Grant. Three-Night Miniseries Event

"At the time of his death, Ulysses S. Grant was the most famous man in the world and stood alongside men like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in the pantheon of American heroes. However, today Ulysses S. Grant is largely forgotten, his rightful legacy tarnished by a fog of myth, rumor and falsehood. Grant tells the remarkable and quintessentially American story of a humble man who overcomes incredible obstacles, rises to the highest ranks of power and saves the nation not once, but twice. With a seamless blend of dramatic scenes, expert commentary and beautifully enhanced archival imagery, this three-part miniseries uncovers the true legacy of the unlikely hero who led the nation during its greatest tests: the Civil War and Reconstruction. ..."
HISTORY (Video)
W - Ulysses S. Grant
YouTube: Grant: Official Trailer | 3-Night Miniseries Event Premieres

Atget's Paris, 100 Years Later

Quai des Grands Augustins.
"PARIS — For much of the last two months, Paris has been empty — its shops and cafes shuttered, its streets deserted, its millions of tourists suddenly evaporated. Freed of people, the urban landscape has evoked an older Paris. In particular, it has called up the singular Paris of Eugène Atget, an early 20th-century father of modern photography in his unsentimental focus on detail. In thousands of pictures, Atget shot an empty city, getting up early each morning and lugging his primitive equipment throughout the streets. His images reduced Paris to its architectural essence. ..."
NY Times

2008 January: Eugene Atget, 1857-1927, 2008 January: Paris Changing

The 21 Best Films Set in New York City

Grace Kelly and James Stewart in 'Rear Window'
"Probably beginning with Herald Square (1896), thousands of movies have been set in New York City. These 21 New York film locations can justifiably be called the best. ... 8. Rear Window (1954) A celebrated Alfred Hitchcock thriller, Rear Window stars James Stewart as L.B. 'Jeff' Jefferies, a voyeuristic wheelchair-bound photographer who realizes that one of his neighbors (Raymond Burr) has murdered his wife. Grace Kelly co-stars as Jeffries’ beautiful socialite girlfriend whose fussing around him intensifies his sense of impotence. The Greenwich Village apartment building Jeffries gazes on at '125 West Ninth Street' was modeled on the one at 125 Christopher Street, which still exists. ..."
culturetrip (Video)

Your Maps of Life Under Lockdown

“I find myself with nowhere to go” - — Alex Chung, New York, New York
"CityLab recently invited readers to draw maps of their worlds in the time of coronavirus. Nearly 400 of you have responded to our call with an incredible range of interpretative maps, submitted from all over the world. You charted how your homes, neighborhoods, cities and countries have transformed under social distancing and stay-at-home orders around the planet, from daily work routines and the routes of your 'sanity walks,' to the people you miss and the places you fled. While most used markers, pens, and computer-based drawing tools to sketch maps by hand, some used watercolors, clay, and photography. Some were humorous, others heart-wrenching — between them all, a full spectrum of quarantine-era emotion emerged. ..."
CityLab

“I constantly found myself scrolling on TikTok or Instagram” — Clare Halvorsen, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Charles Ives

"Charles Edward Ives (/aɪvz/; October 20, 1874 – May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. His music was largely ignored during his early life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Later in life, the quality of his music was publicly recognized, and he came to be regarded as an 'American original.' He was also among the first composers to engage in a systematic program of experimental music, with musical techniques including polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatory elements, and quarter tones. His experimentation foreshadowed many musical innovations that were later more widely adopted during the 20th century. Hence, he is often regarded as the leading American composer of art music of the 20th century. Sources of Ives' tonal imagery included hymn tunes and traditional songs; he also incorporated melodies of the town band at holiday parade, the fiddlers at Saturday night dances, patriotic songs, sentimental parlor ballads, and the melodies of Stephen Foster. ..."
Wikipedia, W - Charles Ives House
***NY Times: At 150, Charles Ives Still Reflects the Darkness and Hope of America (Audio)
The Charles Ives Society
A Charles Ives Website: Works
A Charles Ives Website
Pandemonium: Charles Ives by Alex Ross, The New Yorker, June 7, 2004
The Atlantic: The Many Faces of Ives
NPR: An American Maverick Turns The Symphony On Its Head
How Ives Composed: The Geiringer Lecture By Kyle Gann (Audio)
Discogs (Video)

