A Kind of Packaged Aging Process - Jan Morris

 

Passengers boarding an ocean liner, 1925.

“It was for convalescent reasons that I lately undertook a resolutely up-market Mediterranean cruise, with a Greek classical bias, and since I thought of such a cruise generically as being a kind of packaged aging process, at first I decided for literary purposes to rename our ship the Geriatrica. Later I changed my mind.It was perfectly true, though, as I had foreseen, that we formed a venerable passenger list, and sunset intimations were soon apparent. ... Of course the passage of time had to be a preoccupation on board such a ship as ours. ...”

The Paris Review

2020 November: Venice (1960)

The Meaning of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights Explained

 

“Over the half-millennium since Hieronymus Bosch painted it, The Garden of Earthly Delights has produced an ever-widening array of interpretations. Is it ‘a painting about sexual freedom’? A ‘medieval acid trip’? An ‘erotic fantasy’? A ‘heretical attack on the church’? The work of ‘a member of an obscure free-love cult’? James Payne, the London curator behind the Youtube channel Great Art Explained, rejects all these views. In the opening of the in-depth video analysis above, he describes Bosch’s well-known and much-scrutinized late-15th or early-16th century triptych as, ‘pure and simply, hardcore Christianity.’ ...”

Open Culture (Video) 50:57

2016 February: The Garden of Earthly Delights - Hieronymus Bosch (1490 - 1510), 2016 September: Hieronymus Bosch’s Lost Masterpiece, 2018 September: The Hieronymus Bosch Demon Bird Was Spotted Riding the New York City Subway the Other Day…

Morphagene as a Stepping Stone of the Creative Process - Hélène Vogelsinger

 

“In this video, Hélène Vogelsinger uses the Morphagene in combination with her voice to create the foundation of a whole piece. She starts with a simple rhythmic and tonal vocal pattern, that then evolves into deep and grainy textures. From the Earth to the entire Universe. To hear more of Hélène's work, click on the links below: YouTube, Bandcamp​, Instagram ..."

YouTube: Morphagene as a Stepping Stone of the Creative Process 8:42

Stellarium

 

“Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. ...”

Stellarium.org

Stellarium Web

W - Stellarium (software)

How do I use Stellarium? A guide to the basics

How to install and use Stellarium astronomy software

[PDF] STELLARIUM FREE Planetarium Program, HEAVENS ABOVE, NASA, Subscriptions, News, Alerts, etc. 

YouTube: Stellarium for Beginners

Harry Partch – The Bewitched (2021) and U.S. Highball (2021)

“Many contemporary composers have been described as iconoclasts but few really are the rugged individualists they are often portrayed as being. Harry Partch (1901 – 1974) may be one of the rare exceptions. Influenced by his study and interpretation of ancient musical models, Partch decided to firmly break with the European musical tradition. He devised his own tuning system with a microtonal division of the octave into forty three notes and then designed and built a whole series of instruments to utilize his tuning. His music was influenced by ancient music, folk traditions from around the world and the dramatic inflections and gesturing of the human voice. ...”

avant music news (Video/Audio)

Discogs The Bewitched (Video), US Highball (Video)

2012 February: Harry Partch

The 1619 Project

 

“1619 is not a year that most Americans know as a notable date in our country’s history. Those who do are at most a tiny fraction of those who can tell you that 1776 is the year of our nation’s birth. What if, however, we were to tell you that the moment that the country’s defining contradictions first came into the world was in late August of 1619? That was when a ship arrived at Point Comfort in the British colony of Virginia, bearing a cargo of 20 to 30 enslaved Africans. Their arrival inaugurated a barbaric system of chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the country’s very origin. Out of slavery — and the anti-black racism it required — grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional: its economic might, its industrial power, its electoral system, its diet and popular music, the inequities of its public health and education, its astonishing penchant for violence, its income inequality, the example it sets for the world as a land of freedom and equality, its slang, its legal system and the endemic racial fears and hatreds that continue to plague it to this day. ...”

