Best Fania Samples: 20 Latin Grooves That Helped Build Hip-Hop

"From its earliest days in the late 70s, hip-hop has relied on recycling old beats to make fresh sounds. Initially, DJs used two turntables to mix different records together, but in the early 80s, when the first samplers became commercially available, hip-hop artists began to loop short segments taken from vinyl records – a funky drum beat or a horn lick – and use them as foundations for making new music. While many producers plundered James Brown’s back catalogue for samples, the legendary New York Latin label, Fania, also proved a sampling gold mine, and the best Fania samples, from salsa music to boogaloo, are as essential to hip-hop history as any soul and funk records. ..."
udiscover (Video)

2011 November: Charlie Palmieri, 2014 March: Harlem River Drive - Harlem River Drive (1971), 2014 October: Fania at Fifty, 2017 December: Nu Yorica: Culture Clash In New York City - Experiments in Latin Music 1970-77, 2018 December: Latin Underground Revolution: Swinging Boogaloo, Guaguanco, Salsa & Latin Funk from New York City 1967-1978, 2017 June: Eddie Palmieri - Unfinished Masterpiece (1976), 2018 July: The Soul Of Spanish Harlem / El Barrio: Sounds from the Spanish Harlem Streets, 2011 June: Mario Bauzá, 2017 June: Rhythm & Power: Salsa in New York, 2012 February: Rubén Blades, 2017 December: Carlos Vera: Barcelona's Boogaloo: Mixes and Mashups, 2019 April: An NYC Mambo, Boogaloo and Salsa Family Tree

A City Transformed: Photographs of Paris, 1850-1900

Charles Marville, French, 1816–1879,  Place et rue de l’École Polytechnique, from rue Descartes, 1865–69
"Paris transformed into the 'City of Light' through grand-scale architectural renovations, demolitions, and new construction set in motion during the Second Empire (1852–70). With absolute power, Emperor Napoleon III remapped the French capital from the ground up, appointing civil servant Georges-Eugène Haussmann to redesign Paris toward improved safety, public health and sanitation, and traffic circulation. A self-described artiste démolisseur (demolition artist), Haussmann razed densely settled areas of the medieval city center, its labyrinthine streets rapidly giving way to new axes of orderly, wide boulevards anchored by monuments and open spaces for recreation. ..."
The Clark
The Clark: Map of Paris, 1890

Garnier frères, Nouveau Paris monumental. Itinéraire pratique de l'étranger dans Paris (detail), 1890.

Treasures in the Trash: A Secret Museum Inside a New York City Department of Sanitation Garage

"Like many New Yorkers, retired sanitation worker Nelson Molina has a keen interest in his fellow citizens' discards. But whereas others risk bedbugs for the occasional curbside score or dumpster dive as an enviro-political act, Molina’s interest is couched in the curatorial. The bulk of his collection was amassed between 1981 and 2015, while he was on active duty in Carnegie Hill and East Harlem, collecting garbage in an area bordered by 96th Street, Fifth Avenue, 106th Street, and First Avenue. At the end of every shift, he stashed the day’s finds at the garage. ..."
Open Culture (Video)

Fela’s stories: Confusion Break Bone

"Abidjan, 2001: I receive an unlikely offer. I’m invited to stage the play Le Fou du Carrefour ['the crossroads’ madman'] in Lagos, Nigeria, under the title Madness Junction. This urban fable was penned by the great Ivorian playwright Hyacinthe Kakou in 1994, and depicts a frenetic African city invaded by garbage and other toxic waste originating from industrialized countries. The city’s arteries are blocked. Vehicles can no longer move freely, workers can no longer get to their respective occupations… The people grumble. The cops beat them down. The economy is blocked, the country is suffocated. Everyone complains, but no one does anything. One day, one of the inhabitants feels he has had enough and starts cleaning the city. ... With these lyrics in mind, here I am, deep in what Fela called the 'underground spiritual game'. Read: the connection to the world of underground energies… The inalienable spirits who keep on fighting, generation after generation, against the gravediggers of Nigeria and Africa. ..."
Pan African Music (Video)

Lagos

Can the Rebirth of a Negro League Stadium Revive a Distressed City?