Charles Ives, Intercollegiate March, 1892. Performed at William McKinley's Inauguration, March 4, 1897
YouTube: The Best of Charles Ives (Video)
0:00 The Unanswered Question 6:07 Violin Sonata No. 1. II: Largo cantabile 12:03 Violin Sonata No. 3. I. Adagio - Andante - Allegretto - Adagio 24:24 Three Places in New England: Putnam's Camp II 29:46 Three Places in New England: The Housatonic at Stockbridge III 33:54 Symphony No. 2. I: Andante moderato 40:10 Symphony No. 2. V: Allegro molto vivace 50:27 Symphony No. 4. III: Fugue: Andante moderato con moto 57:04 Central Park in the Dark 1:04:21 The Things Our Fathers Loved 1:06:08 Memories 1:08:38 The Circus Band 1:11:40 They are There! 1:14:32 Tom Sails Away 1:17:21 Tone Roads No. 1 1:20:42 Psalm 100 1:22:17 Hallowe'en (from "Three Outdoor Scenes") 1:24:18 Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord, Mass, 1840–60 IV: "Thoreau" (after Henry David Thoreau)

W - A Symphony: New England Holidays
The Holidays Symphony
Keeping Score (Audio/Video)
Decoration Day According to Charles Ives
YouTube: Keeping Score | Charles Ives: Holidays Symphony (FULL DOCUMENTARY AND CONCERT) 1:48:58
 W - Symphony No. 2
Symphony No. 2
YouTube: Charles Ives - Symphony No. 2 (Leonard Bernstein) 1/3, 2/3, 3/3

W - Central Park in the Dark
Transcendentalism in Charles Ives' Central Park in the Dark
Central Park in the Dark
YouTube: Central Park in the Dark (1906) Symphony Orchestra of Bartók Conservatory Budapest
 W - Three Places in New England
Three Places in New England
Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library: Three Places in New England: II. Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut
YouTube: Three Places in New England - Ensemble intercontemporain (Live)

amazon: Ives Plays Ives The Complete Recordings of Charles Ives
NY Times: That Grumpy Old Pianist Is Ives By Kyle Gann (Feb. 20, 2000)
allmusic (Audio)
W - Piano Sonata No. 2
Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord, Mass., 1840-60
YouTube: Piano Sonata No.2, "Concord, Mass., 1840-1860" 48:11 Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory

W - Universe Symphony
Universe Symphony
Brooklyn Rail: Charles Ives’s Universe Symphony, Finally
W - The Unanswered Question (lecture series)
YouTube: Leonard Bernstein - The Unanswered Question 1973 1 1:45:37, 2 1:36:32, 3 2:23:06, 4 2:23:24, 5 2:13:57, 6 2:52:17
YouTube: Universe Symphony 1:04:31

Spiritmuse Records presents 179: The Interplanetary Travels of Sun Ra

"We’re celebrating the 106th Interplanetary arrival of Sun Ra on Planet Earth, with our quintessential selection of our favourite tracks from the Afrofuturist pioneer’s extraordinary volume of work. Considered by many ‘The Greatest of All Time’, he’s been an immense personal influence and mainstay of our shows, as is to many other jazz lovers and beyond. For 2hrs, we Travel the Spaceways – this is our tribute of love to this unique experimental musician, composer, bandleader, piano and synth player, theatrical performer, poet and cosmic philosopher."
MadonJazz (Audio)

Debatable: Could this be the next Great Depression?

