"The International Criminal Court accused the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, of war crimes and issued a warrant for his arrest on Friday, a highly symbolic step that deepened his isolation and punctured the aura of impunity that has surrounded him since he ordered troops into Ukraine a year ago. The court cited Mr. Putin’s responsibility for the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children, thousands of whom have been sent to Russia since the invasion. It also issued a warrant for Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, the public face of the Kremlin-sponsored program that transfers the children out of Ukraine. There is little prospect of Mr. Putin standing trial in a courtroom anytime soon. The International Criminal Court cannot try defendants in absentia and Russia, which is not a party to the court, dismissed the warrants as ‘meaningless.’ ...”
Mark Stewart - As The Veneer Of Democracy Starts To Fade (Reissue 1988)
"... Probably one of the most chilling, bleak, heavy, and monochrome albums ever recorded, _As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade_ is probably the epitome of, to thieve an album title from Chris and Cosey, Techno Primitiv. The album is pretty much coloured in black and white with scraping shades of grey in between. The beats will rattle your soundsystem (particularly if one has the 1995 reissue), the shrieking of instruments and samples are often cringe-worthy (particularly on ‘Bastards’), and you will barely notice that there is an almost complete absence of bass since so much is going on during most of the songs and everything sounds horrifyingly shrill. Imagine the Persian Gulf war combined with Soviet radio screaming in your ears through bullhorns. ...”
Souls Grown Deep like the Rivers
"For generations, Black artists from the American South have forged a unique art tradition. Working in near isolation from established practices, they have created masterpieces that articulate America’s painful past – the inhuman practice of enslavement, the cruel segregationist policies of the Jim Crow era, and institutionalised racism. Drawing its title from the work of Langston Hughes, Souls Grown Deep like the Rivers brings together sculpture, paintings, reliefs, drawings, and quilts, most of which will be seen in the UK and Europe for the first time. It will also feature the celebrated quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend, Alabama and the neighbouring communities of Rehoboth and Alberta. Made from the materials available locally – like clay, driftwood, roots, soil, recycled and cast-off objects – the 64 works range from the mid 20th century to today. ...”
Thornton Dial, Stars of Everything, 2004.
Ukraine conflict: What war crimes is Russia accused of?
"The International Criminal Court in the Hague has issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin. It accuses him of being responsible for war crimes in Ukraine, including the unlawful deportation of children. Russia's Commissioner for Children's Rights, Ms Maria Lvova-Belova, is also subject to an arrest warrant.According to Ukraine, tens of thousands of possible war crimes have been carried out by Russian forces since they invaded Ukraine in February last year. What is a war crime? ’Even war has rules’, as the International Committee of the Red Cross says. These are set out in treaties called the Geneva Conventions along with other international laws and agreements. ...”
NCAA Tournament Beer Guide: A local brew for every team. Please read responsibly
"The NCAA Tournament is a month’s worth of emotional overload. A bright, shining star we can’t help but stare at. It will consume the universe for the next month. And those who watch along may consume some frosty refreshments. Which brings us to the question we ask every spring: What’s the best beverage to pair with watching every team in the field of 68? That’s right: Welcome to The Athletic’s third-annual men’s NCAA Tournament Beer Guide. For three Marches now, we’ve reached out to local breweries with one question: If you could drink just one of your beers while watching the NCAA Tournament, which would it be? Occasionally, we were able to test the product and provide a mini-review of our own. For journalism. ...”
Southeast Missouri State, The brewery: Many Good Things Brewing, The beer: Frog Bones Imperial IPA
Albert Camus, Stranger in a Strange Land: New York
"When a boat carrying Albert Camus sailed into New York Harbor in March 1946, he was hailed as a moral emissary from war-ravaged Europe and the glamorous embodiment of a newfangled philosophy known as Existentialism. The American publication of his novel ‘The Stranger’ was celebrated on the roof of the Hotel Astor, and Vogue published a portrait by Cecil Beaton, showing Camus smiling slyly from noirish shadows. But a year later, Camus recalled his three months amid the city’s ‘swarming lights’ and frantic streets with a mixture of awe and bafflement. ...”
