Season Ticket: A Baseball Companion - Roger Angell (1988)

"Reading the opening pages of Season Ticket - Roger Angell's fourth and latest collection of baseball reports written originally for The New Yorker - one experiences a little of the same anxiety that he himself admits to early in the book when he describes his 'secret Calvinist fear that baseball will run out on me someday and I will find nothing fresh at the morning camps, despite my notes and numberings, or go newsless on some sun-filled afternoon, and so at last lose this sweet franchise.' After all, so much of what he writes about here has been covered before, whether it is the round of the baseball year from spring training to World Series, or the effects of drugs and labor disputes on the game, or the wonders of George Brett hitting and Keith Hernandez fielding and Vince Coleman going from first to third. ..."
NY Times
W - Season Ticket: A Baseball Companion
LA Times: Spring, and an Old Fan's Fancy Lightly Turns
amazon

Art Tatum & Ben Webster - The Album (1956)

"The only album-length collaboration between pianist Art Tatum and tenor saxophonist Ben Webster (accompanied by a rhythm section of Red Callender, bass, and Bill Douglass, drums) was this September 11, 1956, session under the auspices of Norman Granz's Verve Records label. ... This is a good approach, since Tatum never subsides to simple comping; he just keeps soloing away under Webster's rich tenor tones until Webster stops playing, and then keeps on to the end. So, although this is billed as a group effort, it's not a group of equals or really one in which the players are cooperating with each other. Tatum might as well be playing solo, since he takes very little account of what's happening around him. Granz makes it work by varying the volume of the different instruments in the mix, and the result is a fascinating study in contrasts."
allmusic
W - The Tatum Group Masterpieces, Volume Eight
BEN WEBSTER AND ART TATUM CONSIDERED (2008): Genius loves company
amazon
YouTube: The Album 1:04:43

The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s

"Sometimes it feels like the neon thumbprint of the 1980s never went away. It’s arguably the defining throwback aesthetic of American culture today, from the TV series we reboot to the prints we wear. And when it comes to its music, well, that’s even more ubiquitous: The decade was one of great upheaval and innovation, and the seeds it planted continue to flourish. It was a time when disco and punk were in tatters, its artists rebuilding from the rubble with new innovations to birth hardcore and new wave. Rock was getting more ridiculous, with Aqua-Net to spare, but it was also paring back into the thoughtful nexus that would someday be called 'indie rock'—or it was throwing up pentagrams, getting sludgier and meaner, and turning into metal. Jazz and ambient were pushing their experimental borders, getting more cinematic and free. Singer-songwriters in folk and R&B were plumbing new depths of the human experience, getting frank about social and gender politics. And hip-hop was evolving at a head-spinning clip, expanding its reach and ambition along the way. ..."
Pitchfork (Video)

A Museum of the World

"Only 50 years ago, Saadiyat Island’s 27 square kilometers were something of an empty quarter where sea and sand met only the blue of sky. The few inhabitants mainly earned their livings fishing and pearl-diving, and they had to cross to the mainland to find drinking water. Departing from this image, not that far away in time, we find today a far different one: an urbanism so new it can appear as if it is being swept to the surface from the desert like colossal archeological discoveries. Opened in November, the Louvre Abu Dhabi is the most recent product of the emirate’s ambitious cultural movement, powered by the plan of its Department of Culture and Tourism for a district on Saadiyat that emphasizes education and culture alongside tourism infrastructures. New York University opened a branch in 2010, the Zayed National Museum is under construction, and plans call for a Guggenheim museum and an opera house. ..."
Aramco World
The Atlantic: The Opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi
W - Louvre Abu Dhabi
Louvre Abu Dhabi

People walk near a sculpture by Italian artist Giuseppe Penone inside the Louvre Abu Dhabi on November 7, 2017, a day before the official opening.