NY Times: Why We Published The 1619 Project

NY Times: The 1619 Project

NY Times: Podcasts - 1619 (Audio), Apple (Audio)

W - The 1619 Project

Pulitzer Center: The 1619 Project Curriculum

NY Times: On Recent Criticism of The 1619 Project - Jake Silverstein (Oct. 16, 2020)

Cato Institute: The 1619 Project: An Autopsy, Politico: I Helped Fact-Check the 1619 Project. The Times Ignored Me., The Atlantic: The Fight Over the 1619 Project Is Not About the Facts

YouTube: Frederick Douglass vs. the 1619 Project

Noam Chomsky on Anarchism, Human Nature and Joe Biden

 

Listen to “The Ezra Klein Show”: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, How to Listen

“How do you introduce Noam Chomsky? Perhaps you start here: In 1979, The New York Times called him ‘arguably the most important intellectual alive today.’ More than 40 years later, Chomsky, at 92, is still putting his dent in the world — writing books, giving interviews, changing minds. There are different sides to Chomsky. He’s a world-renowned linguist who revolutionized his field. He’s a political theorist who’s been a sharp critic of American foreign policy for decades. He’s an anarchist who believes in a radically different way of ordering society. He’s a pragmatist who pushed leftists to vote for Joe Biden in 2020 and has described himself as having a ‘rather conservative attitude towards social change.’ He is, very much, himself. The problem in planning a conversation with Chomsky is how to get at all these different sides. So this one covers a lot of ground. ...”

NY Times (Audio)

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, 2020 May: Requiem for the American Dream (2017)

​Video: Riding Mountain Bikes in the Paris Catacombs

 

“Urban travel. A hot topic… Antoni ‘Dante’ Villoni is maybe taking this a little too seriously! The streets of Paris are well known to all, even perhaps the underground Catacombs, which stretch for 1.5km, but few are aware that there are nearly 300km of tunnels several metres below the 'City of Light.' Antoni gives us a guided tour, a descent deep down into the dark depths of the capital city, or to hell… “

pinkbike (Video)

2013 February: Catacombs of Paris

Amplifying the Women Who Pushed Synthesizers Into the Future

 

Daphne Oram, a crucial figure of electronic music history, was the first woman to set up her own independent electronic music studio.

“When you hear the phrase ‘electronic musician,’ what sort of person do you picture? A pallid, wildly coifed young man hunched over an imposing smorgasbord of gear? I’m guessing the person you are imagining doesn’t look like Daphne Oram, with her cat-eye glasses, demure dresses and respectable 1950s librarian haircut. And yet Oram is a crucial figure of electronic music history — the co-founder of the BBC’s incalculably influential Radiophonic Workshop, the first woman to set up her own independent electronic music studio and now one of the worthy focal points of Lisa Rovner’s bewitching new documentary ‘Sisters With Transistors: Electronic Music’s Unsung Heroines.’ ...”

NY Times

Metrograph: Sisters with Transistors – Live Premiere with Electronic Music Panel

YouTube: Sisters with Transistors [Official Trailer]

 

The film includes footage of Maryanne Amacher cranking up her compositions.

​Cooking with Herman Melville

 

“Whenever I would tell someone I was cooking from Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick for my next column, they would gleefully shriek, ‘Whale steaks!’ And I would dither a bit and explain that no, those are illegal in America, and that I was instead planning to make two forms of chowder, clam and cod, that weren’t going to be very different from each other. In our Chowhound-fueled, extreme-eating kind of world, I felt a little silly. Chowder is an easy dish, and while there’s raging conflict over the primacy of New York style (tomato-based) versus New England style (white), and the finer variations of each, the topic seems to inspire passion in inverse proportion to its importance. (Potatoes or no potatoes? Avast.) ...”

The Paris Review

Jazz On Film...The New Wave II (2016)

 

“At last, British jazz gets a chance to shine in this monumental series of soundtrack box sets. Dating mainly from the late 1950s/early 60s, the contents of these eight CDs include such landmarks as John Dankworth’s scores for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Criminal, along with All Night Long, a shambles of a film, but with music by Tubby Hayes. There’s also the virtually forgotten Nowhere to Go, sparked by the composition and trumpet playing of Dizzy Reece. Naturally, too, there’s a lot of Michel Legrand – less well-known ones, such as Eva and Cléo de 5 à 7 – plus some American classics, like Too Late Blues. As always, a rich and enjoyable collection. ...”