2011 October: Albert Camus on Nihilism, 2014 November: Albert Camus: Soccer Goalie, 2015 May: LISTEN: New Cave And Ellis Soundtrack, 2016 April: Anarchism and Friedrich Nietzsche, 2016 April: Algerian Chronicles (2013), 2017 November: The Stranger (1942), 2018 July: Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (1960), 2019 September: Les Pieds-Noirs: Algeria’s Forgotten Footballers, 2020 March: The Plague (1947), 2020 September: An Animated Introduction to Albert Camus’ Existentialism, a Philosophy Making a Comeback in Our Dysfunctional Times, 2021 October: Albert Camus on the Responsibility of the Artist: To “Create Dangerously” (1957), 2022 May: Albert Camus: The philosopher who resisted despair, 2022 September: Deep Emotion, Plain Speech: Camus’s The Plague
‘I Live in Hell’: The Psychic Wounds of Ukraine’s Soldiers
"The soldier cannot speak about what happened to him. It’s been a month since ‘the tragedy,’ as he calls it. When the subject arises, he freezes and looks at the floor. He gulps for air. He cannot say it. His doctor, a motherly woman, speaks for him: There were four of them. They were stationed near the front line, in eastern Ukraine, and on that night they shot a Russian drone from the sky. A small victory. Then its wreckage hurtled down, hunks of ragged metal slicing into the men below. He was the only one left standing. In the numb hours that followed, someone came to collect the others — one dead, two wounded — and he was left to hold the position alone through that freezing night and into the next day. ...”
Inside a psychiatric hospital in Kyiv, the growing mental trauma of the war is written on every soldier’s face.
Composers Find Transcendence, and Inspiration, at the Club
"BERLIN — In 2018, after a visit to Berghain, the storied techno club here, the saxophonist and curator Ryan Muncy called the composer Ash Fure, a friend and collaborator. ‘God spoke to me in the subwoofers,’ Muncy told her. ... She and Muncy went straight to Berghain. ‘I remember so vividly every single detail,’ Fure said in a video interview. She recalled watching as the other club-goers shed their coats and donned futuristic outfits. She explored the labyrinthine architecture, discovering vantage points from which to watch and listen. She got close to the famous Funktion-One sound system, which engulfed her with its volume but never hurt her ears. She stayed for 14 hours. ...”
The composer Ash Fure performing “Hive Rise,” a work that got its start at the club Berghain in Berlin, at the Geffen Contemporary in Los Angeles.
Behind the Scenes at Beyond The Streets London / Recap
"Behind the scenes at ‘Beyond the Streets London’ is a hive of activity, with artists deeply focused on installing their work and seeking assistance with tools and equipment. Curators, organizers, and lighting professionals are bustling up and down the stairs, carrying props, or ladders, and communicating with vendors and artists via text message. Salespeople are diligently crafting wall texts to accompany the art pieces. It’s a few hours before showtime, yet everything is somehow accomplished just as the first guests arrive for the preview. ...”
AgnesB at Beyond The Streets – London. Saatchi Gallery.
Ukraine war: Life in Mariupol under Russian occupation
"Finding people willing to speak to me from Mariupol was never going to be easy. After 10 months of Russian occupation, fear and distrust are the two most frequent responses I encountered when looking for someone who could tell me how things really are in Mariupol, in Ukraine's south-east. ... Russian forces put the people of Mariupol through a horrific months-long siege, before finally capturing it last May. I eventually found three residents willing to speak to me at length: a local city councillor, a retired pensioner and an engineer. All spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals from the local authorities installed by Russia (who block access to occupied Ukraine by Western journalists). They paint a picture of a massively expensive campaign conducted by Russia to win over the hearts and minds of the people of Mariupol, and rebuild a city damaged beyond recognition by Russia's own troops. ...”
The invading Russian forces damaged some 90% of residential buildings in Mariupol
Seedings for N.C.A.A. Men’s Tournament Show Wide-Open Field
"When the N.C.A.A. Division I men’s basketball tournament committee members hunkered down in Indianapolis over the weekend, they pored over spreadsheets, stared at a bank of televisions, sharpened their pencils and massaged their temples to figure out how to best seed the 68-team tournament field. They might have saved themselves all that time — and anguish — by picking names out of a hat. This year’s tournament, which was announced on Sunday night, has an on-any-given-Sunday feel, where blue bloods don’t feel so rich, midmajors don’t feel so middling and every team enters with questions — even at the very top. ...”
The Athletic - NCAA Tournament Midwest Region analysis: Houston, Texas, Indiana and more, NCAA Tournament West Region analysis: Kansas, UCLA, Gonzaga and more, NCAA Tournament East Region analysis: Purdue, Duke, Kentucky and more, NCAA Tournament South Region analysis: Alabama, Arizona and more
Eyre Transmissions XXII: Interview With Hypnagogic Dark Ambient Composer, Ajna
"For the past several years, Ajna has been on fire! The Dark Ambient producer has consistently released great albums spanning sub-genres such as isolationism, drone, hauntology, and other experimental aspects of electronic music. Whatever is on the radar for any particular album, you can rest assure that the results are beyond reproach. Recently I was fortunate to have a few email interactions with the mastermind behind Ajna to get a greater viewpoint of the music, influences, the ardor behind the album artwork and everything in between. The results are embedded in this congenial interview with Ajna and on display is an endless passion for music, photography and spiritual wellbeing. ...”
