Beyond the Monoculture of Modernity: Chanson de la Croisades: Chevalier

A brief sojourn from the present --

Chanson de la Croisades: Chevalier, performed by Al-Darwish and Hesperion XxI, from Jordi Savall's production, Jerusalem.

Sample listening track here

The Boro Prez on PPW Bike Lane: "New York Is Not Amsterdam"

Borough President Marty Markowitz, on NY1 last night, criticized Transportation Commish Janette Sadik-Khan for placement of the two way bike line on Prospect Park West, citing the potential for safety issues for kids in strollers, and its not-so-hidden agenda of making it difficult for automobile users in the City. "NYC is not Amsterdam," said Marty.  This may ultimately prove to be less of a problem for PPW (except for parking for PPW residents and the other safety issues cited by the Boro Prez) than it will for surrounding blocks as folks avoid driving down Prospect Park West. Our friend OTBKB.com noted that a study by a neighborhood advocacy group reported that PPW appears much calmer since the lane was installed. I would likely avoid it on the rare occasions that I might be driving near the Park.

In the past year, I have been driving a lot less, walking more and taking public transportation to work.  But there are times when I want to and/or need to drive my car. I am not sure if this is more of a political issue and turf war between Marty and Jan, since Marty asked that this new lane be relocated elsewhere, but Jan went ahead and put it there anyway. Even as an occasional driver, I recognize that NYC is a heavily car-oriented City, crazy in some times and places. But there are times when I don't want to take public transportation and choose to drive. And, at the same time, you have to respect the wishes of a lot of people to get around by bike.

But I don't think it is realistic to see a day when bikes and current public transportation alone will replace cars.  Perhaps even newer public transportation alternatives are needed - light rail; more, higher-volume ferry services; express dirigibles to JFK;  whatever. Remember when the Segway was the transportation alternative of the future? They aren't even legal in NYC.

But it will always come down to peoples' preferences for personal, not public, transportation - largely bike or automobile.  There is a message and a truth on both sides in this policy battle, but I think the Boro Prez and the Commish, probably with the Mayor's tacit blessing, risk further polarizing an already heated issue.  After all, there is one, unalterable fact in this situation -- in NYC, bikes and cars are here to stay.

A Package of Sunlight Reaches Earth

Photo by Jesper Gronne   Aurora Borealis from the arrival on Earth yesterday of the Coronal Mass Ejection.

On 1 August, almost the entire side of the Sun that faces the Earth erupted in a blaze of activity known as a "coronal mass ejection". These storms throw up to 10 billion tons of plasma - superheated gas - off the surface of the star and hurtling into space at around a million miles an hour. It covered the 93 million mile journey from the Sun to the Earth in just three and a half days.

From the U.K. Telegraph: "It was the "first major Earth-directed eruption in quite some time," according to Leon Golub, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), who warned of the event on Monday.


The flare which caused the eruption was relatively small, described as a class C3 by astronomers. Other flares, known as X or M class, are much larger, and capable of doing damage on Earth. C-class flares rarely have much effect on Earth beyond auroras - the glowing displays towards the poles, like the Northern (and Southern) Lights.

Dramatic auroras were seen in Denmark, Norway, Greenland, Germany and across the northern United States and Canada as the expanding bubble of gas slammed into the Earth's atmosphere. The frequently beautiful displays are caused by the charged particles in the plasma interacting with the Earth's magnetic field - the solar matter is drawn towards the poles, where they collide with nitrogen and oxygen atoms in the atmosphere.

While no damage seems to have been done by this flare, Nasa astronomers have previously warned that a much larger solar storm could cause havoc with electrical systems on Earth. In 2013, the Sun is expected to reach a stage in its roughly 11-year cycle when large storms are more likely."

More here
 
A NASA Scientist has watned that, with the sun awakening from a cyclical solar minimum period, we are now heading into a period of solar maximum. Scientists are concerned about the impact of a severe solar storm on the Earth's satellites, electrical grid, and even earth-bound sensitive technological devices such as cell phones, GPS, etc.  Lookout, Cleveland...
 