Between Heaven and Hell: Florian Fricke & Werner Herzog

"The marriage of Popul Vuh’s music and the films of Werner Herzog was one made in heaven and hell. It was a marriage of opposites – of temperance, spiritually luminous optimism and high-mindedness and moral squalor, dark excess and despair – but also like minds. Both artists were forged in West Germany, but their perspective was unconfined and international. Formed in 1969, with their leader Florian Fricke managing to obtain a Moog synthesizer long before such instruments were available to his peers, Popul Vuh are rightly considered foundational to the Krautrock phenomenon. Fricke’s credentials were impeccable: Born in the Bavarian island town of Lindau in 1944, he was introduced to the piano as a child. ..."
Red Bull Music Academy Daily (Video)

Fight to Retake Last ISIS Territory in Syria Begins

"The last vestige of Islamic State territory in Syria came under attack, as members of an American-backed coalition said Tuesday that they had begun a final push to oust the militants from Hajin, the remaining sliver of territory under the group’s control in the region where it was born. The assault is the final chapter of a war that began more than four years ago after the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, seized enormous tracts of land in Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate. The Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish-led militia that has been fighting the Islamic State in Syria with the United States and its allies, said in a statement that its forces had launched an offensive on the area from four sides on Monday evening. The caliphate put the Islamic State on the map both physically and politically, filling its coffers and swelling its ranks both there and abroad, where adherents committed attacks in its name. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: If the Regime Comes Here, Everyone Will Be Targeted
amazon: Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian War, by Marwan Hisham (Author), Molly Crabapple

A drawing by one of the authors of people watching fighter planes fly above Idlib, Syria, which is controlled by forces opposed to President Bashar al-Assad.

2018 July: NY Times: Caliphate (Audio), 2014 August: The Islamic State, 2014 September: How ISIS Works, 2015 February: The Political Scene: The Evolution of Islamic Extremism, 2015 May: Zakaria: How ISIS shook the world, 2015 August: ISIS Blows Up Ancient Temple at Syria’s Palmyra Ruins, 2015 November: Times Insider: Reporting Europe's Refugee Crisis, 2015 November: Three Teams of Coordinated Attackers Carried Out Assault on Paris, Officials Say; Hollande Blames ISIS, 2015 November: The French Emergency, 2015 December: A Brief History of ISIS, 2015 December: U.S. Seeks to Avoid Ground War Welcomed by Islamic State, 2016 January: Ramadi, Reclaimed by Iraq, Is in Ruins After ISIS Fight, 2016 February: Syrian Officer Gave a View of War. ISIS Came, and Silence Followed., 2016 March: Brussels Survivors Say Blasts Instantly Evoked Paris Attacks, 2016 April: America Can’t Do Much About ISIS, 2016 June: What the Islamic State Has Won and Lost, 2016 July: ISIS: The Cornened Beast, 2016 October: Archaeological Victims of ISIS Rise Again, as Replicas in Rome, 2016 December: Battle Over Aleppo Is Over, Russia Says, as Evacuation Deal Reached, 2017 January: Eternal Sites: From Bamiyan to Palmyra, 2017 February: Tour a City Torn in Half by ISIS, 2017 March: Engulfed in Battle, Mosul Civilians Run for Their Lives, 2017 May: Aleppo After the Fall, 2017 July: Iraqi forces declare victory over Islamic State in Mosul after grueling battle, 2017 July: The Living and the Dead, 2017 October: ISIS Fighters, Having Pledged to Fight or Die, Surrender en Masse, 2018 August: After ISIS, Iraq Is Still Broken

The Prevalence of Ritual: On Romare Bearden’s Projections

The Street, 1964. Photostat on fiberboard, 31 x 40 in.
"On October 6, 1964, at the height of the American civil rights movement, fifty-three-year-old Romare Bearden, a mature artist with a moderately successful career as a painter behind him, debuted nearly two dozen billboard-size, black-and-white, photographic enlargements of collages—Projections, he called them. Instead of the large abstract work he had been painting up to then, he filled his canvases with the faces of black people. Their expressions, unflinching and intense, dominated crowded city streets, southern cotton fields, and ecstatic rituals. ... A surge of civil rights activism swept the country, compelling an urgent need for change. Figures in Bearden’s Projections embody that urgency, confronting their viewers like characters in a play caught in mid-action. At first glance the figures in Projections look ordinary, as if the artist were merely reporting a news event, except faces are fractured and dislocated, their hands swollen to twice their normal size, bodies pieced together from startling juxtapositions, including, as one commentator notes, 'parts of African masks, animal eyes, marbles, corn and mossy vegetation.' ..."
The Paris Review

Romare Bearden in his Long Island City studio with the photograph of his great-grandparents Henry and Rosa Kennedy on their porch around 1920 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