Hinchliffe Stadium, vacant since 1997, is one of the few stadiums from the Negro leagues still standing.
"PATERSON, N.J. — There used to be a ballpark here, at the corner of Maple and Liberty. Baseball royalty once rounded the bases, and city residents once packed the stands. Now defaced with graffiti, Hinchliffe Stadium looks like a blighted lot about to be razed. Weeds and trees have uprooted the bleachers, and asphalt and trash cover the infield. ... Hinchliffe, vacant since 1997, is one of the few stadiums from the Negro leagues still standing. An architectural gem and a symbol of perseverance amid racial injustice, it became a casualty of this economically distressed city’s more pressing needs. After multiple failed attempts to fund its revival, a ninth-inning save seemed unlikely. Until now. ... After Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers, and Doby followed three months later with the Cleveland Indians, the doors finally opened for players of color, lessening the necessity of Negro leagues. ..."
NY Times

Construction is expected to begin next year, in time for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Negro leagues.

Beautiful Losers - Leonard Cohen (1966)

"Beautiful Losers is the second and final novel by Canadian writer and musician Leonard Cohen. It was published in 1966, before he began his career as a singer-songwriter. Set in the Canadian province of Quebec, the story of 17th-century Mohawk saint Catherine Tekakwitha is interwoven with a love triangle between an unnamed anglophone Canadian folklorist; his Native wife, Edith, who has committed suicide; and his best friend, the mystical F, a Member of Parliament and a leader in the Quebec separatist movement. The complex novel makes use of a vast range of literary techniques, and a wealth of allusion, imagery, and symbolism. It is filled with the mysticism, radicalism, sexuality, and drug-taking emblematic of the 1960s era, and is noted for its linguistic, technical, and sexual excesses. ..."
Wikipedia
Visiting Hydra: Leonard Cohen’s Bohemian Idyll
Guardian - Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen: the love affair of a lifetime
amazon
YouTube: Leonard Cohen reading an excerpt from Beatiful Losers

Marianne & Leonard

2008 September: Leonard Cohen, 2009 November: Ladies and Gentlemen... Mr. Leonard Cohen, 2011 June: I'm Your Man, 2012 May: Old Ideas, 2013 February: "Dance Me To The End of Love", 2016 November: The Words and Work of Leonard Cohen, 2017 February: Songs of Love and Hate (1971)

The Unstable Artist Who Helped Invent Expressionism

“Life in the Alps,” a triptych made by the artist from 1917-19.
"... But to linger on Kirchner’s lurid biography would be unfair to the mesmerizing technical genius of his style, amply on display in 'Ernst Ludwig Kirchner,' the Neue Galerie’s generous and essential overview of a peripatetic and unconventional career. Surrounding more or less sober portrait subjects with backgrounds of flat but brilliant color, as Kirchner did, wasn’t just a youthful revolt against the staid academic painting of the late 19th century, or a bid to put German visual culture on the map. (Of course, it did those, too.) It was also an ingenious way to articulate subjective experience in an increasingly materialist modern world. ..."
NY Times
Neue Galerie
MoMA: German Expressionist

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, “Girl in White Chemise,” 1914.

Tyrone Evans - How Sweet It Is (1980)

"b. Garth Evans, c.1944, Jamaica, West Indies, d. 19 October 2000, New York, USA. While vocalist Evans was enjoying success with the Paragons he also recorded the little known solo side ‘I Don’t Care’, at Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One alongside his early collaborator Bob Andy. ... He embarked on a solo career recording sporadic hits, notably with Lloyd Barnes, although by the late 70s Evans was back at Studio One. Dodd released the sublime, ‘How Sweet It Is’, that revitalised the singer’s career. The song proved a false start following the success of Blondie’s cover version of the Paragons’ ‘The Tide Is High’ that resulted in the re-formation of the group for the release of Sly & Robbie Meet The Paragons and Now. ..."
allmusic
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: How Sweet It Is

Should the House Just Start Jailing Trump Officials?

"What just happened: The White House declared war on the House impeachment inquiry on Tuesday in an eight-page letter to Democratic leaders that condemned the investigation as 'illegitimate' and 'a naked political strategy' to undo the 2016 election, portending a legal standoff with Congress that could result in a constitutional crisis. The letter (which led the prominent libertarian legal scholar Ilya Somin to wonder on Facebook whether 'the White House counsel was sick the day they taught law at law school') came shortly after the administration blocked Gordon D. Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union, from testifying before Congress about President Trump’s efforts to pressure the president of Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden. ... The debate: How should the House respond? ..."
NY Times

