"PARIS — Dry leaves rustled under Benoît Gallot’s footsteps as he rambled his way across the rugged terrain. Stopping by shrubs of laurel and elder, he pulled aside their foliage to uncover a crumbling stone colonnade. A parakeet, perched up in a nearby tree, squawked. It looked like a scene deep in one of France’s luxuriant forests — but this was inside one of the world’s most visited burial grounds, the Père-Lachaise cemetery, nestled between traffic-laden avenues in eastern Paris.The cemetery has long been known as the final resting place for celebrated artists, including Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde and Édith Piaf. ...”
Elegy of a Voyage - Aleksandr Sokurov (2001)
"There is perhaps no other living filmmaker whose work reveals the difference between dramatic and lyric in cinema better than Aleksandr Sokurov. His films and videos exist less to tell stories – although there is usually the thread of some plot or situation – than to expand a moment in time, a sense of place, or an emotion, often to epic duration. Throughout his career, his video elegies series has taken this lyrical impulse to its extreme, achieving a new height in contemplative art. ... Elegy of a Voyage, commissioned by the Boijmans Van Beunigen Museum in Rotterdam, is Sokoruv's meditation on classic painting, specifically Breughel's The Tower of Babel. The journey of the title is the one that brings him into the painting's holy presence. ...”
The battle for Kyiv revisited: the litany of mistakes that cost Russia a quick win
"Six days before Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, a small group of western intelligence officers were briefing on the Russian military plan. On a quiet table, in an unfashionable chain restaurant in London, an astonishing strategy was recounted: a blitzkrieg to surround Kyiv and Ukraine’s other big cities, followed by a ‘kill list’ operation run by Russian FSB intelligence to eliminate Ukraine’s national and local leaders.Western intelligence was certain of the Kremlin’s intentions. But many of the Russian soldiers about to start the biggest war in Europe since the second world war had no clear idea what was to come. Bored troops, nominally on exercises in Khoyniki, Belarus, 30 miles north of Ukraine, were selling their diesel fuel in the week before the invasion and passing the time by drinking. ...”
On the Main Road. Retreat, escape… by the Russian painter Vasily Vereshchagin, depicts the startling defeat of Napoleon I in Russia in 1812.
The Great Authorial Hook-Up Chart
"When you think of the literary world, ‘sex appeal’ isn't necessarily the first thing that comes to mind. But your favorite authors weren't just using their imaginations when it came to writing about sex. A little digging will show that French novelist Colette had an affair with her stepson, Simone de Beauvoir recruited lovers for her husband and everyone else was basically hooking up with each other. As you can see on the chart above, it doesn't take much to get from Oscar Wilde to Roald Dahl. ...”
The Webb Telescope Is Just Getting Started
"So far it’s been eye candy from heaven: The black vastness of space teeming with enigmatic, unfathomably distant blobs of light. Ghostly portraits of Neptune, Jupiter and other neighbors we thought we knew already. Nebulas and galaxies made visible by the penetrating infrared eyes of the James Webb Space Telescope. The telescope, named for James Webb, the NASA administrator during the buildup to the Apollo moon landings, is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. ...”
Annotated views of the Cosmic Cliffs, indicating some of Megan Reiter’s observations.
Ukraine war: Five ways conflict could go in 2023
"... Those who seek to invade another country anywhere across the great Eurasian steppes are condemned eventually to winter in it. Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin all had to keep their armies moving in the face of a steppes winter, and now - his invasion going backwards on the ground - Vladimir Putin is digging his forces in for the winter to await a new Russian offensive in the spring.Both sides need a pause but the Ukrainians are better equipped and motivated to keep going, and we can expect them to maintain the pressure, at least in the Donbas. Around Kreminna and Svatove they are very close to a big breakthrough that would throw Russian forces 40 miles back to the next natural defensive line, close to where their invasion effectively began in February. ...”