"An additional 2.4 million U.S. workers filed for unemployment last week, the government reported Thursday, bringing the total to 38.6 million in nine weeks and providing more evidence — in case there was any doubt — that the economy is plunging ever deeper into crisis. Of the path to recovery, Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford University, told The Times, 'I think we’re in for a very long haul.' But not everyone is despairing of the country’s economic future. Last week, my colleague Paul Krugman, a Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist, expressed some guarded optimism in his newsletter. ..."
NY Times

Requiem for the American Dream - Noam Chomsky (2017)

"REQUIEM FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM is the definitive discourse with Noam Chomsky, widely regarded as the most important intellectual alive, on the defining characteristic of our time - the deliberate concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a select few. Through interviews filmed over four years, Chomsky unpacks the principles that have brought us to the crossroads of historically unprecedented inequality - tracing a half-century of policies designed to favor the most wealthy at the expense of the majority - while also looking back on his own life of activism and political participation. Profoundly personal and thought provoking, Chomsky provides penetrating insight into what may well be the lasting legacy of our time - the death of the middle class and swan song of functioning democracy. A potent reminder that power ultimately rests in the hands of the governed, REQUIEM is required viewing for all who maintain hope in a shared stake in the future."
YouTube: Requiem for the American Dream 1:12:49

2011 January: Peak Oil and a Changing Climate, 2015 May: The Limits of Discourse As Demonstrated by Sam Harris and Noam Chomsky, 2015 October: Electing the President of an Empire, 2015 December: Noam Chomsky on Paris attacks, 2016 December: Chomsky: Humanity Faces Real and Imminent Threats to Our Survival, 2017 April: Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power (2016), 2017 July: Noam Chomsky: Neoliberalism Is Destroying Our Democracy

Spike Lee and the Battlefield of American History

>
Lee pausing during a bike ride on the Upper East Side.
"It’s a funny thing, Zooming with Spike Lee. ... Think of his most famous characters — Mars Blackmon, from his 1986 feature 'She’s Gotta Have It,' and a series of Nike commercials with Michael Jordan; or Mookie from 'Do the Right Thing' — and they’re confronting you head-on. This is Lee’s preferred stance: undaunted, in your face, eye-to-eye. And it works. Even on a stuttering videoconference, the man is unmistakable. ... Now, in the middle of a global calamity, and with a new film, 'Da 5 Bloods,' that revisits the Vietnam War, he is its witness once again — older, more contemplative and as insatiable as ever, despite a legacy as solid as exists in American cinema. ..."
NY Times (Video)

2009 January: Spike Lee, 2014 June: Do the Right Thing (1989), 2016 June: Clockers (1995), 2018 December: BlacKkKlansman (2018)

‘Historic Evening (Soir Historique)’

The Musical Contest c.1754, by Jean-Honoré Fragonard
"'What I like about music', said John Ashbery (1927–2017), 'is its ability to … carry an argument through successfully to the finish, though the terms of the argument remain unknown quantities … I would like to do this in poetry.' This affinity for musical rather than rational structures (he once said he wanted to produce a poem 'that the critic cannot even talk about”) is one of the qualities that made Ashbery well suited to translate the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891), especially the prose poems of Illuminations which, in a TLS review of Ashbery’s versions published in 2011, Edmund White compared to 'a musical score meant only to be read'. In what he called Rimbaud’s 'disordered collection of magic lantern slides', Ashbery discovered the prototype of 'absolute modernity', that is, 'the simultaneity of all of life, the condition that nourishes poetry at every second'. ..."
TLS

2008 May: Arthur Rimbaud, 2010 November: Arthur Rimbaud - 1, 2012 October: Patti Smith: Poem about Arthur Rimbaud (Subtitulado), 2012 December: Writers’ Houses Gives You a Virtual Tour of Famous Authors’ Homes, 2013 August: Arthur Rimbaud Documentary, 2013 November: julian peters comics - The Drunken Boat by Arthur Rimbaud, 2014 June: In Which We Begin To Roar With Laughter At Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, 2015 May: Illuminations - Arthur Rimbaud (John Ashbery - 1875), 2016 March: Rimbaud in New York, 2016 December: The Photography of Poet Arthur Rimbaud (1883), A Season in Hell - Arthur Rimbaud (Robert Wyatt, Carl Prekopp, Elizabeth Purnell, 2009), 2019 September: A Rebel French Poet Draws New Followers to the Hometown, 2019 December: 127 years after his death, letters of love and angst still come to Rimbaud’s grave.