2017 November: Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power

The Progressive

Cover for June 2013 issue. 
Wikipedia - "The Progressive is an American monthly magazine of politics, culture and progressivism with a pronounced liberal perspective. Founded in 1909 by Senator Robert ^'Fighting Bob' La Follette, it was originally called La Follette's Weekly and then simply La Follette's. In 1929, it was recapitalized and had its name changed to The Progressive; for a period The Progressive was co-owned by the La Follette family and William Evjue's newspaper The Capital Times. Its headquarters is in Madison, Wisconsin. The magazine is known for its strong pacifism. It devotes much coverage to combating war, militarism, and corporate power. It supports civil rights and civil liberties, women's rights, LGBT rights, immigrant rights, labor rights, human rights, environmentalism, criminal justice reform, and democratic reform. ..."
Wikipedia
The Progressive
YouTube: The Progressive Magazine

Bugalù (from The Dap-Kings) • DJ set

"Charles Bradley & Menahan Street Band, The Delfonics, Four Mints, Soul Toronados, MEMPHIS SOUL and more. This upload was 51^st in the #funk chart and 64^th in the #soul chart."
Mixcloud (Audio)
Paris DJs: A Conversation with Neal Sugarman
W - Daptone Records

Winter Time Blues - Lightnin' Slim (1998)

"Winter Time Blues collects some of Lightnin' Slim's later singles for the Excello label, and while it might be hard to believe, these tracks sound positively lush when placed next to his earlier sides. Not that anything here is too fancy, but these songs at least have recorded basslines (the early singles were just Slim on electric guitar and vocals, accompanied by a drummer and a harmonica player, usually Lazy Lester) and the occasional added wash of an organ for texture. Truthfully, part of Slim's appeal is his nerve-bare starkness, and these later tracks show less of that, although the chilling bayou voodoo of 'I'm Evil,' included here, makes it one of his most powerful songs."
allmusic (Audio)
W - Lightnin' Slim
WIRZ - Lightnin' Slim
amazon
YouTube: Winter Time Blues 1:05:28

BRD Trilogy - Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Wikipedia - "The BRD Trilogy (German: BRD-Trilogie) consists of three films directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder: The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979), Veronika Voss (1982), and Lola (1981). The films are connected in a thematic rather than in a narrative sense. All three deal with different characters (though some actors recur in different roles) and plotlines, but each one focuses on the story of a specific woman in West Germany after World War II. The three letter acronym 'BRD' stands for Bundesrepublik Deutschland, the official name of West Germany and of the united contemporary Germany. The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) begins in the last days of World War II during the rushed marriage ceremony of Maria Braun, after which her husband is sent to battle the advancing Allies. After Maria later hears that he has been killed, she becomes the mistress of an African-American soldier. When Maria’s husband unexpectedly returns alive, she kills the soldier in a scuffle, but her husband takes the blame. Maria becomes the self-centered assistant and lover of a wealthy industrialist and a model of post-war recovery. Veronika Voss (1982) depicts the twilight years of film actress Veronika Voss in stark black-and-white. A sports reporter becomes enthralled by the unbalanced actress and discovers that she is under the power of a villainous doctor who keeps her addicted to opiates in order to steal her wealth. Despite his best attempts, he is unable to save her from a terrible end. The original German title, Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss, translates as 'The longing of Veronika Voss'. Lola (1981) is loosely based on Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel and its source novel Professor Unrat by Heinrich Mann. It tells the story of an upright new building commissioner named Von Bohm who comes to a small town. He falls in love with Lola, innocent of the fact that she is a famed prostitute and the mistress of Shuckert, an unscrupulous developer. Unable to reconcile his idealistic images of Lola with reality, Von Bohm spirals into the very corruption he had sought to fight. ..."
Wikipedia
W - The Marriage of Maria Braun, W - Veronika Voss, W - Lola
Mirroring History: Fassbinder’s The BRD Trilogy
Jim's Reviews - Fassbinder's BRD Trilogy
FilmStruck: Rainer Werner Fassbinder ($)
YouTube: GER 330 Final Project - Rainer Werner Fassbinder and His BRD-Trilogy 11:10