Éthiopiques 30: Mistakes on Purpose - Girma Bèyènè & Akalé Wubé

"The two-decade-strong Éthiopiques series on the French label Buda Musique has shone a light on the fruitful output of Ethiopia in the ‘60s and ‘70s, with strikingly fresh amalgams of traditional flavors infused in Western-world genres including jazz (such as Mulatu Astatke’s “Ethio-jazz”), funk and soul. Éthiopiques Volume 30, entitled Mistakes on Purpose, pairs pianist Girma Bèyènè—who can be heard on the very first Éthiopiques collection—with the Paris-based Ethio-revivalists Akalé Wubé. This isn’t the first time contemporary material has been released under the Éthiopiques banner—for example, there have been new collaborations between Ethiopian legends and the Boston jazz group Either/Orchestra—and it’s all in line with the series’ classic 'Golden Years' aesthetic. ..."
The Pulse
bandcamp (Audio)
Discogs (Video)
amazon
YouTube: Mèlèwètesh Menèw, Ené Nègn Bay Manèsh, For Amha, Enkèn Yèlélébesh

Your Guide to Jamaica: Queens’ First, Bustling Downtown

"Since its urbanization in the early twentieth century, Jamaica has been a mix of hundreds of ethnicities, religions, and styles. Considered Queens’ 'downtown' well before the build-up of Long Island City and Flushing, Jamaica became a popular destination in the 1940s for black families fleeing a crowded Harlem, who found they were able to rent apartments and buy homes after whites moved on to then-segregated communities like nearby St. Albans (now also a predominantly black and immigrant neighborhood). ..."
Voice

Jamaica Avenue reggae shrine VP Records.

2012 August: Springfield Gardens, Queens, 2017 May: The Queens landscape by Frank Gohlke and Joel Sternfeld, 2017 June: Saving Queens’ Secret Wetlands, 2018 April: Corona Is Queens’ Cultural Smorgasbord, 2018 April: The Many Languages (and Foods) of Jackson Heights

Lost Blue Note Albums: 12 Buried Treasures You Need To Discover

"Numbering around 1,000 albums, the Blue Note discography is one of the most revered in the history of jazz. Ranging from bebop and hard bop to soul jazz, post-bop and even avant-garde music, Blue Note’s most essential albums should be in every jazz fan’s collection. But not everything this iconic label recorded during its most prolific years in the 50s and 60s was released, as Grammy-winning producer and Mosaic Records co-founder, Michael Cuscuna, discovered in 1975 when he was given permission to go through the then dormant company’s archives. He found over 100 albums’ worth of sessions that had never been heard before and, understandably, wanted to share them with the world. The results were an extensive archival release programme of lost Blue Note albums that could finally receive their due. ..."
udiscover (Video)

Forget What You Know About the Black Sox Scandal - John Thorn

The 1919 White Sox, before the Black Sox scandal came to light.
"A century ago this week, eight players from the Chicago White Sox conspired with professional gamblers to rig the outcome of the World Series, enabling the underdog Cincinnati Reds — and bettors in the know — to win. The scandal, which was uncovered almost a year later, has come to be seen as baseball’s 'loss of innocence,' the cause of fans’ diminished feelings for the game they once adored and a mortal blow to the nation’s confidence as it entered the 1920s, a decade of disrespect for elders, contempt for institutions and worship of the fast life and the fast buck. After a puzzlingly inept performance by his White Sox in Game 1, the club’s founder and owner, Charles Comiskey, heard rumors that the 'sporting set' had been looking for a big score and that maybe some of his players had agreed to throw the series. ..."
NY Times
W - Black Sox Scandal

Buck Weaver, left, and Swede Risberg, who were indicted in the Black Sox scandal.

In Praise of Graffiti: The Fire Down Below - Richard Goldstein (December 1980)

"John Lindsay hated graffiti. He vowed to wipe it off the face of the IRT, and allocated $10 million to its obliteration. But the application of vast resources is no match for disciplined determination, as we should have learned in Vietnam. Graf­fiti survived Lindsay’s defoliation plan, and it has thrived on every subsequent attempt to curb its spread. In 1973, there may have been a few hundred ghetto kids writing in a few definable styles. Now thousands call themselves 'writers.' They come from ev­ery social stratum and range in age from nine to 25. Their signatures — called 'tags' — have transformed the subway into what the Times calls 'some godawful forest.' And now that the perpetrators have moved above ground, trucks and elevators, monuments and vacant walls look as if they have suddenly sprouted vines. It is, says Claes Oldenburg, 'a big bouquet from Latin America.' It is, says Rich­ard Ravitch of the MTA, 'a symbol that we have lost control.' ..."
Voice