See Spring's Finest Spiral Galaxies

The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) in Canes Venatici ...
"Ever since I was a young amateur I've wanted to see spiral arms. In the telescopes of my youth galactic structure was hard to come by. While I could often distinguish a galaxy's bright core from its faint disk, arms held out on me until I could afford a larger instrument. On Earth we find spirals in sunflowers and snails, but to see it expressed in something as enormous as a galaxy transforms this familiar pattern into something truly grand. That's what I feel when I point my scope at the Whirlpool Galaxy and see its billions of suns arranged in the whorls of a spiral. Grandeur. Not to mention the joy of knowing that a shape imprinted in my very DNA resonates across the universe. ..."
Sky and Telescope
Astronomy: Meet the stars next door

The nearest stars. Two-thirds of our stellar neighbors are cool M-class dwarf stars. ...

My Lighthouses

C Levå, Marinmotiv
"Certain landlocked cities have lighthouses. On such rivers as the Rhine, the Seine, and the Saint Lawrence, lighthouses gave warning of dangerous areas. In London, the Trinity Buoy Wharf light is still in existence. This hexagonal, pale-brown brick structure is located in an area known as Container City. I remember my father telling me about these buildings when I was a child. To my ears, accustomed to the Spanish language, the word container, which I never completely understood, sounded warlike; I imagined gigantic metal constructions, improbably conical or spherical in shape. It never occurred to me that they would be like shoeboxes. ..."
The Paris Review
amazon

“Prince and the Revolution: Live,” the Historic 1985 Concert Is Streaming Online

"A quick heads up. The Prince Estate has released Prince and the Revolution: Live, a historic concert captured at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, NY on March 30, 1985. Streaming to support the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for the World Health Organization, the video revisits the Purple Rain tour, when Prince was at the height of his powers. You can find the 20-song setlist right below. Enjoy the free fundraising stream while it lasts. ..."
Open Culture (Video) 1:52:34

FM3: Buddha Machine Variations

Buddha Machine Variations No. 21 (Dark Pixels)
"... In 2005, FM3 began work on a small musical loop player that the group called the Buddha Machine. The Buddha Machine fulfills certain criteria of a generative music device, while the idea of layering loops of ambient sound is credited to Brian Eno, who worked similarly using tape machines for installations. Eno was himself an early supporter of the Buddha Machine. Roughly the size of a pack of cigarettes, the device features a single toggle switch to cycle through samples, a combined power and volume dial, and an integrated speaker. The device contains a chip holding nine digitally encoded drones, ranging in length from 1.5 to 40 seconds. The name and idea is derived from a popular Chinese device that intones repeating loops of Buddhist chanting. ..."
Wikipedia
disquiet: No. 27 (Fracture Delay), disquiet: No. 29 (Prescient Delay)
YouTube: Buddha Machine Variations 35 videos

Buddha Machine Variations No. 27 (Fracture Delay)

Take a Virtual Walk in Brooklyn, Before It Was a Global Brand

"Officially incorporated in 1834, Brooklyn was already the third largest city in America by the Civil War. Just over a century later it was in shambles, hemorrhaging jobs. Now it’s a global brand, a glorious, complex megalopolis of thriving streets, gentrification and poverty, its booming neighborhoods illuminated by a million twee Edison bulbs, its enduring emblems a parachute jump and an old, beloved roller coaster. ... Historian-in-residence for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, a fourth-generation Brooklynite, he is the author of 'Brooklyn: The Once and Future City.' This is the latest in a series of (edited, condensed) virtual walks with architects and others. ... He proposed a stroll from Brooklyn Heights to the gates of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The walk meandered through Cadman Plaza Park and Vinegar Hill — a couple of miles, more or less, covering a few hundred years. ..."
NY Times
NY Times - Brooklyn Bridge, Star of the City: Here’s a Tour
NY Times - The East River Waterfront Dazzles. Take a Virtual Tour.

Vinegar Hill was a neighborhood of three-story houses with ground floor shops.