Guardian - Various: Jazz on Film – The New Wave II review – a rich and enjoyable collection

Bandcamp (Audio)

allmusic (Audio)

Discogs

Fine Drone Partita in a Minor Synth Setup

 

“This is a solid example of the sort of videos I’ve been collating in my YouTube playlist of fine live ambient recordings. The equipment is in full view, and the actions in the video correlate with the generally subtle though sometimes not inconsiderable alterations to the pulsing drone as it proceeds. This video isn’t a tutorial. There are no instructions, just two hands enacting manipulations, turning knobs, clicking buttons. In addition, as the music plays, the ear’s sense of interior activity can find consonance with the eye’s attention to the pace of the various lights, providing clues as to which parts of the assembled tools align with what aspects of the music. ... This is the latest video I’ve added to my ongoing YouTube playlist of fine live performance of ambient music. Video by Little Ambient Machines, based in Amsterdam, and posted today at YouTube. ...”

disquiet (Video)

Derek Chauvin Trial Live Updates: Chauvin Found Guilty of Murdering George Floyd

 

“... Judge Peter A. Cahill revoked Derek Chauvin’s bail on Tuesday after he was convicted of murdering George Floyd. Mr. Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who has been free on bail since the fall, was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs and remanded into the custody of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office.Judge Cahill said he expected to begin a sentencing hearing in about eight weeks. Mr. Chauvin was convicted on all three counts he faced at trial — second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Because Mr. Chauvin has no criminal history, the sentencing guidelines for each of the murder charges is 12.5 years. But the maximum sentences for each charge differ: Second-degree murder can result in a term as long as 40 years, while the maximum for third-degree murder is 25 years. By Sean Plambeck. ...”

NY Times (Video)

YouTube: Jury finds Derek Chauvin guilty of murdering George Floyd

“State of Minnesota v. Derek Michael Chauvin is a criminal case in the District Court of Minnesota in which former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was tried and convicted of the murder of George Floyd during an arrest on May 25, 2020. Chauvin was charged with second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter; the first charge carries a maximum penalty of 40 years in prison. On April 20, 2021, the jury found Chauvin guilty of all three charges. The trial began on March 8, 2021, at the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was the first of two scheduled criminal trials stemming from Floyd's death. It was also the first criminal trial in Minnesota to be entirely televised and the first in state court to be broadcast live. ...”

*****W - State v. Chauvin

*****NY Times: The Death of George Floyd Reignited a Movement. What Happens Now? (Video)

*****Guardian: Will the Derek Chauvin guilty verdict change policing in America? (Video)

** **Guardian: Tearful testimony and defense’s own goal: key moments in the Chauvin trial (Video)

NY Times: Few Charges, Fewer Convictions: The Chauvin Trial and the History of Police Violence

*****CNN: Derek Chauvin is in a prison's segregated housing unit for his safety while he awaits sentencing (Video)

Capitalist Greed Created the European Super League

 

Roberto Firmino of Liverpool shoots while under pressure from Éder Militão of Real Madrid during the UEFA Champions League quarter-final second-leg match on April 14, 2021 in Liverpool, England.

“Yesterday, once again, the prospect of a breakaway European Super League (ESL) reared its head. The proposal — to carve out a continental competition in which fifteen of the game’s elite clubs could never be relegated — was met with widespread dismay by those who love the game. Despite a year that has shown just how vital fans are for the ‘spectacle’ of football, it was the match-going fans that once again were of least concern. Instead, if the plans go ahead, the future of football will be shaped by television and advertising — an entertainment industry that the top clubs estimate will deliver them £300 million per year, far outstripping their current domestic and Champions League revenues. It’s important to point out that the Super League isn’t an anomaly. ...”