Destroyed Russian tank in liberated town of Sviatohirsk
Tango: The Art History of Love – Robert Farris Thompson (2005)
"... With the publication of Tango: The Art History of Love last autumn, [Robert Farris] Thompson gave that century-old, planet-wide phenomenon its black spring, detailing roots in Montevideo’s candombe rituals and black gaucho milongas out on the pampas. Kongo precedents prep the dance ground, then a knife pegged in the floorboards serves as razor pylon while 1930’s tanguero Cachafaz bests rival El Negro Santillán. Tango returns the drumless music formulated in South America’s whitest land to the hands of black innovators such as bassist Leopoldo Thompson, who fueled legendary orchestras led by Firpo, Canaro, and de Caro, and Horacio Salgán, whose hot sound spiced with arrastres — slurred low notes that incite the dance — spurred Ella Fitzgerald to initiate Salgán’s 1965 disc, Buenos Aires at 3 a.m. ...”
2014 April: Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy, 2017 February: Canons of the Cool, 2021 December: Robert Farris Thompson, ‘Guerrilla Scholar’ of African Art, Dies at 88
The History of Barcelona, in 26 Interactive Maps
"It’s now possible to flip through the key chapters of Barcelona’s life as a city, through the The Historic Charter of Barcelona. This is a new interactive mapping project tracking the history of the capital of Spain’s Catalonia region from 150 A.D. to 2010, created by an urban-planning and data-viz collective called 300.000 Km/s (whose projects we’ve written about in the past). ...”
The revenge of history in Ukraine: year of war has shaken up world order
"The Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko recalls a quote attributed to Otto von Bismarck: “Wars are not won by generals, but by schoolteachers and parish priests.” It’s a country’s taught collective memory, its shared sense of its own history, that are the decisive instruments for mobilisation, and are as important on the battlefield as weaponry.Few conflicts have been so shaped by the chief actors’ sense of their own national story as the Ukrainian war that began in February. It is the competing grand narratives of the past, not just in Russia and Ukraine, but in Germany, France, Poland, the Baltics, the UK, the US, and even the global south, that make this war so hard to resolve.Indeed, sometimes this war feels less like the end of history and more like the revenge of history. ...”
A section of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in Lubmin, Germany. ...
Haitian Revolution
"The Haitian Revolution ... was a successful insurrection by self-liberated slaves against French colonial rule in Saint-Domingue, now the sovereign state of Haiti. The revolt began on 22 August 1791, and ended in 1804 with the former colony's independence. It involved black, biracial, French, Spanish, British, and Polish participants—with the ex-slave Toussaint Louverture emerging as Haiti's most prominent general. The revolution was the only slave uprising that led to the founding of a state which was both free from slavery (though not from forced labour) and ruled by non-whites and former captives. It is now widely seen as a defining moment in the history of the Atlantic World. Haiti at the beginning of the Haitian revolution in 1791. The revolution's effects on the institution of slavery were felt throughout the Americas. ...”
The Battle for Palm Tree Hill - January Suchodolski, 1845
Diary Days from Christmas Past
"With December 25th fast approaching we have put together a little collection of entries for Christmas Day from an eclectic mix of different diaries spanning five centuries, from 1599 to 1918. Amid famed diarists such as the wife-beating Samuel Pepys, the distinctly non-festive John Adams, and the rhapsodic Thoreau, there are a sprinkling of daily jottings from relative unknowns - many speaking apart from loved ones, at war, sea or in foreign climes. All diaries are housed at the Internet Archive - click the link below each extract to take you to the source. ...”
In Ukraine, Christmas Lights Defy Darkness of War, and Children Ask for Peace
"KYIV, Ukraine — Hundreds of missiles and drones aimed at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure have left millions of people without power — and dozens of cities without Christmas lights.It was no accident that the wave of attacks came before the holidays and in the darkest and coldest time of year, said Denys Shmyhal, Ukraine’s prime minister. ‘It is important for the Russians,’ he said, ‘that Christmas and New Year’s Eve pass in darkness in Ukraine.’ With that in mind, some Ukrainian cities decided to be inventive with their Christmas decorations — finding ways to win back the season while not wasting precious electricity or disappointing children as holiday lights blink out during the attacks. In the usually serene square of St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, the capital, the authorities put up what they called the Christmas Tree of Invincibility. It was decorated with papier-mâché white doves and a strip of blue and yellow lights — the colors of the Ukrainian flag — powered by a diesel generator. ...”