In Fields Sown With Bombs, Ukraine’s Farmers Risk Deadly Harvest
"BERYSLAV, Ukraine — Oleksandr Hordienko stepped gingerly into a wheat field that had recently served as a Russian tank position, following closely behind an assistant with a metal detector. He stopped when he came to a row of metal disks glinting in the late-winter sun. They were tank mines, hundreds of them, laid out in a checkerboard pattern across his field and presenting a deadly conundrum before the spring planting season. Farmers who choose to climb into their tractors and work their land risk death or dismemberment by the mines, shells and other ordnance that litter the fields. Those who do not risk an economic crisis: The fighting has already cost the southern Kherson region three harvests, and there is no sign that farming will resume its role as an engine of Ukraine’s economy anytime soon. ...”
Piles of wheat rotting in a half-destroyed grain storage facility at a farm complex in the village of a Shyroke, Ukraine, near the city of Kherson in February.
Long-Lost Letters Bring Word, at Last
"In a love letter from 1745 decorated with a doodle of a heart shot through with arrows, MarÃa Clara de Aialde wrote to her husband, Sebastian, a Spanish sailor working in the colonial trade with Venezuela, that she could ‘no longer wait’ to be with him. Later that same year, an amorous French seaman who signed his name M. Lefevre wrote from a French warship to a certain Marie-Anne Hoteé back in Brest: ‘Like a gunner sets fire to his cannon, I want to set fire to your powder.’ Fifty years later, a missionary in Suriname named Lene Wied, in a lonely letter back to Germany, complained that war on the high seas had choked off any news from home: ‘Two ships which have been taken by the French probably carried letters addressed to me.’ None of those lines ever reached their intended recipients. British warships instead snatched those letters, and scores more, from aboard merchant ships during wars from the 1650s to the early 19th century. ...”
Cooking with Florine Stettheimer - Valerie Stivers
"The painter and poet Florine Stettheimer should have been easy to cook from. Her poetry, commercially published for the first time in the 2010 collection Crystal Flowers, has a section devoted to ‘comestibles’—including airy tributes to ham, bread, and tomatoes with Russian dressing—and her paintings often portray food. She was born to a wealthy German-Jewish family in New York in the late eighteen hundreds, part of a social circle that included Neustadters and Guggenheims, and she held salons that were a Who’s Who of the New York art world. (Marcel Duchamp, Carl Van Vechten, and Leo Stein were regulars.) ...”
Major Russian missile barrage slams targets across Ukraine
"Russia unleashed ‘a massive rocket attack’ that hit critical infrastructure and residential buildings in 10 regions of Ukraine, the country’s president said Thursday, with officials reporting at least six deaths in the largest such night-time attack in three weeks. Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the barrage that came while many people slept as an attempt by Moscow ‘to intimidate Ukrainians again. The occupiers can only terrorize civilians. That’s all they can do,’ Zelenskyy said in an online statement. The war has largely ground to a battlefield stalemate over the winter. The Kremlin’s forces started targeting Ukraine’s power supply last October in an apparent attempt to demoralize the civilian population. The barrages later became less frequent, with analysts speculating Russia may have been running low on ammunition. The last massive barrage took place on Feb. 16. ...”
Smoke billows after a Russian missile strike in Kyiv on Thursday.
The old brick city by the Atlantic - John Wieners's Boston haunts
"For almost thirty years, John Wieners lived meagerly and humbly in the same apartment in Beacon Hill; 44 Joy Street, Suite 10 as he called it. Joy Street, originally called Belknap Lane, named after the Colonial Apothecary, Dr. John Joy, with its history of livery stables, was his home. Wieners became somewhat more reclusive in his later years, but he was still a fixture on the streets of Beacon Hill, seen often trudging tragic-comically through the streets with his bag draped around his shoulder, and a cigarette in his hand, carrying himself with a certain muted elegance. ... Like a ghost, Wieners can be glimpsed in the emptiness of specific places left behind. There are many places to me where I can conjure up a spark of his spirit just by walking his Beacon Hill streets. ...”