Birdfoot violet

"... Bird-foot violet is a low, clumped perennial, 4-10 in. high, with large, almost pansy-sized flowers. The leaves, almost round in outline, are 3/4-2 inches long, deeply cut into 3-5 segments, and these again narrowly lobed. The leaf stem is 4-6 inches long. Flowers are pale to dark purple, broad, flat, 1-1 1/2 inches across. They have 5 petals, the 2 upper ones smaller than the lower 3 and deep violet. The lowest petal has the dark streakings which are common to most violets. There are 5 stamens with brilliant orange anthers. A most beautiful Violet of dry, upland sites. Its showy, light violet-blue flowers, distinctive birds-foot-shaped leaves make it easy to identify. It is pollinated by bees and butterflies. The bicolored form of this species, with its 2 upper petals a deep violet and the lower 3 a lilac shade, has been considered the most beautiful Violet in the world. This violet does not reproduce vegetatively like most other violets. Reproduction is by seed only. ..."
Wildflower: Plant Database
W - Viola pedata

Jodie Foster Breaks Down Her Career, from “Silence of the Lambs” to “Hotel Artemis”

"Jodie Foster is looking old in new movie Hotel Artemis. Playing a 70-year-old nurse who hasn’t been outside for 20 years, she looks pale and grey. It turns out to be makeup (she’s only 55 in real life) but you wonder if this is how Foster feels on the inside, given her long, strange career. Foster was always old beyond her years. At about the same age Emma Watson was enrolling at Hogwarts, Foster was playing a child prostitute in Taxi Driver. By that stage, she had made more movies than Martin Scorsese. Even in Bugsy Malone, her Tallulah seemed like an adult among kids. In Freaky Friday, she was literally playing a 30-year-old woman in a 14-year-old’s body. ..."
Guardian - The brave one: why Jodie Foster is Hollywood’s ultimate survivor
YouTube: Jodie Foster Breaks Down Her Career, from “Silence of the Lambs” to “Hotel Artemis”

Queen of Sheba

The Visit the Queen Sheba to King Solomon, Edward John Poynter (20 March 1836 - 26 July 1919)
"The Queen of Sheba (Hebrew: מלכת שבא‎; Arabic: ٱلْمَلِكَة بَلْقِيْس‎, romanized: Al-Malikah Balqīs) is a figure first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. In the original story, she brings a caravan of valuable gifts for the Israelite King Solomon. This tale has undergone extensive Jewish, Islamic, and Ethiopian elaborations, and has become the subject of one of the most widespread and fertile cycles of legends in the Orient. Modern historians identify Sheba with the South Arabian kingdom of Saba in present-day Yemen. The queen's existence is disputed among historians. ... The treatment of Solomon in literature, art, and music also involves the sub-themes of the Queen of Sheba and the Shulammite of the Song of Songs. ..."
Wikipedia
PBS: Queen of Sheba
YouTube: Queen of Sheba - Black is Beautiful

17th-century AD painting of the Queen of Sheba from a church in Lalibela, Ethiopia and now in the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa

2016 June: Voyage to the Orient (1851), 2017 March: Selected Writings of Gerard De Nerval (1957), 2017 June: Did Gerard de Nerval walk his pet lobster through Paris?, 2017 October: Les Filles du feu (1854), 2019 March: Sylvie (1853)

Reading List: Ronnie Close

"When researching my book on the ultras phenomenon in Egypt, Cairo’s Ultras: Resistance and Revolution in Egypt’s Football Culture (2019), I was surprised to discover how little has been published on football literature concerning the Middle East and North African (MENA) region. Apart from a limited number of journal articles, newspaper reports of different sorts, and various types of book publications, little has been written on football culture in Egypt per se. In particular, the Cairo ultras had not been looked at in a meaningful way as a significant social movement in recent years. However, as I began to write this reading list, I was pleased to hear of a new pending book by anthropologist Dr. Carl Rommel and look forward to more publications of this kind in the future. ..."
Africa is a Country

