. program, sees it somewhat differently. 'You say cacophony,’ he said. 'I call it chaos.' But amid all of this chaos there is the occasional beacon. Choc, for instance. It’s a typeface that draws the eye with its inherent contradictions. It seems to have been drawn improvisationally with a brush, and yet it’s so hefty it looks like it could slip off a wall. It’s both delicate and emphatic, a casual paradox, like a Nerf weapon. Choc is far from the most popular typeface on the storefronts of New York, but it can still be found everywhere and in every borough. It’s strewn on fabric awnings and etched in frosted glass. It gleams in bright magenta or platinum lighting. ..."
NY Times

Fukuyama Sushi and Ramen at 622 Metropolitan Avenue in Brooklyn.

Earth & Stone - Kool Roots: The Classic 1977-79

"Albert Bailey and Clifton Howell were an obscure vocal duo who cut several Jamaican hit singles for Channel One producer JoJo Hookim under the name Earth & Stone in the mid-1970s. Kool Roots, which compiles most of the group's Channel One output, was originally released in 1978 as a double album (standard vocal mixes on one LP, dub versions on the other) in a gatefold sleeve -- an almost unheard-of packaging extravagance for a reggae act at the time. Little more is known about the duo, and they dropped from sight after Kool Roots was released. But the haunting single 'In Time to Come' has endured, and this reissue, which combines both LPs on a single CD, shows that Earth & Stone was capable of producing consistently high-quality material. Bailey and Howell's sweet harmonies are the main attraction, but a good portion of the credit for this album's success must also go to the Revolutionaries, Channel One's crack house band. ..."
Holland Tunnel Dive
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: Earth & Stone - Kool Roots - 1978 (Full LP) 1:06:16

Director Bill Morrison

"This mini-documentary focuses on the artistry of director Bill Morrison, who leverages decaying film stock from years past to tell new stories that are relevant to today's audiences. The decaying film lends brilliant visuals which add to Morrison's concept of storytelling. FilmStruck brings you the best indie, foreign, cult, classic, silent and hard-to-find films and is the exclusive streaming home of The Criterion Collection."
YouTube: Director Bill Morrison

2012 June: Bill Morrison, 2015 October: Decasia (2002), 2017 December: The Miners' Hymns (2011), 2018 January: The Dockworker's Dream (2016), 2018 October: Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016)