A square in Kyiv that is usually filled with entertainment and games for children at Christmastime, but such displays are rare this year.
Why there are no football matches on Christmas Day
"This Christmas Day, after ingesting uncomfortable amounts of food and medicinal levels of alcohol, people across the USA will be able to flop down on the couch and gorge themselves on sport too.If the three NFL games — including reigning Super Bowl champions the LA Rams hosting the Denver Broncos — don’t grab you, then perhaps the three NBA fixtures might, with the LA Lakers in action, among others. Not so for Premier League fans in England, though. ...”
The 1959 Project
"... What is The 1959 Project? Most jazz fans find themselves suffering from golden age syndrome at some point or another; for the casual listener it might define their relationship with the music, given that so many of the genre’s seminal (and best-selling) records are now well-worn classics. A fair number of them, in fact, were released or recorded 60 years ago, and thus form the inspiration for this (quite probably foolhardy) endeavor. But for me, and I imagine for others, the best thing about jazz music isn’t the albums. ...” About
March 26, 1959 - John Coltrane in the studio, 1958 (Video)
Christmas Eve missile strike kills at least 8 in Ukraine city of Kherson
"The liberation of Kherson by Kyiv troops more than a month ago hasn’t brought peace of mind nor a feeling of security to residents of the southern Ukrainian city. Moscow launched a missile strike on the city Saturday morning, killing at least eight people and injuring another 58, with 18 of the injured were in serious condition, according to local officials. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other Kyiv officials published graphic pictures of burning cars and people lying in blood on the streets. ... Bridget Brink, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, called Saturday’s assault ‘another brutal attack by Russia on recently-liberated Kherson. Truly horrific, especially on Christmas Eve’. Kherson, which had a pre-war population of about 300,000, became a target for Russian troops after their withdrawal from the city and other settlements on the western bank of the Dnipro River to the eastern bank in November in an attempt to avoid being cut off by the artillery of advancing Ukrainian troops. ...”
Intensified daily strikes force civilians to choose between risking their lives staying in Kherson or leaving the city for safer Kyiv-controlled areas of the country
Clarence Carter - “Back Door Santa” (1968)
"A slice of greasy blues soul that draws from the Willie Dixon classic ‘Back Door Man,’ Clarence Carter’s ‘Back Door Santa,’ co-written with Marcus Daniel for the 1968 compilation Soul Christmas, adds a touch of raunch to the holiday celebrations. ‘I ain’t like old Saint Nick,’ Carter barks over a bleating horn section and chopping funk guitar, ‘he don’t come but once a year. I come runnin’ with my presents every time you call me dear.’ ...”
Jan. 6 Panel Issues Final Report, Placing Blame for Capitol Riot on ‘One Man’
"Declaring that the central cause of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was ‘one man,’ the House committee investigating the assault delivered its final report on Thursday, describing in extensive detail how former President Donald J. Trump had carried out what it called ‘a multipart plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election’ and offering recommendations for steps to assure nothing like it could happen again.It revealed new evidence about Mr. Trump’s conduct, and recommended that Congress consider whether to bar Mr. Trump and his allies from holding office in the future under the 14th Amendment’s ban on insurrectionists. ...”
Caught on Camera, Traced by Phone: The Russian Military Unit That Killed Dozens in Bucha
"They were mothers, fathers, children and grandparents. Their lives became intertwined by a tragic fate: For weeks in March, their bodies would lie along a single street in Bucha. The photographs of these victims, published widely after Bucha was liberated, became emblematic of the indiscriminate way Russia would wage war in towns and cities across the country. Russian officials denied that their soldiers killed civilians in Bucha. They claimed that the images of the bodies were ‘fake’. Our visual investigation identifies the Russian military unit responsible for many of the killings along Yablunska Street. Watch the video here.The New York Times has identified 36 of the victims along Yablunska Street. We spoke to dozens of family members, friends and colleagues in Bucha to identify the people in the photographs — and used satellite imagery, cellphone videos, social media posts and text messages to retrace their final moments. ...”