This Space Available

"They proliferate like gaps in an otherwise welcoming smile, vacant storefronts along New York City’s most popular retail corridors. 'When you walk the streets, you see vacancies on every block in all five boroughs, rich or poor areas — even on Madison Avenue, where you used to have to fight to get space,' said Faith Hope Consolo, head of retail leasing for Douglas Elliman Real Estate, who said the increase in storefront vacancies in New York City had created 'the most challenging retail landscape in my 25 years in real estate.' A survey conducted by Douglas Elliman found that about 20 percent of all retail space in Manhattan is currently vacant, she said, compared with roughly 7 percent in 2016. While a commercial crisis might more likely be associated with periods of economic distress, this one comes during an era of soaring prosperity, in a city teeming with tourism and booming with development. That has aggravated the vacancy problem by producing a glut of new commercial real estate. ..."
NY Times

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara Tuchman (1978)

Wikipedia - "A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century is a narrative history book by the American historian Barbara Tuchman, first published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1978. It won a 1980 U.S. National Book Award in History. The main title, A Distant Mirror, conveys Tuchman's idea that the death and suffering of the 14th century reflect that of the 20th century, especially the horrors of World War I. The book's focus is the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages suffered by Europe in the 14th century. Drawing heavily on Froissart's Chronicles, Tuchman recounts the Hundred Years' War, the Black Plague, the Papal Schism, pillaging mercenaries, anti-Semitism, popular revolts including the Jacquerie in France, the liberation of Switzerland, the Battle of the Golden Spurs, and peasant uprisings. She also discusses the advance of the Islamic Ottoman Empire into Europe, ending in the disastrous Battle of Nicopolis. Yet Tuchman's scope is not limited to political and religious events. She begins with a discussion of the Little Ice Age, a change in climate that reduced the average temperature of Europe until the 18th century, and describes the lives of all social classes, from nobles and clergymen to the peasantry. Much of the narrative is woven around the life of the French nobleman Enguerrand de Coucy. Tuchman chose him as a central figure partly because he lived a relatively long life and could therefore stay in the story during most of the 14th century. (Coucy was born in 1340, seven years before the Black Death began in southern Italy. He died in 1397.) He was also close to much of the action, tied to both France and England. ..."
Wikipedia
Commentary Magazine
NY Times: In Time of War and Plague (1978)
amazon

MADONJAZZ From the Vaults vol 20: Deep & Spiritual Jazz Sounds

"MADONJAZZ From the Vaults vol. 20: Deep & Spiritual Jazz Sounds . An 1hr set including jazz gems from Dom Um Romao, Batsumi, Phillip Cohran, Sun Ra, John McLaughlin and the legendary Randy Weston, who passed away recently. Recorded live in a London venue, in SEP 2015. All vinyl. Enjoy!"
MADONJAZZ (Audio)

Bobby Jaspar Quintet

Wikipedia - "Bobby Jaspar (20 February 1926 – 28 February 1963) was a Belgian cool jazz and hard bop saxophonist, flautist and composer. Born in Liège, Belgium, Jaspar learned to play piano and clarinet at a young age. Later, he took up the tenor saxophone and flute. With the 'Bop Shots' band, he took his first steps in the jazz world. In 1950, Jaspar moved to Paris, playing and recording with the best musicians of the era. Here he met singer Blossom Dearie; the two were married in 1954 but separated in 1957. In 1956, Jaspar was persuaded to try his luck in the United States, where his reputation in jazz circles had preceded him. He played and recorded with the quintet of J. J. Johnson, with Kenny Burrell, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Donald Byrd and many others. ... Bobby Jaspar died from a heart attack in New York City on 28 February 1963 at age 37."
Wikipedia
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: Bobby Jaspar Quintet 41:50

Frederick Wiseman: 10 essential films

"As Errol Morris once quipped of the Boston-born, Jewish-raised Frederick Wiseman: 'Fred likes institutions like Fellini likes the circus.' In his half-century career as a documentary maker, Wiseman has tirelessly charted American institutions and communities, with a style that’s often reductively described as flat, fly-on-the-wall vérité. As a result, compared to more famous auteurs, Wiseman gets short shrift as an ‘invisible’ presence behind the camera – or he’s mischaracterised as a dry descendent of the 60s Direct Cinema documentary movement. Yet the man himself has always argued that his often lengthy movies are more novelistic than journalistic, and indeed, several of his films have been transcribed and republished as screenplays. ... Here are 10 of the best places to start. ..."
BFI (Video)
W - Frederick Wiseman
Zipporah Films (Video)
LA Times: Frederick Wiseman's first decade of docs kicks off a vital retrospective