More here

Freud's Last Session: The Lion, the Witch and the Psychoanalyst at the West Side Y

C.S. Lewis (Mark H. Dold) and Sigmund Freud (Martin Rayner)

A provocative summer surprise, The Barrington Stage Production of  Freud's Last Session at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater on the upper west side, is a thoughtful and unexpectedly moving play by Mark St. Germaine. The play follows the meeting of author and academic C.S. Lewis (Mark H. Dold)  and Sigmund Freud (Martin Rayneor) in London at the beginning of World War II. Lewis, at the time, a recent convert to Catholicisim, had satirized Freud in  a book and he assumed that his invitation to Freud's consultation rooms was to receive a rebuke from the founder of psychoanalysis. Instead, Freud,at the end of his life, suffering from incurable cancer, engages the young author in a conversation that quickly becomes a fascinating debate about religion, psychoanalysis, spirituality, love, and war. The dialogue is fast paced. at times amusing, but always stimulating, and brings in elements of the lives of each of the two characters. Mark H. Dold and Martin Rayner are marvelous, bringing to life this plausible meeting on the day that the Nazi's invaded Poland. Set design by Brian Prather, which brings the audience directly into any photograph that you may ever scene of Freud's consultation room, and  costume design by Mark Mariani together bring an astounding versimilitude that completes the transformation of Mr. Dold's and Mr. Rayner's top notch performances.

The play at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater at the West Side Y is an intriguing and intelligent conversation between two complex and philosophical personalities.   The performance we attended on Saturday night was packed. Offering lively performances, thoughtful playwrighting and marvelous stagecraft, Freud's Last Session is an entertaining and intelligent summer gem not to be missed.

More here.

--Brooklyn Beat

Criminal Intent-Brooklyn: Murder, Assault on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope

As reported by Gothamist last night and in passing by NY1, one man was bludgeoned and another stabbed at 5th Avenue and 12 th street in Park Slope.

The bloodstained sidewalk in front of the OTB on 12th street, and what appeared to be a group of detectives on an opposite corner, echoed what is a growing trend of violence and mayhem throughout the five boroughs during this long, hot summer.

On the Road III- Pittsburgh and the Andy Warhol Museum

The 7th Street Andy Warhol Bridge over the Allegheny River connects the downtown/strip area with the Northside - home of the Andy Warhol Musuem.

Andy Warhol was an extraordinarily talented and visionary artist who understood, as he was wont to say, first the business of art and later, the art of business. He was recognized worldwide as a talented artist and as an icon, perhaps an avatar, of the new art scene that exploded in the early 1960s and beyond. He understood and helped forge the concept of celebrity in his adopted city, New York. Happily, the Brooklyn Museum has continued to recognize and champion his work. But, if a prophet often has no honor except in his home town, then clearly Andy Warhol (aka Drella) in his heart was perhaps at home nowhere more so than the City of Pittsburgh where he was born and learned about art from his mother, Jula Warhola, as well as his studies at the Carnegie Institute (now Carnegie Mellon University).' 

The Andy Warhol Museum is a breathtakingly exciting and deeply comprehensive venue to provide the viewer to both understand and apprecitate the talent of the man and the scope of the work, but also to help put it in the context of a man who lived in what appear to be the mutually exclusive worlds  of Eastern Rite Catholicism and celebrity, sex, and urban intrigue.

The Andy Warhol Museum contains seven floors filled with Warhol's art, memorabilia and other cultural artifacts.  A current show matches the work of Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol. The museum pulls no punches in presenting the work of its unique and talented son: there is a great deal of explicit sex and nudity on display in Andy's works throughout his productive lifetime.

A great museum for Warhol and art fans. The stroll across the Andy Warhol Bridge to the museum gives you an idea of the appreciaiton of his talent and contributions.  While the city was always a cultural magneone senses that the resurgence of art  and creativity in the Pittsburgh is directly linked to the  possibilities that the "business of art and the art of business" can potentially bring to a community if, like the artist, it is willing to take a risk and aim for the stars.

-- Brookyln Beat

The Andy Warhol Museum, Sandusky Street, Pittsburgh, PA

 

Silver Clouds by Warhol

The show includes an entire floor of the museum dedicated to Andy's film and TV work.  

On the Road II-Pittsburgh, PA, at the Confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers

It was after visitng the recent Brooklyn museum exhibit on the later  works of Andy Warhol that we thought about visiting Pittsburgh, the city of Andrew Warhola's birth and the site of the Andy Warhol Museum. Pittsburgh is a lovely, liveable city, but a long drive from NY, so we decided to spend the first evening, at roughly the 3.5 hour mark, in Harrisburg, PA. The next day we continued onward and spent a few days in the City of Bridges. To give you an idea of how far west in Pennsylvania we are, Pittsburgh is built on a triangle of land formed by the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, which form the Ohio RIver west of the city.

Aside from a plethora of small neighborhoods, there is a thriving art scene downtown and in other locations around the city that , like in other cities, are filling the vacuum left by demographic and economic changes. However, Pittsburgh continues to offer a colorful, vibrant, and seemingly mellow place to live in far western Pennslvania.