Baseball: Part 8: A Whole New Ball Game

Roger Maris
"Early in the 1960s, 1950s-style baseball was still in charge. The Yankees continued to win pennants. Home whites and road grays remained in vogue. Ted Williams, Warren Spahn and Stan Musial were still producing. But America of the 1960s evolved into a decade of quick change, if not complete metamorphosis. America’s internal and external problems —and the counterculture that spawned as a result—made major league baseball, the bastion of tradition for over 60 years, feel odd and out-of-place through the decade. Answering to immense pressure, each league reluctantly expanded from eight teams to ten early in the decade—and more contentedly added two more in 1969 to total 12. The relocations of the Dodgers and Giants to the West Coast at the end of the 1950s were just the beginning of an inevitable trend that would reach all corners of America—and beyond. By the end of the decade, the U.S. Northeast—the long-anchoring region of baseball—saw its geographic power diluted with new or relocated teams in San Diego, Seattle, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Oakland, Houston and even Montreal in neighboring Canada. ..."
This Great Game
PBS: Part 8: A Whole New Ball Game (Video)
This Great Game: 1964 The Fizz Kids
This Great Game: 1966 Wish You Were Here, Mr. DeWitt
This Great Game: 1968 Year of the Pitcher
How Baseball Got Its Groove Back in the Turbulent 1960s
SABR: 1960s
W - Major League Baseball on television in the 1960s, W - Major League Baseball relocation of 1950s–1960s

Sandy Koufax 1963
Dean's Cards: 1960s Baseball Cards
Baseball from 1960 to 1969 Chronology
W - Roberto Clemente, Roger Maris, Whitey Ford, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Bob Gibson, Harmon Killebrew, Jim Palmer, Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, Carl Yastrzemski, Steve Carlton, Lou Brock, Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan
amazon: The Long Season by Jim Brosnan, Ball Four by Jim Bouton, The Summer Game by Roger Angell, Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? by Jimmy Breslin, Bill Veeck, October 1964 by David Halberstam, The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. by Robert Coover, Veeck - As in Wreck by Bill Veeck, Red Smith on Baseball: The Game's Greatest Writer on the Game's Greatest Years, The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading And Bubblegum Book
World Series: 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969
YouTube: Roger Maris 1961 - 61st Home Run as Called by Red Barber, WPIX-TV, 10/1/1961, Struck Out: The Fall of the 1964 Phillies, Dick Allen story, 1966 World Series Game 4: Dodgers @ Orioles, 1964 Baseball Highlights 1:22:48, Every MLB World Series Film From The 1960s (1960-1969) 6:58:48

Bob Gibson

At the Drive-In: Thrills, Chills, Popcorn and Hand Sanitizer

"WARWICK, N.Y. — In the end, it was the rain, not the virus, that drove some moviegoers to leave the drive-in theater here Friday as a storm interrupted the season’s first shows. Hours before, SUVs, sedans and pickup trucks had crunched along the gravel road leading to the Warwick Drive-In’s three screens, and then were directed to a grassy mound where they parked for the evening to watch the double features. ... As the sun set, masked ticketholders lined up at the snack bar to order candy and buttered popcorn, dutifully planting themselves six feet behind the person in front of them. Children horsed around. Adults sipped beverages. An older couple ate ice cream on lawn chairs as smoke from a nearby grill wafted toward them. ..."
NY Times


2010 July: Drive-in theater

Orshi Drozdik

Individual Mythology, I Project On Myself My History, 1977, photographs, performance.
"Hungarian visual artist. Orsolya – known as Orshi – Drozdik studied graphic arts at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts from 1970 to 1977. A post-conceptual artist, she uses the full range of techniques that fine art has to offer, from drawing to installation. While her work finds its roots mainly in conceptual art, it builds on the constitution and definition of the self and on the question of gender identity. As such, it positions itself between the poles of the female self and the creative self. ..."
AWARE: Women Artists
W - Orshi Drozdik
Orshi Drozdik: Deconstructing Gender and the Self
Orshi Drozdik
Archive: Orshi Drozdik Retrospective Exhibition Ludwig Museum Budapest 2001/02 (Video)