In Jackson Heights (2015)

2017 August: National Gallery (2014), 2017 September: Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (2015), 2018 April: In Jackson Heights (2015)

Last Rites for the Village Voice, a Bohemian Who Stayed On Too Long

"The death last week of The Village Voice, the storied alt-weekly, was in some ways to be expected. When its latest owner, Peter D. Barbey, who bought it in 2015 to restore it to its early glory, stopped print publication almost a year ago, it seemed that it would be only a matter of time before its online presence ceased as well. The Voice didn’t appear to have a strong sense of identity anymore, in part because the New York that it covered — downtown, the underground, bohemia and its ephemera — didn’t exist anymore, neither in a physical sense nor as a state of mind. SoHo, once the stomping ground of artists and punk rockers, is a high-end shopping mall. CBGB, which The Voice covered religiously when Blondie and Television were at their apex, has been turned into a John Varvatos store and lives on as a T-shirt. The East Village is … I don’t know what it is anymore. At least Spike Lee is still in Brooklyn. ..."
NY Times
Voice: Robert Christgau’s Five Favorite Pazz & Jop Essays (Jan 15, 2014)

5 Takeaways From Bob Woodward’s Book on the Trump White House

"A new book by Bob Woodward, the longtime Washington Post reporter, portrays a White House with relentless infighting and a work culture so toxic and volatile that many of President Trump’s top advisers and cabinet members became accustomed to working around their boss, whom they described as unstable and uninformed. 'Fear: Trump in the White House,' which is set for a public release next Tuesday and already sits atop Amazon’s best-seller list, is one in a series of insider accounts published this year that have drawn the ire of the West Wing. 'Fire and Fury,' by the writer Michael Wolff, and 'Unhinged,' by the former White House adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman, also reported the kind of hostility and interpersonal feuding that Mr. Woodward depicts. Mr. Trump reacted to both books with numerous tweets targeting the authors. On Tuesday, after copies of Mr. Woodward’s book leaked to reporters, Mr. Trump told The Daily Caller that parts of it may have been made up. ..."
NY Times: 5 Takeaways From Bob Woodward’s Book on the Trump White House
Image
NY Times: In ‘Fear,’ Bob Woodward Pulls Back the Curtain on President Trump’s ‘Crazytown’
Esquire: The Rats Are Fleeing the Sinking Ship—and Talking to Bob Woodward
amazon
Washington Post: Bob Woodward’s new book reveals a ‘nervous breakdown’ of Trump’s presidency (Video)

‘Store Front’ Photographer Karla Murray Races Against Time to Document ‘Fun and Funky’ NYC

"Longtime East Village photographers James and Karla Murray installed a structure in Seward Park recreating the Lower East Side’s Cup and Saucer, which closed after more than 70 years in business. Now, they’ve set up a gallery show featuring photographs from their 'Store Front' books just a few blocks away at The Storefront Project (70 Orchard Street). The exhibit, 'Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York,' pays homage to the mom-and-pop shops of the Lower East Side and will remain open through August 12. Bedford + Bowery chatted with Karla Murray about her hopes and thoughts on the changing neighborhood. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. ..."
Bedford + Bowery

Brazil museum fire: ‘incalculable’ loss as 200-year-old Rio institution gutted

"Brazil’s oldest and most important historical and scientific museum has been consumed by fire, and much of its archive of 20 million items is believed to have been destroyed. The fire at Rio de Janeiro’s 200-year-old National Museum began after it closed to the public on Sunday and raged into the night. There were no reports of injuries, but the loss to Brazilian science, history and culture was incalculable, two of its vice-directors said. 'It was the biggest natural history museum in Latin America. We have invaluable collections. Collections that are over 100 years old,' Cristiana Serejo, one of the museum’s vice-directors, told the G1 news site. Marina Silva, a former environment minister and candidate in October’s presidential elections said the fire was like 'a lobotomy of the Brazilian memory'. ..."
Guardian (Video)

The B-52's - Give Me Back My Man (1980)