Jacobin

European Super League explained: the contracts, plots and threats that shook football to its core

Guardian: The greed of the European Super League has been decades in the making

Guardian - ‘It’s war’: what the papers say about the European Super League

Twin Peaks Supercut: Every Mention of Pie and Coffee

“Here it is at last! The Twin Peaks coffee and pie supercut! It took the Internet 23 years and Bryan Menegus plenty of hours of work, but Twin Peaks fans worldwide can finally enjoy this, excuse me, damn good video montage of probably every mention of ‘pie’ and ‘coffee’ on the show. Good for 3 minutes and a half of delicious footage. Bryan, I feel like we, the fans, owe you something for making this supercut… Like a cup of coffee and a slice of cherry pie perhaps? Let me know. My treat! BONUS (via Slacktory): Here’s a pie chart of every sip of coffee in Twin Peaks by character. Dale Cooper unsurprisingly leads the way, but who are the other big coffee drinkers in town?”

Welcome to Twin Peaks (Video)

2020 April: Twin Peaks: Go Down the Rabbit Hole.

What an artist captured on 1950s Orchard Street

 

“When Joseph Sherly Sheppard painted these three scenes of Orchard Street in the 1950s, this eight-block stretch of the Lower East Side was devoted to cut-rate commerce. Unglamorous tenement storefronts jockey for space, merchandise spills onto the sidewalk, and sign after colorful sign advertised such utilitarian items like coats, linens, eyeglasses, and hosiery. Orchard in the 1950s seems emptier than it had been in the early decades of the 20th century, when it was a packed Jewish immigrant enclave. ...”

Ephemeral New York

Top 10 Night Sky Objects for Amateur Astronomers

 

“Although there are thousands of astronomical objects worth observing in the night sky, all astronomers, both amateur and professional alike, will tell you that they have their own personal favorites. These might include lingering early memories, such as the first sighting of the Milky Way‘s largest globular cluster, Omega Centauri, or the first splitting of a difficult binary star system, such as observing the double star Albireo in Cygnus, whose brighter yellow star presents a striking contrast to its fainter blue companion. Whatever the case may be, the following list looks at ten celestial objects most astronomers agree are worth a second look. ...”

Astronomy Trek

Pet Shop Boys Share Live Cover Of Blur's 'Girls & Boys'

 

“The infernally catchy 'Girls & Boys' is arguably Blur's best pop song. So what happened when the world's best pop band covered it in Rio in 1994? Why, everyone went nuts, as you can see in the footage above. From their earliest inception, PSB have been pop magpies, always excited about what's happening in the cultural milieu around them, and in 1994, they paid homage to Blur just as that band were about to hit the big time. Essentially the performance has everything you'd want from the Pet Shop Boys – Neil looks amazing in a big white shirt and black waiscoat! Some lads come onstage in Brazil football strips to do keepy-uppies! Chris looks nonchalant in DKNY hat and sunglasses! ...”

theQuietus (Video - Live)

YouTube: Girls and Boys (Pet Shop Boys Remix) (2012 Remaster) 7:12

2008 September: Pet Shop Boys, 2010 November: Pet Shop Boys - 1985-1989, 2011 January: Behaviour, 2011 May: Very, 2011 December: Bilingual, 2012 March: "Always on My Mind", 2012 August: Nightlife, 2012 September: "Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can't Take My Eyes off You)", 2012 December: Release, 2013 March: Pandemonium Tour, 2013 November: Leaving, 2014 April: Introspective (1988), 2014 August: Go West, 2015 January: "So Hard"(1990), 2015 February: "I'm with Stupid" (2006), 2015 July: Thursday EP (2014), 2016 May: "Twenty-something" (2016), 2017 September: Left To My Own Devices / The Sound of the Atom Splitting (1988), 2019 May: It's A Sin (1987)

Avant Gardening - New Age Steppers (2021)

 

“In the tradition of archival On-U Sound compilations of recent years such as the Return Of The Crocodile and Churchical Chant Of The Iyabinghi sets for African Head Charge; and the Displaced Masters LP of early Dub Synidcate rarities, we’ve gone through the tape vaults to put together this special record of unreleased versions and rarities from the white hot early days of the New Age Steppers, the group that launched the On-U Sound label by appearing on both the first single and album. Highlights include a restored track from their infamous and long-lost 1983 John Peel session (an ebullient cover of Atlantic Starr’s ‘Send For Me’ featuring a beautifully spirited vocal performance from the much-missed Ari Up), the Jah Woosh deejay cut of ‘Love Forever’, some rare dubs previously only available on Japanese import CDs, all bookended by two very different takes on Chaka Khan’s ‘Some Love’. An essential set for collectors of post-punk, dub and other outernational sounds. ...”

