The Harlem of Don Hogan Charles

“… Hundreds of stunning images from black history, drawn from old negatives, have long been buried in the musty envelopes and crowded bins of the New York Times archives. None of them was published by The Times until now. Were the photos — or the people in them — not deemed newsworthy enough? Did the images not arrive in time for publication? Were they pushed aside by words here at an institution long known as the Gray Lady? As you scroll through the images, each will take you back: To the charred wreckage of Malcolm X’s house in Queens, just hours after it was bombed. To the Lincoln Memorial, where thousands of African-American protesters gathered, six years before the March on Washington. To Lena Horne’s elegant penthouse on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. To a city sidewalk where schoolgirls jumped rope, while the…

A reader of the blog posted the following comment, which I find to be sane and wise:

There is so much hypocrisy and ignorance in this politicization of mask wearing and vaccination. When everyone’s health and well-being is on the line, there can be no personal choice to forego what keeps everyone safer.

Why is it these people insist they can mandate what a woman does with her body or who can and cannot marry, but not that we all wear masks to keep everyone safer?

If one can’t wear a mask out in public for a health reason (which, for the life of me, I can’t think of), perhaps one shouldn’t be out. If you’re a professional athlete competing closely against others, you should be required to be vaccinated. If you are a spectator in the stands, you should be vaccinated. If you’re a teacher, a bus driver, a…

Jeanne Moreau and Miles Davis

“In the late 1950s and early 1960s, cinema and jazz were at the forefront of an artistic revolution – one of improvisation, immediacy and invention. Both were born around the turn of the century, came of age in the 1910s and 20s, and attained a ‘Golden Age’ of mass-popularity in the 1930s and 40s. The late 1950s and early 60s, however, saw a convergence of these two artforms that, for a moment in time, shared a common spirit. Both sought to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy, to express what was modern and true about the world, to invent new forms, to re-invent old ones, and to create a language of ‘the now’. For a brief moment, across the world, they stood together against the old guard. Here we’ll look at how they came together, what they stood for, and how they eventually went their separate ways…

The poet Pablo Neruda in 1952. He persuaded Chile’s president to offer asylum to some of the mistreated Spanish patriots rotting in French internment camps.

“Does politics belong in art? The question arouses heated debate about creative freedom and moral responsibility. Assumptions include the idea that politics cheapens film, music, or literature, or that political art should abandon traditional ideas about beauty and technique. As engaging as such discussions might be in the abstract, they mean little to nothing if they don’t account for artists who show us that choosing between politics and art can be as much a false dilemma as choosing between art and love. In the work of writers as varied as William Blake, Muriel Rukeyser, James Baldwin, and James Joyce, for example, themes of protest, power, privilege, and poverty are inseparable from the sublimely erotic—all of them essential aspects of human experience, and hence, of literature…

“A View from the Bridge (French: Vu du pont, Italian: Uno sguardo dal ponte) is a 1962 drama film directed by Sidney Lumet, based on the Arthur Millerplay of the same name. The film was an international co-production between French and Italian studios, with exteriors shot on-location in Brooklyn and interiors filmed in Paris, France. It was written for the screen by Norman Rosten and Jean Aurenche, and stars Raf Vallone as Eddie Carbone, Maureen Stapleton as Beatrice, Carol Lawrence as Catherine, Jean Sorel as Rodolpho, Raymond Pellegrin as Marco, and Morris Carnovsky as Alfieri. The Carbones are a working class Italian-American family living in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn – patriarch Eddie, his wife Beatrice, and their niece Catherine. Eddie is a longshoreman on the waterfront, and he and Beatrice have raised 18-year old Catherine from infancy…

“In 1968 The Living Theatre, an anarcho-communalist troupe led by Julian Beck and Judith Malina, returned to America from years of self-imposed exile in Europe with what would become their best-known production: ‘Paradise Now,’ a post-Artaud play that sought to completely dissolve the boundaries of human interactions through a practice of live collective creation, forging a revolutionary harmony between actors and audience. ‘The purpose of the play is to lead to a state of being in which non-violent revolutionary action is possible,’ wrote Julian, and he meant it. What happened each night onstage-and offstage, and then out into the streets-was a series of purposefully provocative and interventionist actions, from marijuana smoking and full-body group nudity to screamed declarations, intense arguments, dance and (yes) orgies, sometimes involving audience members. They attracted the attention of the police, the derision of mainstream critics, and the devotion of many, including The Doors’ Jim Morrison…

A sign of sanity, common sense, and responsibility: Culver City schools require all eligible students to be vaccinated. Superintendent estimates that about 1 in 20 parents object. Why should their objection override the public health of all students?

The Culver City Unified School District has issued a COVID-19 vaccine requirement for all eligible students — believed to be the first such requirement in California — a move the district superintendent said has the overwhelming support of parents, teachers and staff.
Currently, children 12 and older are eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine, which remains under emergency use authorization by the Federal Drug Administration. The Culver City requirement has a Nov. 19 deadline, and district officials hope the vaccine will have received full FDA approval by then.

California has ordered all K-12 school employees to be vaccinated or submit to weekly coronavirus testing — and a growing number of school districts, including…

I received a notice a few days ago from a scholarly organization, informing me that Mike Rose had died. Mike was a beloved teacher, scholar, and author. He had keen empathy for working people. He taught at UCLA. I met him a decade ago, and we became friends. You may have met him through such books as Lives on the Boundary, or Why School?, or Possible Lives.

Other people knew Mike far better than I, and I invite you to read what they wrote about him.

His literary agent, Anna Sproul-Latimer, who worked with Mike on his latest book, wrote a deeply personal article about him.

She wrote, as part of a longer piece:

Five days ago, just hours before what was probably going to be the last of our four editor meetings, my beloved client Mike Rose dropped dead. He woke up at dawn, sent me a…

“Tenor saxophonists Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt co-led a small group in 1950, and this follow-up, taped in the studio in 1961, finds the two picking up where they left off. The highlight of the date is the jointly written ‘Blues up and Down,’ a classic jam which has since inspired a number of other tenor match ups to record it, especially Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis and Johnny Griffin. Ammons‘ repetitious one-note melody within ‘The One Before This,’ like Duke Ellington‘s deceptively simple two-note theme ‘C Jam Blues,’ leads to some inspired improvising by both men. Stitt switches to alto sax for a loping take of ‘There Is No Greater Love,’ during which Ammons‘ tenor provides the perfect foil. The rhythm section includes bassist Buster Williams, along with the somewhat obscure pianist John Houston and drummer George Brown. This rewarding date has become hard to…