Wikipedia - "'Give Me Back My Man' is a song written and recorded by the American rock band The B-52's. It was released as the second single from their 1980 album Wild Planet and is one of many solo vocal performances from Cindy Wilson in the band's earlier years. 'Give Me Back My Man' was a staple in The B-52's concerts in the 1980s and was usually one of the first few songs played. Early on, it was played just as it was on the record, with Schneider playing extra synth and glockenspiel. After the release of the Party Mix! album in 1981, the band performed 'Give Me Back My Man' and others in the extended style in which they were presented on that album. ..."
Wikipedia
Genius (Audio)
YouTube: Give Me Back My Man (Live)

Your Next Trip? It’s Written in the Stars

A view from the Manning Park Resort in British Columbia.
"Like watching the sunset, seeking out the Big Dipper in the night sky is a vacation ritual. But in the past five years, according to experts, the term astrotourism has evolved to describe more intentional travel to places with dark skies and more visible stars. 'Astrotourism is any kind of tourism that involves the night sky or visiting facilities related to astronomy like observatories, and combining that with a broader sense of ecotourism where interaction with nature is what the visitor experience is about,' said John Barentine, the director of public policy at the International Dark-Sky Association, a Tucson-based nonprofit organization devoted to battling light pollution and certifying dark sky preserves where stars and planets shine brightly. ..."
NY Times

When Labor Day Meant Something

An engraving depicting the 1886 Haymarket affair
"Labor Day online specials at Walmart this year 'celebrate hard work with big savings.' For brick-and-mortar shoppers near my home in Chicago, several Walmart stores are open all 24 hours of Labor Day. Remember, this is a company so famously anti-union that it shut down a Canadian store rather than countenance the union its workers had just voted in. The fact that Walmart 'celebrates' Labor Day should draw laughter, derision, or at least a few eye-rolls. But it doesn’t—or at least not many. Somewhere along the line, Labor Day lost its meaning. ... Many politicians and commentators do their best to avoid any mention of organized labor when observing the holiday, maybe giving an obligatory nod to that abstract entity, 'the American Worker.' Labor Day, though, was meant to honor not just the individual worker, but what workers accomplish together through activism and organizing. Indeed, Labor Day in the 1880s, its first decade, was in many cities more like a general strike—often with the waving red flag of socialism and radical speakers critiquing capitalism—than a leisurely day off. ..."
The Atlantic
W - Labor Day
W - Haymarket affair
CBS: Trump blasts union leader on Labor Day (Video)

Wiffle ball

Wikipedia - "Wiffle ball is a variation of the sport of baseball designed for indoor or outdoor play in confined areas. The game is played using a perforated, light-weight, resilient plastic ball and a long, typically yellow, plastic bat. Miniature versions of baseball have been played for decades, including stickball, improvised by children, using everything from rolled up socks to tennis balls. The ball most commonly used in the game was invented by David N. Mullany at his home in Fairfield, Connecticut in 1953 when he designed a ball that curved easily for his 12-year-old son. It was named when his son and his friends would refer to a strikeout as a 'whiff'. ... The game became popular nationwide by the 1960s, and is played in backyards and on city streets and beaches. ..."
Wikipedia
Wiffle Ball
The Atlantic: The Contentious Physics of Wiffle Ball
A Brief History of Wiffle Ball (Video)
New Yorker: The Men Who Have Taken Wiffle Ball to a Crazy, Competitive Place
New Yorker: Wiffle Ball: A Gentleman’s Game (Video)
YouTube: The World's Greatest Wiffle Ball Tournament

History of American Protest Music: Which Side Are You On?

"It’s axiomatic: In hard times, the vulnerable suffer most. Although the Great Depression left no American untouched, those who lived in the penury of Kentucky coal country bore a greater burden. 'In the early thirties I had one of my babies starve to death,' recalled Kentucky singer Sarah Ogan Gunning in Voices From the Mountains. 'It literally happened — people starved to death. Not only my own baby, but the neighbors’ babies. You seed them starve to death too. And all you could do was go over and help wash and dress ‘em and lay ‘em out and sit with the mothers until they could put ‘em away.' On February 16, 1931, the Harlan County Coal Operators’ Association reduced their employees’ wages — already at subsistence level — by 10 percent. The miners responded by organizing a union. Union members were either fired and evicted from their company-owned homes, or beaten and killed. Soon there was a general strike. ..."
Longreads (Video)

V/A - Senegal 70 (2016)