Among the many charming features, is the city's funicular, like in the song "funiculi, funicula". Originally steam powered, the Duquesne Incline was built to carry cargo up and down Mt. Washington in the late 1800s. It later carried passengers, particularly Mt. Washington residents who were tired of walking up footpaths to the top. Inclines were then being built all over Mt. Washington. But as more roads were built on “Coal Hill” most of the other inclines were closed. In the 1940s, only the Monongahela Incline and the Duquesne Incline remained.

The Dusquense Incline, which originally connected the factories in the valley below with the workers' homes on Mount Washington above, still provides transportation alternatives and offers fabulous views of the city, especially at night. 

This sure beats the IRT for charm and scenic views.

Pittsburgh's Golden Triangle, downtown business, cultural and corporate center

In 1962, the incline was closed, apparently for good. Major repairs were needed, and with so few patrons, the incline's private owners did little. But local Duquesne Heights' residents launched a fund-raiser to help the incline. It was a huge success, and on July 1, 1963, the incline reopened under the auspices of a non-profit organization dedicated to its preservation.

The incline has since been totally refurbished. The cars, built by the J. G. Brill and Company of Philadelphia, have been stripped of paint to reveal the original wood. An observation deck was added at the top affording a magnificent view of Pittsburgh's "Golden Triangle", and the Duquesne Incline is now one of the city's most popular tourist attractions.

English lyrics: 

Yesterday evening, O Nannina [short for Carolina], I climbed up,

Do you know where?
To where an ungrateful heart can no longer vex me!
Where a fire is burning, but if you flee
It lets you be.
It doesn't chase you, doesn't melt you, with just one glance!
Let's go, let's go, let's go to the top,
Let's go, let's go, let's go to the top,
Funiculì, funiculà, funiculì, funiculà!
Let's go to the top, Funiculì, funiculà!

Italian lyrics: 

Aieressera, oì Nanninè, me ne sagliette,
tu saie addò tu saie addò
Addò 'stu core 'ngrato cchiù dispietto
Farme nun pò!
Addò lo fuoco coce, ma si fuie
te lassa sta!
E nun te corre appriesso, nun te struie
sulo a guardà.
Jamme, jamme 'ncppa, jamme jà,

funiculì, funiculà

Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the state of Pennsylvania and is thecounty seat of Allegheny County.Its population was 334,563 at the 2000 census; by 2009, it was estimated to have fallen to 311,647. The population of the seven-county metropolitan area was 2,354,957 in 2009. Downtown Pittsburgh retains substantial economic influence, ranking at 25th in the nation for jobs within the urban core (and is 6th in job density). Pittsburgh is the largest city located in Appalachia.

The characteristic shape of the city's downtown is a triangular tract carved by the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahelarivers, where the Ohio River forms.Pittsburgh is known colloquially as "The City of Bridges" and "The Steel City" for its many bridges and former steel manufacturing base.

While the city is historically known for its steel industry, today its economy is largely based on healthcare, education, technology, robotics, and financial services. The region is also becoming a hub for oil and natural gas companies' Marcellus Shaleproduction.^[14] The city has redeveloped abandoned industrial sites with new housing, shopping and offices, such as the Waterfront and the SouthSide Works. While Pittsburgh faced economic troubles in the 1980s as the steel industry waned, modern Pittsburgh is economically strong. The housing market is relatively stable despite a national subprime mortgage crisis, and Pittsburgh added jobs in 2008 even as the national economy entered a significant jobs recession. This positive economic trend is in contrast to the 1980s, when Pittsburgh lost its manufacturing base in steel and electronics, and corporate jobs in the oil, electronics), chemical  and defense ) industries. The city is also headquarters to major global financial institutions.

Major publications often note Pittsburgh's high livability compared to other American cities. Most recently, in 2010, Forbes andYahoo! both listed Pittsburgh as the most livable city in the United States.  A lovely city. Next - the Andy Warhol Museum.

On the Road - Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on the Susquehana River

Sunset, Susquehana River, July 26, 2010

Sunset, Susquehana River

Market Street Bridge

The Walnut Street footbridge over the  Susquehana River 

to City Island, Harrisburg, PA

Photos by Brooklyn Beat/TN

More Brooklyn Daze: Let the Zappolla Special Shine a Light on Me

When I was a kid in Windsor Terrace, there was a candy store on 10th avenue between Prospect Avenue and 17th Street. It was a little place, with racks for comic books and newspapers, plus a wooden rack featuring boxes of candy-by-the-piece for a penny or a nickel: Bazooka bubble gum; Mary Janes; Licorice in various shapes; tiny wax soda bottles with sugary liquid; coconut-, and peanut-, and chocolate-flavored goodies and the like.