New York: 1962-1964
"A historical exhibition aims to show us past life, but sometimes the retrospective becomes reflective, a two-way mirror seeing through to the present. So it is with New York 1962–1964 at The Jewish Museum, certainly at the moment our fair city’s most enveloping visual and aural museum experience. With more than 150 works spanning vanguard fine art, outré fashion, cult film, political periodicals, and documentary videos of radical dance and news, the real stars of the show are its wranglers. ...”
Kafka’s Diaries, 1911
"The following is drawn from Franz Kafka’s 1911 notebooks, to be published by Schocken Books in a new translation by Ross Benjamin in January 2023. Benjamin’s translation preserves the diaries’ distinctive writing, inconsistencies and all. Between March 19 and 28, 1911, Franz Kafka (1883-1924) attended several lectures given by Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) at the invitation of the Prague chapter of the Theosophical Society. After the end of his lecture series, Steiner remained in Prague for two more days, which were reserved for personal conversations at the Hotel Victoria, where he was staying. The audience that Kafka describes in the following diary entry probably took place on March 29. ...”
Zelenskyy delivers impassioned plea to Congress, asking for more
"In an emotional speech to Congress Wednesday night that party leaders compared to the wartime pleas of World War II, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged lawmakers to continue providing weapons and aid to help Ukraine fend off Russia through the winter and beyond. ‘You can speed up our victory. I know it,’ Zelenskyy said in the address, dressed in his battle fatigues and combat boots on the dais in the House chamber. ‘Let the world see that the United States are here.’ Throughout his roughly 20-minute speech delivered entirely in English, the Ukrainian president relayed his case for continual support, underscoring his gratefulness for that which has been provided — while saying that it’s not nearly enough. ... And judging by the sound of thunderous applause echoing throughout the House chamber, that message was mostly received. Hundreds of lawmakers packed the aisles with all the pomp and circumstance, and even the selfies, of a State of the Union address, many decked in royal blue and yellow blazers and scarves to honor Ukraine. ...”
Joe Strummer's 10 greatest songs
"Joe Strummer will always be remembered as one of the leading voices of the burning punk movement. Not only as he fronted the only band that matters, The Clash, but because he took his ethics off the stage and into every single thing he ever did. That said, his musical influence stretches far further than the confines of a single genre, band or movement. For many, Strummer embodied the mythical spirit of punk that we’ve all tried to ignite in ourselves once in a while, but Joe, as he was lovably known by thousands of friends met at Glastonbury’s stone circle, did it with grace, poise, humanity and, above all else, a sense of self that few could fuck with. ...”
Repertory Movie Theaters of New York City: Havens for Revivals, Indies and the Avant-Garde, 1960-1994
"Ben Davis’ excellent new book thoroughly explores the history, culture and importance of the repertory movie theaters that influenced the art film scene in New York City from the 1960s into the 1990s. In this well organized and impressively researched monograph, the author explains and analyzes the ways that the major repertory film theaters contributed to the film scene and to the creation of a cinephilic community – both casual and extreme- among a diverse group of filmgoers in New York City. ...”
amazon: Repertory Movie Theaters of New York City: Havens for Revivals, Indies and the Avant-Garde, 1960-1994
As Ukraine Readies for a Second Year at War, Prospect of Stalemate Looms
"As the war in Ukraine soon enters its second year, Ukrainian troops will find it much more challenging to reclaim territory from Russian forces who are focused on defending their remaining land gains rather than making a deeper push into the country, American officials say. Over the course of the first 10 months of the war, the Ukrainian military has — with significant American support — outmaneuvered an incompetent Russian military, fought it to a standstill and then retaken hundreds of square miles and the only regional capital that Russia had captured. Despite relentless Russian attacks on civilian power supplies, Ukraine has still kept up the momentum on the front lines since September. But the tide of the war is likely to change in the coming months, as Russia improves its defenses and pushes more soldiers to the front lines, making it more difficult for Ukraine to retake the huge swaths of territory it lost this year, according to U.S. government assessments. ...”
POLITICO - Christmas comes early: Ukrainian church allows December 25 celebrations for first time (Audio)
The Ukrainian military has been reliant on American intelligence reports that pinpoint where the Russian army is at its weakest.