August Wilson's Blues Poetry

"If the blues is the wash of black suffering hung up to dry in the sun of pitiless self-reflection, then August Wilson was our greatest lyrical washerman. He was also the most gifted blues poet on the American stage. He bathed the soil of bigotry in the rhetoric of black spirituality. And he made raucous black vernacular an agitator to stir hope into motion. 'I think the blues is the best literature that we as blacks have created since we’ve been here,' Wilson said. 'And it’s a lot of philosophical ideas. I call it our sacred book. So what I’ve attempted to do is mine that field, to mine those cultural ideas and attitudes and give them to my characters.' When Wilson says the blues are literature, he is not exaggerating its importance but underscoring the blues’ sublime literary qualities. ..."
HUMANITIES, March/April 2015
PBS: August Wilson and the Blues (Video)
August Wilson: Poetic playwright as historian (Audio)
[PDF] August Wilson and the African-American Odyssey By Kim Pereira
Hill District Map

2017 July: Fences (2016), 2017 August: The Ground on Which I Stand, a Speech on Black Theatre and Performance (1992), 2018 July: Pittsburgh Cycle, 2018 August: August Wilson in St. Paul: A MN Original Special

Medieval "Dark Eclipse" Helps Date Ice Cores — and Time Volcanic Eruptions

"You never know where an astronomical event might turn up in old historical records, and how it might link up with evidence from modern science. Researchers at the University of Geneva recently uncovered such an astronomical tale from the archives, using contemporary accounts of a curiously dark lunar eclipse to give insight into volcanic eruptions and their effect medieval climate. The researchers, who published their study April 21st in Scientific Reports, were examining ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica over the past couple millennia, looking for sulfate spikes that would indicate volcanic eruptions. ..."
Sky and Telescope

Seeing Robert Wilson plain

"When Gabrielle Dean first visited Robert Wilson in 2009 at his home on Maryland's Eastern Shore, her intention was to collect photographs that Wilson wanted to add to the personal papers he had donated to Johns Hopkins' Sheridan Libraries in 2003 and 2004.  ... Then Wilson, A&S '43, a well-regarded bookseller, obsessive book collector, and author who for more than 25 years owned and operated the Phoenix Book Shop in Greenwich Village, ushered Dean into his voluminous library, located in a special addition to the house, to show her his collection, notably his Gertrude Stein materials, a spectacular trove of inscribed first editions by the iconic and idiosyncratic 20th-century author—a total of 1,396 volumes, representing 1,187 unique titles, plus much more Stein-related material. ..."
Johns Hopkins University

2007 November: Gertrude Stein, 2011 July: The making of "Tender Buttons", 2012 March: The Steins Collect, 2012 May: Gertrude Stein's War Years: Setting the record straight, 2014 November: Lost Generation, 2015 January: The Making of an American by Edward White, 2015 March: Twenty-two on 'Tender Buttons' - Gertrude Stein

Léon Augustin Lhermitte

Harvest (1874)
"The artist I am looking at today is the French painter Léon-Augustin Lhermitte. I suppose his work could be categorised by three artistic terms: Naturalism, Realism and Ruralism, as he will probably be remembered for his paintings depicting peasant farmers and their families at work in the fields. However, as you will find out, there were more strings to his bow. Léon-Augustin Lhermitte was the only son of a local schoolmaster. He was born on July 31, 1844 in Mont-Saint-Père, a commune in the Aisne department in Hauts-de-France in north-eastern France, which lies about eighty kilometres north east of the French capital. The village was close to Chateau Thierry, a farming region close to the Champagne region around Rheims. This rural setting was to provide a wealth of ideas, inspiration, and realist subject matter throughout the artist’s life. ..."
my daily art display
W - Léon Augustin Lhermitte

A Rest from the Harvest

Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count

"More than 1,429,100 people in the United States have been infected with the coronavirus and at least 86,000 have died, according to a New York Times database. Though the numbers of new cases and deaths have started trending downward, the virus continues to circulate widely within the United States. As many states move to partly reopen their economies, thousands of new cases are still being identified each day and true normalcy remains a distant vision. Every day, more beloved events are scrubbed from the calendar. There will be no Jericho ATV Festival in New Hampshire, no World’s Largest Brat Fest in Wisconsin, no Lake Placid Horse Shows in New York. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: What Is the Real Coronavirus Death Toll in Each State?