The shop was relatively small, but big enough to include a small soda fountain/luncheonette counter with stools, and a juke box. One of the wonders of the place was the “Zappolla Special.” This was a summer treat, and one of the most refreshing beverages imaginable. I never asked but I assume its origins are from the customer who requested it for the first time: 

Zappolla Special

In a large soda fountain glass add–

• 2 generous scoops of lemon ice (preferably the quality Italian kind lost in the shrouds

of memory that has actual lemon seeds in it);

• Add seltzer (from a soda fountain or siphon-seltzer bottle, must not be club soda

from a 2 liter plastic bottle)

• Stir vigorously for 10 seconds with a long-handled fountain spoon.

That’s it ! But on a hot summer day in the 1960s and I guess early 70s, it was unimaginably thirst-quenching, like the lemonade at the British club that Peter O’Toole as Lawrence of Arabia and his Arabian aide-de-camp down in seconds (over the objections of the other British officers) after returning from their desert travels following the victory at the Battle of Aqaba, where the Arab revolt, aided by the British, drove the Turks out of the Jordanian port city.

As it happens, we stopped by the delicious NYC ICY on Church Avenue last night and I had a combo pear and lemon sorbet which was delicious and I also tasted the mango basil which was out of sight, and how can you not love Uncle Louie G’s gel-ring flavor, among many others. But, the Zappolla Special, still, in its way, reigns supreme, since, as always, the depths of time boil the experience down to its essential pleasures so that everything else falls away ---flavor, aroma, texture, temperature--- and you are only left with the memory of the pleasure of your enjoyment...

And, as a kid, how could you not find infinite amusement in a place that featured a sign reading:  "Y.C.H.J.C.Y.A.Q.F.T.J.B. – 25 cents.” ?  Stepping in out of the heat, pointing to the sign, the unwitting customer would be asked to proffer his or her quarter first, at which point they were informed that “Your Curiosity Has Just Cost You A Quarter For The Juke Box.”

At that point, you would have no choice other than to sit down on one of the revolving stools, toss another quarter on the counter, and enjoy your Zappolla Special, while listening to Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” or the Beach Boys’ “Do You Wanna Dance” on your quarter. 

Ahhh, speak memory..

Me Feeling Fire: NYC's Hot, Hot, Hot Summer Heads Toward Record

"If it feels hotter than it’s ever been in New York, that’s because it is, reports Bloomberg media:

"New York’s Central Park is heading toward its warmest July on record after two heat waves this month, the National Weather Service reported. Extreme heat pushes aging power systems to their limits, increasing the odds of breakdown, according to grid monitors.
“The grid system was built a long time ago, and the population has increased dramatically across this part of the country, and energy demand has gone up accordingly,” said Jim Rouiller, a senior energy meteorologist at Planalytics Inc. in Berwyn, Pennsylvania. “July may not be the top, but it is going to be in the top five, and this is over 130 years worth of observation, so it is outstanding heat.. The system generally works, said Apt, who is also professor of technology at Mellon’s Tepper School of Business and its school of Engineering and Public Policy.

“The chances of it not working are very small, and even on a hot day they are very, very small,” he said. “But they are slightly higher on a hot day with lots of demand than they would be on an April day where it is nice and cool with the windows open.”

A heat advisory was issued for New York City today, where the temperature in Central Park was 90 at 3 p.m. after three straight days above 90, according to the weather service. The definition of a heat wave is three consecutive days with temperatures of 90 degrees or higher.
“We have been well above normal for the month,” said David Wally, also a meteorologist in the Upton office. “We will have above-normal temperatures through the week.”

The water authority set a record for usage of 500,000 gallons per minute when temperatures reached into the 100s two weeks ago, said Chairman James Gaughran.   “Which is huge,” Gaughran said. “There seems to be a psychology to water your lawn more when it gets hot outside."

Details here

The New Normal -- Outtake from Cartoonist Tom Toles in the Washington Post

(c) 2010 Washington Post Company

From the Washington Post/blog here

Step Right Up (Before it's too late): Tom Waits Muses from the Gone World

The 200th issue of British music magazine MOJO has been on the stands for a few weeks now, and it is a classic. It is the July issue and the MOJO Website is already featuring the August issue, so better move fast.  To celebrate the mag's 200th issue, Tom Waits was invited to guest edit the issue which he does with style and grace. His interview with Hank Williams III, his music picks and faves, and other wry and interesting  comments and musings, along with dispatching Joe Henry to interview legend Harry Belafonte, make really interesting and fun reading.