Patti Smith at Bowery Ballroom (12-30-2001)
"On December 31st, 2001, Patti Smith and her band played at the Bowery Ballroom! This was the second of a two-night stint at the venue and the show contains a nice mix of Smith’s poetry readings and emotional performances of classic songs like ‘Summer Cannibals,’ ‘Frederick’, and ‘Redondo Beach.’ Patti started the show with a very powerful poem reflecting on the events of 9/11 and the immediate aftermath. The band rings in the new year at around the 10-minute mark of Part 3, right after a rousing rendition of ‘Be My Baby.’ ...”
African Origins and Adaptations in African American Music
"Africans brought their own cultures and way of life to the Americas. As enslaved Africans they participated in African rituals and music-making events. They told stories, sang, danced, played African and African-derived instruments, and more broadly, celebrated life as they had done in Africa. In North America their introduction to European culture and music came from participating in or witnessing the religious and social activities of slaveholders, which they reinterpreted to conform to their own cultural practices and musical values through processes of adaption and resistance. ...”
The Old Plantation: Slave Dance and Music,ca. 1785-1795. Watercolor on paper, attributed to John Rose, Beaufort County, SC.
A Culture in the Cross Hairs
"Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has taken the lives of tens of thousands
of soldiers and civilians, and unleashed the most severe humanitarian
and refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. It has also dealt a
grievous blow to Ukrainian culture: to its museums and monuments, its
grand universities and rural libraries, its historic churches and
contemporary mosaics.
Since the invasion in February, The New York Times’s Visual
Investigations team has been tracking evidence of cultural destruction
across Ukraine. By assessing hundreds of photos and videos from social
media and Ukrainian government databases, analyzing satellite imagery
and speaking to witnesses, we have identified and independently verified
339 sites nationwide that sustained substantial damage. ... These
documented cases represent only a partial picture of the devastation,
with much of what is still unaccounted for believed lost.
Libraries, architectural treasures, statues, churches, houses of
culture, museums, cinemas, sports facilities, theaters and
archaeological sites have been damaged or destroyed. ...”
A newspaper magnate builds a soundproof, Venetian-style mansion steps from Fifth Avenue
"The year 1900 wasn’t a good one for Joseph Pulitzer—the rich and influential owner of the New York World, one of Gilded Age Gotham’s most popular and sensational newspapers. His elegant mansion at 10 East 55th Street, designed by Stanford White, had been destroyed by a fire earlier that year. Two household servants died in the blaze, according to architectural historian Andrew Alpern, author of Luxury Apartment Houses in Manhattan: an Illustrated History. His health was in bad shape as well. ...”
The Pagan School
"‘The Pagan School‘ is an essay by the French writer Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1852, it is critical of the neopaganism of its time, which existed in explicit form among supporters of the French Revolution of 1848. From this starting point, Baudelaire criticised a broader trend of striving for material beauty and sensory pleasure, which he said would leave people unsatisfied and make it hard to maintain relationships. ... ‘The Pagan School’ is in line with Baudelaire's aversion to pantheistic views and contains a specifically modern rejection of classicism. It addresses the modern idea of the god Pan as an embodiment of revolutionary momentum, which Baudelaire viewed as artificial. ...”
2009 February: Charles Baudelaire, 2012 December: Impressionism and Fashion, 2017 January: How Baudelaire Revolutionized Modern Literature
Baudelaire preferred Honoré Daumier's comical visions of ancient history and described Sappho (pictured here by Daumier) as a "patroness of hysterical women".
Argentina, caught in economic depression, gets something to cheer in World Cup win
"BUENOS AIRES — An incredibly tense World Cup final, if not the best of all time. An extraordinary victory for Argentina that crowns the career of superstar Lionel Messi. A new hope for a country in deep crisis. Argentina beat France in a penalty shoot-out after the match ended tied 3-3, causing hundreds of thousands of citizens to pour into the streets of Buenos Aires to celebrate, chant and dance. The obelisk, the landmark monument of the South American capital that houses over 17 million people in its broader agglomeration, was quickly covered in a sea of people. ...”
Argentina will hold general elections in October next year
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