Janie Cohen: Rogue Cloth Work

"I carried a security blanket as a little kid. It was a pale, bluish-green with a satiny binding across the top, which I sucked on. I realized years later why the smell of mildew was comforting to me. When I was 4, my family moved to Palo Alto for my father’s sabbatical year. My mom worried that if I lost my blanket it would scar me for life. So, with my permission, she cut it into 8 pieces and meted them out to me during the course of the year. I think I consumed the whole blanket. Cloth carries associations of comfort, security, warmth, not just for me, but historically. For centuries, cloth was central in the lives of women: spinning, weaving, sewing, darning, mending, quilting, swaddling, shrouding. I am drawn to its histories and humanity, its evocative traces of age and use. ..."
Rogue Cloth Work: About
Rogue Cloth Work
‘Rogue Cloth Work’: Janie Cohen at the Supreme Court

'Transcription of handwritten note: Testmony (Detail) by Janie Cohen

Giovanni Boccaccio’s One and Only Good Book

Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron
"Decameron—that’s a long book. I powered through it this past summer. I was like a self-propelled lawn mower, had to be. I had a lot of big books on my to-do list. Each one of ’em was allotted two weeks and no more. I 'had a good experience' with Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, though I did not love it. I only liked the stuff where Boccaccio speaks in his own voice. That is, I liked the frame narrative and the interruptions. He does that thing medieval writers do: he plays dumb. And I love it when authors play dumb. But 95 percent of the book is devoted to ten young people telling their stories—you know the deal—and those I did not care for. ..."
The Paris Review
New Yorker: Renaissance Man
W - Giovanni Boccaccio
U. Chicago: Boccaccio - A Critical Guide to the Complete Works

Circes: illustration of one of the women featured the 1374 biographies of 106 famous women, De Claris Mulieribus, by Boccaccio – from a German translation of 1541

Before & After ‘The B-52’s’

"The B-52’s were ’70s punks molded not from the syringes and leather of New York City, but from the campy detritus you might have found in the thrift stores and garage sales of their home of Athens, Ga.: bright clothes, toy pianos, old issues of Vogue, tall wigs and discarded vinyl. They channeled spy soundtracks, exotica, surf music, long-abandoned dance crazes and garage rock — music that was gathering dust by their 1979 self-titled debut LP. Much of it (alongside their obsessions with Yoko Ono and the Velvet Underground) would reveal itself as bedrock of alternative culture years later. The B-52’s were a sui generis clash of sounds that help bring punk to the suburban kids more likely to watch 'Saturday Night Live' than visit CBGB: Fred Schneider’s sing-shout poetry, Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson’s alien girl-group harmonies, Ricky Wilson’s tricky guitar riffs and Keith Strickland’s art-funky drums. ..."
NY Times (Audio)

2008 October: The B-52's, 2012 October: The B-52's -1, 2013 May: "Private Idaho", "Give Me Back My Man", 2014 August: "Rock Lobster", 2016 January: Invisible Hits: The Miracle of The B52's, Live in the Early Days

Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection

"The first-ever artist-curated exhibition mounted at the Guggenheim celebrates the museum’s extensive collection of modern and contemporary art. Curated by Cai Guo-Qiang, Paul Chan, Jenny Holzer, Julie Mehretu, Richard Prince, and Carrie Mae Weems— artists who each have had influential solo shows at the museum—Artistic License brings together both well-known and rarely seen works from the turn of the century to 1980. Each artist was invited to make selections to shape a discrete presentation, one on each of the six levels of the rotunda. With the museum’s curators and conservators, they searched through the collection in storage, encountering renowned masterpieces while also finding singular contributions by less-prominent figures. ..."
Guggenheim (Video)
NY Times: The Guggenheim’s Collection, as Seen by Six Art Stars
WSJ - ‘Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection’ Review: An Artist-Led Sampler

The Secret to Shopping in Used Bookstores

"Summer is a good season for bookstores. As the weather warms, more foot traffic passes by on the street. Front doors can be left open to entice wander-ins. The relaxed flow of summer reading lends itself to spontaneous finds plucked from the shelf instead of purposeful winter tomes. And visitors tend to linger as the daylight hours lengthen. At least some do. There’s another type of customer encounter that happens at least once a shift at the used bookstore where I work, sometimes a dozen times. A customer walks in, beelines to where I’m helming the front desk, and asks a variation of the same question: 'Do you have this specific book?' I’ve worked at the register for two used bookstores—the nonprofit Housing Works Bookstore in New York City’s Soho and the cooperatively run Adobe Bookstore in San Francisco’s Mission District—so I’ve fielded this question hundreds of times. It’s usually easy to answer. ..."
LitHub
W - Used bookstore