And, if that isn't enough, Tom has programmed the audio CD,which is a regular and delightful feature of MOJO magazine. Tom's picks on this exclusive CD include some amazing roots classics -- Son House ("John the Revelator"), Big Mama Thornton, Ray Charles, Cliff Edwards, The Prisonaires, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters,  Tennessee Ernie Ford ("Sixteen Tons"), William Seward Burroughs, Jr. (performing a classic rendition, auf Deutsch, of "Falling in Love Again"), Paul Robeson, among others, and last but not least, even personally ringing up the artist to arrange for inclusion of Bob Dylan's "I Was Young When I Left Home."  The CD alone, in all of its roots and rock glory, personally selected by Tom Waits, is worth the cover price. Get it before it's gone, gone, gone.

                                     

                                                    Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits

Tom Waits web here

Mojo here

--Brooklyn Beat

Henri Matisse as Radical Inventor @ MoMA

 

The Moroccans by Henri Matisse 1916

 

The Piano Lesson 1916

On Sunday, The Museum of Modern Art will open what appears to be one of the extraordinary shows of the summer: “Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917.” The exhibit focuses on a tumultous and extraordinarily dynamic and fertile period in the career of Henri Matisse, 1913-1917. The exhibit, curated by John Elderfield, chief curator emeritus of painting and sculpture at MoMA and Stephanie D’Alessandro, Gary C. and Frances Comer curator of modern art at The Art Institute of Chicago, features more than 110 of his works, and is closely intertwined with the upheavels brought about during those years by the start of World War I and the early years of surrealism.

Much has been made, in the NY Times and other publications, on the exhibit's use of recent art-history research and scientific/technological investigations to explore the evolution and development of the artist's work. X-ray and laser analysis lead to discussions of the artist's use of brush handles and palette knives to scape away paint, revealing complex colors below.

At a preview on Friday morning, I was drawn to the color and complexity of his work, but more the continued pressing forward of experimentation with materials and technique.

From MoMA: "In the time between Henri Matisse's (1869–1954) return from Morocco in 1913 and his departure for Nice in 1917, the artist produced some of the most demanding, experimental, and enigmatic works of his career—paintings that are abstracted and rigorously purged of descriptive detail, geometric and sharply composed, and dominated by shades of black and gray. Works from this period have typically been treated as unrelated to one another, as an aberration within the artist's development, or as a response to Cubism or World War I. Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913–1917 moves beyond the surface of these paintings to examine their physical production and the essential context of Matisse's studio practice. Through this shift of focus, the exhibition reveals deep connections among these works and demonstrates their critical role in the artist's development at this time. Matisse himself acknowledged near the end of his life the significance of this period when he identified two works—Bathers by a River (1909–10, 1913, 1916–17) and The Moroccans (1915–16)—as among his most "pivotal." The importance of this moment resides not only in the formal qualities of the paintings but also in the physical nature of the pictures, each bearing the history of its manufacture. The exhibition includes approximately 120 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints, primarily from the years of 1913–17, in the first sustained examination devoted to the work of this important period.

The technological analysis has its place in art history, but despite all of that, Radical Invention is a  complex, demanding, and  enriching show, exposing the patient viewer to colors, techniques and forms at a pivotal time in the development of modern art, and the development of an artist. Matisse as radical inventor and art explorer at this time, for whatever the reasons, clearly seems to rush quickly beyond the reach of any well-meaning efforts to track the painterly techniques that he used much less apply analysis. After awhile, the explanation of the paint scraping, the repriming and repainting, all seem to be a wan effort to understand an artist confronting himself and his expression during a complicated era. Ultimately, the artistic explosion leaves the art historians in the dust. For this viewer, it seems we can only look on as the artist takes risks and pushes ahead in an effort to give expresion to the workings of his eye and mind, and absorb this progress with joy.

MoMA here (note: timed tickets required).

--Brooklyn Beat

Joyeux Quatorze Juillet

Bastille Day is the French national holiday which is celebrated on 14 July each year. In France, it is formally called La Fête Nationale (National Celebration) and commonly le quatorze juillet (the fourteenth of July). It commemorates the 1790 Fête de la Fédération, held on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789; the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille fortress-prison was seen as a symbol of the uprising of the modern nation, and of the reconciliation of all the French inside the constitutional monarchy which preceded the First Republic, during the French Revolution. Festivities are held on the morning of 14 July, on the Champs-Élysées avenue in Paris in front of the President of the Republic. More here

Mid Summer, Clinton and State: July 13, 4:30 PM

Photo by Brooklyn Beat/TN