"Few sounds capture tropical heat-induced laziness better than a full Latin orchestra in a reverie. Unpick those sounds, and each member of the orchestra is essential to a groove that lasts as long as it takes for ice to melt in a rum cocktail. Horns are sultry, drums are earthy, guitars ebb and swell in slow rhythms and the bass is thumped out in a simple yet weirdly penetrating assault. Forget sweating it out in an afrobeat gig. When the music is this well acclimatised, you either crash sprawled in a chair or, if you and your partner can muster the energy, plug directly into the rhythm by swaying to a slow dance. So in a place as humid and sweat drenched as a Dakar night club, it's no wonder how popular the Cuban ensembles who toured Senegal in the 1940s became. ..."
The Quietus
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: Senegal 70 (African, Highlife, Afro-Cuban compilation) 41:22

Ode to Gray

Vilhelm Hammershøi, Dust motes dancing in sunbeams, 1900.
"The color gray is no one’s color. It is the color of cubicles and winter camouflage, of sullage, of inscrutable complexity, of compromise. It is the perfect intermediate, an emissary for both black and white. It lingers, incognito, in this saturated world. It is the color of soldiers and battleships, despite its dullness. It is the color of the death of trees. The death of all life when consumed by fire. The color of industry and uniformity. It is both artless and unsettling, heralding both blandness and doom. It brings bad weather, augurs bleakness. It is the color other colors fade to once drained of themselves. It is the color of old age. Because I have no style, I defer to gray. I find it easier to dress in gray scale than to think. I buy in bulk, on sale, in black and white and shades between—some dishwater desolate, some pleasing winter mist. I own at least five cardigans in grandpa gray. ..."
The Paris Review

Joy Division - Transmission (1978)

Wikipedia - "'Transmission' is a song by English post-punk band Joy Division. Originally recorded in 1978 for the band's aborted self-titled album, it was later re-recorded the following year at a faster tempo and released by record label Factory as the band's debut single. 'Transmission" was released on 7" vinyl in October 1979 by record label Factory. ... Greil Marcus has a chapter on this song in his book The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs. According to Marcus, ' 'Transmission' is not an argument. It's a dramatization of the realization that the act of listening to the radio is a suicidal gesture. It will kill your mind. It will rob your soul.' Marcus also quotes the band's bassist Peter Hook about the importance of this song: 'We were doing a soundcheck at the Mayflower, in May, and we played 'Transmission': people had been moving around, and they all stopped to listen. I realized that was our first great song.' ..."
Wikipedia
Guardian - Ian Curtis: ‘His lyrics were so dark’
YouTube: Transmission, Novelty

2009 August: Factory: Manchester From Joy Division To Happy Mondays, 2010 November: Love Will Tear Us Apart, 2012 May: Unknown Pleasures, 2016 December: John Peel Session (1979), 2017 July: Closer (1980), 2018 January: She's Lost Control (1979), 2018 March: Unknown Pleasures

On the Trail of a Lover Boy in the Age of Enlightenment

Exhibition tableau, 18th-century Paris, “A Morning Toilette.” More than 250 paintings, furnishings and objects evoke a Pan-European social scene in which life took on the aspects of theater.
"His parents were actors, his grandfather made shoes; he did not seem born for great things. Giacomo Casanova, though, had assets that outshone the lack of money and title: boldness, wit, a gift for languages, and charm enough to slide into a seat at a cardinal’s dinner table or a countess’s bed. In his native Venice, in glittering Paris, and then across the continent, he reinvented himself as he went, playing the roles of author, courtier, entrepreneur, spy. The actors’ son trod the boards of a different stage, one that stretched from London to Constantinople. The voracious Venetian hovers like a governing spirit over the art of the 18th century in 'Casanova’s Europe,' a vivacious and often ingenious exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts here. Now his name is a bare synonym for sexual prowess, or worse — Casanova went to bed with his own daughter, and several of his romances fell well short of the contemporary bar of affirmative consent. ..."
NY Times
MFA: Casanova’s Europe - Art, Pleasure, and Power in the 18th Century (Video)

“Bacino di San Marco, Venice” (around 1738), Canaletto’s painting of boatmen plying the lagoon between San Marco and San Giorgio Maggiore.