The melancholy feel of Central Park in autumn

"At the turn of the 20th century, social realism was all the rage among New York’s painters, who created masterpieces inspired by the city’s tenements, saloons, and gritty waterfront. Impressionist artist Paul Cornoyer was different. Cornoyer painted New York’s blurred edges, bathing buildings and trees and people and puddles of water in somber tones or reflective streaks of rain or snow. At first glance 'Central Park Autumn,' from 1910, seems placid and benign; we’re at the boat pond close to East 73rd Street, a favorite of parkgoers then and now. But the autumn leaves and subdued bench sitters create a sense of melancholy stillness. Cornoyer 'has painted for us the New York that he felt,' one critic wrote in 1909, a year before this painting was completed."
Ephemeral New York

2019 January: A Gilded Age painter’s rainy, wintry New York

XLR8R Influences Podcast 16: Kevin Saunderson

"Born in New York but raised in Detroit, USA, Kevin Saunderson joined Belleville High School where he befriended two like-minded students: Derrick May and Juan Atkins. As teens, they bonded over music, citing the pop, disco, and funk records spun by DJ Charles 'The Electrifying Mojo' Johnson as a profound influence—and they went on to create the Detroit techno sound, shifting the global music landscape in an unprecedented way. Starting off as a DJ and under the technically-focused guidance of Atkins, Saunderson began producing, and he put his early work on the Atkins’ legendary Metroplex. Following this period of discovery, Inner City, arguably Saunderson’s greatest achievement, came to be. The result of an accidental pairing with Paris Grey, Inner City established itself as one of the world’s most influential dance acts. ..."
XLR8R (Audio)
MixCloud (Audio)

The Hugo Boss Prize 2018: Simone Leigh, Loophole of Retreat

"Over the course of her career, Simone Leigh (b. 1967, Chicago) has continuously and insistently centered the black female experience. In Loophole of Retreat, an exhibition presented on the occasion of Leigh winning the 2018 Hugo Boss Prize, she layers form, sound, and text to fashion narratives of resilience and resistance. The project’s title is drawn from the writings of Harriet Jacobs, a formerly enslaved abolitionist who in 1861 published an account of her struggle to achieve freedom, including the seven years she spent hiding from her master in a tiny crawl space beneath the rafters of her grandmother’s home. This act of defiant fortitude, which forged a 'loophole of retreat' from an unjust reality, serves as a touchstone for Leigh’s long-standing commitment to honoring the agency of black women and their power to inhabit worlds of their own creation. ..."
Guggenheim (Video)
Brooklyn Rail
W - Simone Leigh

The Life and Times of Alvin Baltrop

“Pier 52 (Gordon Matta-Clark’s “Day’s End”),” n.d. (1975–1986)
"A quiet man who supported himself doing odd jobs such as street vendor, jewelry designer, photography printer, and cab driver, Bronx native Alvin Baltrop left an important body of work after his untimely death in 2004 that only now is garnering the serious attention it deserves. Like the startling images of Peter Moore, Robert Mapplethorpe, Peter Hujar, and Gordon Matta-Clark, the photographs of Alvin Baltrop memorialize New York City at a breaking-point moment amid ruin and chaos. As such, they constitute an important document, remarkable both for its social import as well as for its groundbreaking visual dare. Rarely shown during his lifetime, Baltrop’s images return us to that conflicted era when the city was on the brink of a financial crisis; they convey the raw energy that characterized some of the city’s most impassioned grassroots campaigns for survival. ..."
Bronx Museum
Interview: How Alvin Baltrop Captured the Intimate Queer History of Manhattan’s West Side Piers
W - Alvin Baltrop
amazon

Yabby You - Jesus Dread (1972-1977)

"The 1970s were a time of social consciousness in Jamaica. Reggae music played a significant role in this awareness largely through Bob Marley, but artistes like Yabby You kept the fire burning at the grass roots. Yabby You produced some of the decade's most inspirational reggae and along with Augustus Pablo, is rated among the music's visionaries. His King Tubby's Prophesy of Dub and Blazing Horns featuring saxophonist Tommy McCook and trumpeter Bobby Ellis, are considered Yabby You's best work. British reggae historian Steve Barrow has described his 1975 debut album, Conquering Lion, as a 'true cornerstone of Jamaican roots music'. Yabby You (real name Vivian Jackson) crafted a remarkable catalogue despite severe physical challenges. In his youth, he suffered from malnutrition and battled arthritis which caused him to use crutches for most of his life. ..."
Holland Tunnel Dive
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Jesus Dread (1972-1977) 1:52:19