Bandcamp (Audio)

Discogs (Video)

YouTube: Singing Love, I Scream (Rimshot), Wide World Version, etc.

2010 October: Ari Up (17 January 1962 – 20 October 2010), 2012 July: Subatomic Sound System meets Lee Scratch Perry & Ari Up of the Slits (7″ vinyl), 2014 September: Live in Cincinnati and San Francisco 1980, 2015 August: Return Of The Giant Slits (1981/2007), 2016 May: "Typical Girls" / "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" (1979), 2016 July: "Man Next Door" - Berlin 1981

Birds by the Billions: A Guide to Spring’s Avian Parade

 

An Eastern bluebird at the Greenwich Audubon Center in Greenwich, Conn. Eastern bluebirds are found in the East and Midwest; at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin, for instance, sightings of them spike beginning in late April.

“... The Northeast: a festival of songbirdsI came to birding relatively late. My parents had a bird feeder on the Jersey Shore where I grew up, and I’d watch house finches and sparrows come and go. But I knew nothing about the migrations of songbirds until my late 20s when I interviewed Roger Tory Peterson, author of the iconic fields guides. With the spring migration underway, this is the time to discover — or rediscover — the allure of birding. ... Each day brings platoons of warblers, vireos, thrushes, tanagers and other migrants. The first thing you learn when you pick up your binoculars and head out is that you are not ‘bird-watching,’ but ‘birding.’ Bird-watching implies a sedentary activity, while birding is proactive. ...”

NY Times

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, 2019 October: A Quest to Protect the World’s Last Silent Places, 2020 June: Making a Garden That Welcomes the Birds, 2020 July: New Bird Song That ‘Went Viral’ Across This Species of Sparrow Was Tracked by Scientists For the First Time, 2020 August: How to Use Binoculars - Jason Ward, 2020 October: Get the Birds To Come To You, 2020 June: BirdNET

Banknote embroidery as political art – in pictures

 

“American artist Stacey Lee Webber has embroidered money for more than a decade. She started as a way to question the value of work by meticulously stitching patterns on to worthless one dollar bills. The latest incarnation – the Insurrection Bills – is a response to the US’s febrile political climate. Webber, a trained metalsmith who lives and works in an old industrial building in Philadelphia , doesn’t feel the end of the Trump era has changed much. ‘The political situation in the US is not peaceful. The country is completely divided politically.’ ...”

Guardian

A Guide to the Extensive Musical Legacy of Mills College

 

Ana Roxane, Pauline Oliveros, Gregg Kowalsky, Holly Herndon

“When he started teaching at Mills College in the late 1990s, Fred Frith already had an extensive resume. He had founded British avant-rock pioneers Henry Cow and collaborated with legends such as Richard Thompson, Brian Eno, and John Zorn. Yet he still found himself intimidated by Mills’ status as a breeding ground for inventive and influential experimental musicians. As he later told the L.A. Times, ‘When I first got here, I was a little overwhelmed by the history.’ It’s hard to blame him. The musical legacy of Mills College is dauntingly vast. Just listing all the artists who have passed through as students and professors—figures as diverse as Terry Riley, Laurie Anderson, Phil Lesh, and Joanna Newsom—could take days. ...”

Bandcamp (Audio)

NY Times: Is the Music Over at Mills College?

Mills Performing Arts

Discogs - Various Music From Mills  2:13:38 (Video)

 

The composer Robert Ashley in 1970. Through the ’70s Ashley was a guiding presence at Mills.

Capitol Police Told to Hold Back on Riot Response on Jan. 6, Report Finds

 

The report offers the most devastating account to date of the lapses and miscalculations around the most violent attack on the Capitol in two centuries.