Trump’s Top Targets in the Russia Probe Are Experts in Organized Crime

"Bruce Ohr. Lisa Page. Andrew Weissmann. Andrew McCabe. President Donald Trump has relentlessly attacked these FBI and Justice Department officials as dishonest 'Democrats' engaged in a partisan 'witch hunt' led by the special counsel determined to tie his campaign to Russia. But Trump’s attacks have also served to highlight another thread among these officials and others who have investigated his campaign: their extensive experience in probing money laundering and organized crime, particularly as they pertain to Russia. As Trump praised and defended Russian President Vladimir Putin along the campaign trail, financial analysts and money-laundering experts questioned whether the real-estate mogul had any financial incentives—including business ties or outstanding debt—to seek better relations with Moscow. Robert Mueller, the special counsel appointed in May 2017 to investigate a potential conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Moscow to defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, assembled a team with revealing expertise in fraud, racketeering, money laundering, and other financial crimes. ..."
The Atlantic

Found in a Junk Shop: Secrets of an Undiscovered Visionary Artist

"His story is one shrouded in mystery, almost lost forever, intertwined with secret societies, hidden codes, otherworldly theories and seemingly impossible inventions before his time. Unseen for decades and salvaged by a junk dealer in the 1960s from a trash heap outside a house in Texas, his entire body of work would later go on to marvel the intellectual world. But during his lifetime, Charles Dellschau had only been known as the grouchy local butcher. In 1969, used furniture dealer Fred Washington bought 12 large discarded notebooks from a garbage collector, where they found a new home in his warehouse under a pile of dusty carpets. In 1969, art history student, Mary Jane Victor, was scouring through his bazaar of castaways when she came upon the mysterious works of a certain Charles Dellschau. Inside the scrapbooks she discovered a remarkable collection of strange watercolours and collage pieces. More than 2,500 intricate drawings of flying machines alongside cryptic newspaper clippings filled the pages, crudely sewn together with shoelaces and thread. ..."
MessyNessyChic

Arundhati Roy: Brilliant, troubled and troubling

Unsilenced: Arundhati Roy has repeatedly spoken out against the Indian government’s policies. She is also sharply critical of capitalism and refuses to deify Mahatma Gandhi.
"In the 1780s, the Dutch East India Company moved the eastern border of the Cape to the Fish River. Under European law, this act tacitly affirmed the trekboers’ claim to the land, which would plunge them and successive colonial administrations into wars for 100 years against the rightful owners, the amaXhosa and Khoikhoi clans. It was early during that decade that a building in Cape Town, now known as the Cape Heritage Hotel, was built. By whom? ... After a 20-year hiatus, Roy released her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, last year and is on her first book tour of South Africa. Two cities, one week — then she’ll be gone. Holding a dark earthen teacup in her palms, she admits to being no expert on South African history and the country’s present social realities. But, she adds, she’s not a complete stranger to them either. Her self-admitted, modest knowledge about the country raises some questions. Did her publisher, Penguin Random House, know about the silenced, preferably unheard, histories of the hotel when it was chosen as the place where Roy, of all people, would hold court with pre-selected, pre-vetted journalists? ..."
Mail & Guardian
amazon: The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

2008 May: Arundhati Roy, 2010 April: "Walking With The Comrades", 2015 November: Politics by Other Means, 2018 July: What is the Morally Appropriate Language in Which to Think and Write?

We Saw Nuns Kill Children: The Ghosts of St. Joseph’s Catholic Orphanage

"... Sally figured the boy fell from the window in 1944 or so, because she was moving to the 'big girls' dormitory that day. Girls usually moved when they were 6, though residents of St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Burlington, Vermont, did not always have a clear sense of their age — birthdays, like siblings and even names, being one of the many human attributes that were stripped from them when they passed through its doors. She recounted his fall in a deposition on Nov. 6, 1996, as part of a remarkable group of lawsuits that 28 former residents brought against the nuns, the diocese, and the social agency that oversaw the orphanage. I watched the deposition — all 19 hours of grainy, scratchy videotape — more than two decades later. By that time sexual abuse scandals had ripped through the Catholic Church, shattering the silence that had for so long protected its secrets. It was easier for accusers in general to come forward, and easier for people to believe their stories, even if the stories sounded too awful to be true. Even if they had happened decades ago, when the accusers were only children. Even if the people they were accusing were pillars of the community. ..."
BuzzFeedNews (Audio)
YouTube: We Saw Nuns Kill Children: The Ghosts of St. Joseph’s Catholic Orphanage