2008 July: John Wieners, 2009 December: John Wieners - 1, 2011 May: John Wieners: June 21, 1959, 2012 May: Behind the State Capitol: Or Cincinnati Pike, 2012 August: John Wieners - 707 Scott Street, 2013 January: Mass: John Wieners, 2013 October: Measure (1957-1962), 2015 November: Stars Seen in Person: Selected Journals of John Wieners (2015), 2016 January: Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners
The Brave Women Who Saved the Collected Texts of Hildegard of Bingen
"11 March 1948 – Eibingen Monastery, Wiesbaden, Germany: A brave, frightened women is risking her life in a daring rescue mission. In these post-war years, medieval scholar Margarete Kühn is not dealing with spies and Nazis: instead, she has kidnapped a book. Assisted by her friend Caroline Walsh, an American military spouse, Margarete has secured the manuscript’s safe passage across 400 miles, traversing the wildest and most hostile parts of Germany’s war-ravaged landscape to a secluded monastery high above the banks of the Rhine. ... From her childhood as an enclosed nun with just a handful of companions, to her rise on the international stage as a leading scholar, theologian, visionary, musician, linguist, artist and scientist, the remarkable life of Hildegard of Bingen (1098– 1179) has been celebrated for centuries. ...”
Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say
"New intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials suggests that a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines last year, a step toward determining responsibility for an act of sabotage that has confounded investigators on both sides of the Atlantic for months. U.S. officials said that they had no evidence President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine or his top lieutenants were involved in the operation, or that the perpetrators were acting at the direction of any Ukrainian government officials. The brazen attack on the natural gas pipelines, which link Russia to Western Europe, fueled public speculation about who was to blame, from Moscow to Kyiv and London to Washington, and it has remained one of the most consequential unsolved mysteries of Russia’s year-old war in Ukraine. Ukraine and its allies have been seen by some officials as having the most logical potential motive to attack the pipelines. ...”
Liverpool 7 Manchester United 0: Gakpo, Nunez and Salah run riot as Ten Hag’s men wilt
"Two goals each from Cody Gakpo, Darwin Nunez and Mohamed Salah helped Liverpool power to a record win over Manchester United. Gakpo, the Netherlands forward signed from PSV Eindhoven in January, produced his best performance for Jurgen Klopp’s team, scoring two exquisite goals either side of Nunez’s 47th-minute header. Salah got in on the act with a fourth before Nunez got his second and the Egypt star completed his own double. Roberto Firmino, who confirmed this week he will be leaving at the end of the season, came off the bench to complete the rout. …”
Hear De La Soul’s Highly Acclaimed & Influential Hip-Hop Albums Streaming Free for the First Time
"If you don’t listen to rap, you’ve heard the same questions over and over in response to that confession. One of the most common is ‘But have you heard De La Soul?’ — which in recent years was easier said than done, at least on streaming platforms. ... One complication had to do with sampling, a standard hip hop practice conducted in such a far-reaching, freewheeling, and elaborate manner by De La Soul that the prospect of renegotiating each and every sonic snippet they’d cleared in the CD-and-tape era inspired untold corporate intransigence. ...”
From left: Posdnuos (Kelvin Mercer), Maseo (Vincent Mason) and Trugoy the Dove (David Jolicoeur) in the early 1990s.
Race to get last children out of Bakhmut as city becomes ‘hell on earth’
"War breeds euphemism and metaphor. In the battle for the Donbas city of Bakhmut, threatened with a closing encirclement by Russian forces after seven months of bitter fighting, there are ‘White Angels’ and ‘Dark Angels’, the ‘road of life’ (the Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway, which is anything but) and the ‘Invincibility Centre’. The White Angels, a police evacuation group, scour the lethal districts of the shell-ruined city to evacuate children and the elderly.Their counterparts, the Dark Angels, take out the dead. The Invincibility Centre is where the few thousands of civilians who remain can find water and hot food cooked by the volunteers who have stayed in the city, even as in the past fortnight it has faced an increasing threat of finally being overrun. ...”
Bakhmut has lost 95% of its pre-war population since the start of the Russian invasion
Ironweed - Héctor Babenco (1987)
"Ironweed is a 1987 American drama film directed by Héctor Babenco. It is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by William Kennedy, who also wrote the screenplay. It stars Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, with Carroll Baker, Michael O'Keefe, Diane Venora, Fred Gwynne, Nathan Lane and Tom Waits in supporting roles. The story concerns the relationship of a homeless couple: Francis, an alcoholic, and Helen, a terminally ill woman during the years following the Great Depression. Major portions of the film were shot on location in Albany, New York, including Jay Street at Lark Street, Albany Rural Cemetery, and the Miss Albany Diner on North Broadway. ...”