A Quest to Protect the World's Last Silent Places

"In 2005, Gordon Hempton placed a small stone on a log in the Hoh Rainforest of Washington’s Olympic National Park, one of the quietest places in the world. He dubbed his miniature cairn One Square Inch of Silence. If he could keep the rock free of human noise pollution, Hempton reasoned, many surrounding square miles would be free of it, too. Hempton, now 66, lives in the small town of Joyce, less than 15 miles from the park. He’s been recording endangered natural soundscapes around the world for more than 37 years. A documentary he made about his work, Vanishing Dawn Chorus, won an Emmy Award in 1992. 'The earth is a solar-powered jukebox,' he likes to say. For years, One Square Inch of Silence worked: Hempton monitored the spot and alerted noisemakers—mainly commercial airlines—of their trespasses via recordings and letters. ..."
Outside
Bird Note: Sound Escapes (Audio)
YouTube: Vanishing Dawn Chorus 49:57

2008 September: Birds, 2008 June: Bird Songs, 2017 April: Of a Feather, 2017 June: Bird Sounds, 2017 July: Beautifully Designed Tiny Houses... For Birds, 2019 September: The Crisis for Birds Is a Crisis for Us All, 2019 March: She Invented a Board Game With Scientific Integrity. It’s Taking Off., 2019 June: Where Birds Meet Art . . . After Dark, 2019 September: The Crisis for Birds Is a Crisis for Us All

The New MoMA Is Here. Get Ready for Change.

Before moving into its expanded building, curators at the Museum of Modern Art used foam-core models and miniature artworks to prepare more than 60 collection galleries. Here, Amy Sillman’s installation, “The Shape of Shape.”
"Picasso and Braque were looking a little forlorn: unsure of their new home, unsure of their new acquaintances. It was early September, six anxious weeks from the reopening of the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. After three years of piecemeal renovations, the museum had shut its doors for the summer, preparing for a top-to-bottom rehang of the world’s finest collection of modern and contemporary art, with about 47,000 additional square feet to play with. Two senior curators were still installing the cardinal gallery, the one with 'Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,' Pablo Picasso’s grand, violent painting of five contorted Catalan prostitutes. ..."
NY Times

Henri Matisse’s “The Red Studio” (1911) and Henri Rousseau’s “The Dream” (1910) await new homes.

Ursula K. Le Guin’s Revolutions

"In the second book of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea cycle, the wizard Ged tells the priestess Arha that she has a choice. Stay and serve the nameless grim gods of the tomb, as she has done the last ten years of her life, or walk away from them into the light. Arha knows nothing but the dark, not even her original name. Before a religious order named her Arha, the Eaten One, she was Tenar; she had a family, an identity, choices. She can be Tenar again, but only if she can admit that she’s wasted her entire life on false gods, and only if she follows Ged out of the tombs and into a world she has never really known. The Earthsea books are set in a world where dragons are real and so is magic. As Arha’s choice so poignantly demonstrates, Le Guin explored these fantastical worlds out of an interest in the liberatory possibilities of the human imagination. ..."
Dissent

Ursula K Le Guin - T-Shirt

2015 October: Ursula Le Guin, 2018 January: Ursula K. Le Guin, Acclaimed for Her Fantasy Fiction, Is Dead at 88

Treasure Hunting in the Hall of the Deep-Sky King

The pentagonal figure of Cepheus, the King, stands above Polaris at nightfall in October.
"When my kids were younger they loved to listen to the iconic In the Hall of the Mountain King from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt. The music so perfectly captures Peer's desperate attempt to escape the mountain trolls and the troll king. But just when all seems hopeless, he's saved by the rays of the rising Sun and the sound of distant church bells, two things the beasts cannot bear. At nightfall in October, Cepheus, King of the Sky, looks down upon the chilling earth and tempts skywatchers with similar riches. None of us need fear his wrath — these treasures are free for the taking. I'm always amazed how much Cepheus has to offer, so much that I'm only going to describe a few of my favorites. ..."
Sky & Telescope

The Iris Nebula, named for the flower, is 1,300 light-years away and 6 light-years across. The massive, young star at center, HD 200775, illuminates a region of space rich in dust grains. Light reflected from the grains gives the nebula its blue color.