“The Capitol Police had clearer advance warnings about the Jan. 6 attack than were previously known, including the potential for violence in which ‘Congress itself is the target.’ But officers were instructed by their leaders not to use their most aggressive tactics to hold off the mob, according to a scathing new report by the agency’s internal investigator. In a 104-page document, the inspector general, Michael A. Bolton, criticized the way the Capitol Police prepared for and responded to the mob violence on Jan. 6. The report was reviewed by The New York Times and will be the subject of a Capitol Hill hearing on Thursday. Mr. Bolton found that the agency’s leaders failed to adequately prepare despite explicit warnings that pro-Trump extremists posed a threat to law enforcement and civilians and that the police used defective protective equipment. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: Key Findings of the Inspector General’s Report on the Capitol Riot

NY Times: How a Presidential Rally Turned Into a Capitol Rampage (Jan. 12, 2021)

 

The 104-page report is one of the most searing portraits yet of the lapses and miscalculations around the most violent attack on the Capitol in two centuries.

2021 February: 77 days: Trump’s campaign to subvert the election, 2021 February: First They Guarded Roger Stone. Then They Joined the Capitol Attack., 2021 February: A Small Group of Militants’ Outsize Role in the Capitol Attack , 2021 March: Police Shrugged Off the Proud Boys, Until They Attacked the Capitol, 2021 March 21: 'We've Lost the Line!': Radio Traffic Reveals Police Under Siege at Capitol

Burn! - Gillo Pontecorvo (1969)

 

“Burn! (Italian: Queimada) is a 1969 Italian war drama film directed by Gillo Pontecorvo and starring Marlon Brando, Evaristo Márquez and Renato Salvatori. The music was composed by Ennio Morricone. The fictional story focuses on the creation of a tropical republic in the Caribbean, and the events that follow it. Brando plays an agent of the British government, named after the American filibuster William Walker, who manipulates a slave revolt to serve the interests of the sugar trade. The screenwriters also drew on the experiences of intelligence agent Edward Lansdale, who served the United States government in the Philippines and Indochina in the 1950s through 60s....”

Wikipedia

POLITICAL FILMS

Criterion

Brooklyn Rail

amazon

YouTube:  Burn! Official Trailer #1 - Marlon Brando

Barney Wilen - La Note Bleue (1987)

 

“... Barney Wilen remains steadfastly among my favourite tenor players. Lyrical, musical, romantic, swinging, entirely unlike the hard biting aggression of New York, or the huge breathy tone of the tenor founding fathers. He remains a distinctive voice that over decades continues to delight. I can put on ‘Jazz sur Scene’ and I cross The Channel to the Left Bank and fifty years in just the first few notes, and he has never lost that voice, because it is authentically his own..His first major appearance in the late Fifties, not even out of his teens, were the European tours of Art Blakey and Miles Davis. This record reprises many songs of that era, with compositions of Monk, Duke Jordan and Bennie Golson mixed with his own. For twenty years Wilen took his saxophone into rock and world music. We find him here back in his roots in long-term collaboration with Alain Jean-Marie, both delicate and swinging in the manner of McCoy Tyner, and Philippe Petit,  shades of Jim Hall and Kenny Burrell. He doesn’t grandstand, but gives space to other members of the ensemble as equals. ...”

LondonJazzCollector (Audio)

W - Barney Wilen

Discogs (Video)

amazon

YouTube: La Note Bleue, Harlem Nocturne, Besame Mucho, All Blues

Jack Delano's Color Photos of Chicago's Rail Yards in the 1940s

 

A view of part of the South Water Street freight depot of the Illinois Central Railroad and buildings in downtown Chicago on May 1, 1943

“Jack Delano was one of the photographers who worked in Roy Stryker’s Farm Security Administration photography program in the early 1940s, traveling the American countryside, photographing people and places with the stated goal of ‘introducing America to Americans.’ In 1942 and ’43, Delano spent time in the rail yards of Chicago, documenting the busy freight hub and the countless workers who kept the trains running 24 hours a day. Some of his most striking images were made on Kodachrome color transparencies, wonderfully preserved in the Library of Congress today. Collected below, a handful of images from Chicago as it was some 75 years ago. ...”

The Atlantic