Late winter was boot scraper season in 19th century New York City
"In the 18th and 19th centuries, New York City roads were filthy. Garbage was tossed in gutters (sometimes consumed by free-roaming pigs, who left their own waste behind), dust got kicked up on dry days, and manure from the thousands of horses that pulled streetcars and wagons caked the streets. Add in the snow and sleet typical of late February and early March, and the cityscape that appears so charming in old black and white photos was actually a muddy, grimy, soupy mess. ...”
Does Europe want Ukrainians as living partners or dead heroes?
"Nine years ago, Maidan, the main square of my home city Kyiv, was filled with people carrying EU and Ukrainian flags. Maidan, or the Revolution of Dignity, was the last successful European democratic revolution. The protesters won. They – we – managed to overthrow a regime that was actively preparing Russia’s political annexation of Ukraine. Nine years ago, the human ocean of Maidan carried on its shoulders the coffins of activists who had been shot dead by police. The tragedy was immense but the space for mourning was limited: the annexation of Crimea began and we realised that the Kremlin had gone to war against Ukraine, against us. We learned then that achieving the impossible might be romantically beautiful in songs or movies. It came at a price, however, a price that was too high from the very beginning. But that image of Maidan filled with European flags remained a point of reference and a symbol of the change we sought. ...”
A destroyed Russian tank lies near a church in the city of Sviatohirsk, Donetsk
Christina Vantzou’s “Unsettled” Electroacoustic Compositions
"Composer and sound artist Christina Vantzou first attracted attention via her role in The Dead Texan, a side project of Stars of the Lid‘s Adam Wiltzie. And while it would be another seven years before Vantzou emerged as a solo artist in her own right, the album anticipated a tantalizing aspect of her subsequent work. Her music might be ambient and classically rooted at its core, but drift along with it for a while and you’ll soon encounter elements that feel unsettling and disruptive—as if the music is following a dream logic. ...”
Wayne Shorter, Innovator During an Era of Change in Jazz, Dies at 89
"Wayne Shorter, the enigmatic, intrepid saxophonist who shaped the color and contour of modern jazz as one of its most intensely admired composers, died on Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 89. His publicist, Alisse Kingsley, confirmed his death, at a hospital. There was no immediate information on the cause. Mr. Shorter had a sly, confiding style on the tenor saxophone, instantly identifiable by his low-gloss tone and elliptical sense of phrase. His sound was brighter on soprano, an instrument on which he left an incalculable influence; he could be inquisitive, teasing or elusive, but always with a pinpoint intonation and clarity of attack. ...”
2015 December: JuJu (1964), 2015 December: Art Blakey - Paris Jam Session (1959), 2019 August: Night Dreamer (1964), 2019 July: Blue Note Records at 80: Can a Symbol of Jazz’s Past Help Shape Its Future?, 2020 August: Mr. Gone - 10 CD (The Best Of The Early Years)
Wayne Shorter emerged in the 1960s as a tenor saxophonist and in-house composer for Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and the Miles Davis Quintet.
In an Epic Battle of Tanks, Russia Was Routed, Repeating Earlier Mistakes
"Before driving into battle in their mud-spattered war machine, a T-64 tank, the three-man Ukrainian crew performs a ritual.The commander, Pvt. Dmytro Hrebenok, recites the Lord’s Prayer. Then, the men walk around the tank, patting its chunky green armor. ... Their respect for their tank is understandable. Perhaps no weapon symbolizes the ferocious violence of war more than the main battle tank. Tanks have loomed over the conflict in Ukraine in recent months — militarily and diplomatically — as both sides prepared for offensives. Russia pulled reserves of tanks from Cold War-era storage, and Ukraine prodded Western governments to supply American Abrams and German Leopard II tanks. ...”
Street food
"Street food is food or drinks sold by a hawker or vendor on a street or at other public places, such as markets, fairs, parks, and clubs. It is often sold from a portable food booth, food cart, or food truck and is meant for immediate consumption. Some street foods are regional, but many have spread beyond their regions of origin. Most street foods are classified as both finger food and fast food and are typically cheaper than restaurant meals. The types of street food widely vary between regions and cultures in different countries around the world. ...”
Street food in New York City
The Night - Tom Verlaine & Patti Smith (1976)
"The Night, Tom Verlaine & Patti Smith, published 1976. Front & back covers, plus two inside pages. Even numbered poems are by Tom, odd numbered by Patti. The rear cover has a pic of 19th century poet Arthur Rimbaud & a poem by Patti. The book is entitled The Night, at least partly ‘cause Tom & Patti reportedly wrote the whole book(let) in one night. I’ve scanned & uploaded all pages from my copy of The Night. ...”