Vanished into Music

"There’s a man on the ferry. He’s wearing jeans and a baseball jacket, and standing at the stern, his handsome face pitted with acne scars. Everyone else is looking at Manhattan. It’s 1986: the twin towers dominate the view. But this man isn’t looking at the buildings. He’s staring at the swirling water, the confluence of tides, the East River and the Hudson coming together in the harbor of the city. Out here, everything is expansive. Out here, everything falls away. He has his Walkman in his pocket, his headphones around his ears. The music he’s listening to is a mix he finished late last night. When he was done—though nothing he does is ever done, exactly—he took the cassette and left the studio. Full moon, of course. He has been recording this album every full moon for three years now. Sometimes he curls up in the studio for a nap, waking in the small hours with a new idea, an unprecedented sound bubbling through his mind. His name is Arthur Russell. ..."
The Paris Review
Listen To This Imaginative New Arthur Russell Documentary (Audio)

2015 November: Love Of Life Orchestra ‎– Extended Niceties EP (1980), 2015 September: Arthur Russell, 2017 January: Instrumentals (2007), 2017 April: The Infinite Worlds of Arthur Russell, 2018 December: The World Of Arthur Russell (2004), 2019 May: Another Thought (1994)

Are ghosts haunting the British Museum?

"In the late evening, after the last members of the public have been ushered out of the building and the outer gates have been bolted shut, a swift and palpable change comes over the British Museum. The museum is the most popular tourist attraction in Britain, ahead of Tate Modern and the National Gallery: more than 6.2m people visited in 2019, over 17,000 every day. Without these visitors, the relentless thrum of activity beneath the glass-and-steel lattice roof of the Great Court fades to a whisper. A thick silence fills the cavernous galleries that surround it, each one loaded with artefacts that encompass the arc of human history. ..."
1843 Magazine

A statue of Buddha overlooks the haunted staircase

Lewis and Clark Expedition

Corps of Discovery meet Chinooks on the Lower Columbia, October 1805
"The Lewis and Clark Expedition from August 31, 1803, to September 25, 1806, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the first expedition to cross the western portion of the United States. ... The Corps of Discovery was a select group of U.S. Army and civilian volunteers under the command of Captain Meriwether Lewis and his close friend Second Lieutenant William Clark. President Thomas Jefferson commissioned the expedition shortly after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 to explore and to map the newly acquired territory, to find a practical route across the western half of the continent, and to establish an American presence in this territory before Britain and other European powers tried to claim it. The campaign's secondary objectives were scientific and economic: to study the area's plants, animal life, and geography, and to establish trade with local American Indian tribes. The expedition returned to St. Louis to report its findings to Jefferson, with maps, sketches, and journals in hand. ..."
Wikipedia, W - List of species described by the Lewis and Clark Expedition (174 plants and 134 species and subspecies of animals, etc.), W - Sacagawea
Lewis and Clark: A Timeline of the Extraordinary Expedition
Discovering Lewis & Clark
YouTube: 23rd March 1806: The Lewis and Clark Expedition begins its return journey, Lewis and Clark | A film by Ken Burn, Lewis and Clark: Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (FULL Audiobook)

A map depicting the route taken by Lewis and Clark on their first expedition from the Missouri River (near St. Louis, Missouri) to the mouth of the Columbia River (at the Pacific Ocean in Oregon), and their return trip, 1804 - 1806.

Calvin and Hobbes and quarantine

"When I think of Calvin, that glorious little menace, I first remember the depth of his imagination. His was an external life born explicitly of the internal: distant planets, bed monsters, mutant snowscapes, gravity-defying wagon rides, crass Transmogrifications, and of course, one tuna-loving tiger BFF. But the second thing I remember was exactly why the kid had such a big imagination to begin with: Calvin was looking for a way out. He was trying to escape. He didn’t like school, so he fled it as Spaceman Spiff. Bathtime, a nightmare for small children, saw Calvin turning into a tub shark or being attacked by a bubble-bath elemental. ..."
Polygon

2011 January: Calvin and Hobbes, 2015 March: Bill Watterson talks: This is why you must read the new ‘Exploring Calvin and Hobbes’ book, 2015 July: Calvin and Markov, 2017 November: 23 Stupendous Vocabulary Words I Learned From ‘Calvin & Hobbes’