Monday, January 21, 2019

Watch #MLKNow 2019 by Blackout for Human Rights





The program is live now from Riverside Church, site of one of his most revolutionary speeches. It will include a panel on athletes and activism moderated by and a conversation between Ta-Nehisi Coates and . Watch it live here.

Monday, January 14, 2019

The Killers - Land Of The Free - Video by Spike Lee





Powerful and Timely! Kudos to The Killers and Spike Lee

"We got more people locked up than the rest of the world
Right here in red, white and blue
Incarceration's become big business
It's harvest time out on the avenue"

"So how may daughters, tell me how many sons
Do we have to put in the ground before we just break down and face it

We got a problem with guns"







Bob Lefsetz writes,"The message of the song, the message of the video. What does America stand for? But that wall hasn't been built yet and the Killers don't want it to be. They're making a statement that will reach their fans more than anything in the "New York Times," never mind Fox News. That's the power of art, to change minds.

And if this were the eighties, this video would be all over MTV, the talk of the nation. But in the teens, it's impossible to reach everybody. But disruption never sleeps, it's just a matter of who is willing to fight.

We've been overwhelmed with the innovation of the techies for two decades. But we've learned in the past few years that the majordomos have no moral center, which is why artists need to take the reins and make a statement.

Like the Killers."

More at:
spoti.fi/2CoO6ZG and lefsetz.com/wordpress/ 

UCLA gymnast Katelyn Ohashi's flawless floor routine is one for the ages.




Thursday, January 03, 2019

Love AOC!





Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her friends having a great time at Boston University in 2010! 












Wednesday, January 02, 2019

Saudi Arabia | Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj | Netflix





In solidarity with , and to honor the memory of Jamal , everyone should watch and share Hasan’s brilliant Saudi Arabia episode, which the Saudi government banned. It is still online on YouTube

Tuesday, January 01, 2019

Robert Frost Recites -"Stopping by woods on a snowy evening"





Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
-
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
-
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
-
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
-Robert Frost 

Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Merriam-Webster choses justice as the official Word of 2018




Merriam-Webster choses justice as the official Word of 2018

Tuesday, December 25, 2018

Monday, December 24, 2018

A look back at the 2018 Winter Olympics






A look back at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang
From Chloe Kim's dominant performance in the halfpipe to Hanyu Yuzuru's second consecutive gold medal in men's figure skating.

Friday, December 21, 2018

Season's Greetings!


 Love the latest holiday card from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Happy Holidays to all. 


Hear Barack Obama take the mic on Lin-Manuel Miranda's 'Hamilton' remix





We’re coming at you one last time with our final #Hamildrop and it’s one for the books. Listen to “One Last Time (44 Remix)” featuring Christopher Jackson, Bebe Winans, and Barack Obama.

Stream it:
https://Atlantic.lnk.to/OneLastTime44...

Barack Obama reads George Washington's lines reflecting on his own administration:
“Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration
I am unconscious of intentional error
I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects
Not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors
I shall also carry with me the hope
That my country will view them with indulgence
And that after forty-five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal
The faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion
As I myself must soon be to the mansions of rest
I anticipate with pleasing expectation that retreat
In which I promise myself to realize the sweet enjoyment of partaking
In the midst of my fellow citizens, the benign influence of good laws
Under a free government, the ever-favorite object of my heart
And the happy reward, as I trust
Of our mutual cares, labors and dangers”

Thursday, December 20, 2018

"Invention and Design: Early Italian Drawings" at the Morgan Library




Invention and Design: Early Italian Drawings at the Morgan



February 15 through May 19, 2019


























From the Morgan Library and Museum Website:
"The Morgan’s impressive collection of Italian Drawings documents the development of Renaissance drawing practice from its beginnings in the fourteenth century and over the following two centuries. Drawings from the earlier part of the Renaissance—by artists born before 1500—are a particular strength of the collection, but this exhibition will be the first to focus on this material, featuring works by artists such as Mantegna, Filippo Lippi, Filippino Lippi, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Fra Bartolomeo, and Andrea del Sarto. The exhibition also explores the development of different and overlapping regional traditions in Tuscany, Umbria, Lombardy and Emilia, and Venice.
From the influence of medieval manuscript and painting workshops to the new practice of sketching, artists gradually moved away from imitation of standard models and to the invention of novel ways of thinking on the page and representing traditional subjects. Following shifts in artistic theory, workshop practice also began to embrace the practice of life study. As artists came to be recognized more as intellectuals than as craftsmen, a new class of collectors and connoisseurs created a market for autonomous drawings of classical subjects and other compositions. During the fifteenth century, portrait drawing also emerged as an independent genre, and artists invented new ways approaches to landscape drawing. Invention and Design: Early Italian Drawings at the Morgan explores all these developments and celebrates more than a century of innovation in drawing.
Invention and Design: Early Italian Drawings from the Morgan is made possible with generous support from the Scholz Family Charitable Trust, the Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Charitable Trust, the Alex Gordon Fund for Exhibitions, and the Andrew W. Mellon Research and Publications Fund."
Giovanni Agostino da Lodi (active ca. 1467–ca. 1524), Head of a Bearded Man in Profile to the Right, ca. 1500, red chalk on paper. The Morgan Library & Museum, 1973.35:1, Gift of János Scholz. Photography by Janny Chiu, 2018.

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016
(212) 685-0008

"Happy Xmas (War is Over)" Miley Cyrus, Mark Ronson ft. Sean Ono Lennon

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

H.E.R. at the Tiny Desk



Music Break! Watch as H.E.R. () stuns in her second appearance at the , showcasing not only her vocal mastery but also her skills as a multi-instrumentalist.

Cohen Going to Prison for 45's Dirty Deeds

Cohen addresses Trump’s tweets: “Recently, the President tweeted a statement calling me weak, and it was correct, but for a much different reason than he was implying. It was because time and time again, I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds.”

Michael Cohen sentenced to 36 months in prison. 's self-described "fixer" going to the big house.













Monday, December 10, 2018

Get Health Insurance for 2019




If you need health insurance for 2019, the deadline to get covered is December 15. Go to today and pass this on — you just might save a life.

Sunday, December 09, 2018

"Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki" in theaters Dec. 13 & 18, 2018

by Gregg Chadwick

"The single difference between films for children and films for adults is that in films for children, there is always the option to start again, to create a new beginning. In films for adults, there are no ways to change things." -Hayao Miyazaki*


Gkids is bringing a new documentary on Hayao Miyazaki to theaters in the United States this month and I have been thinking about how inspirational Miyazaki has been to artists all over the world. Pixar animator Enrico Casarosa said, "Miyazaki has this uncanny ability to add a childish sense of wonder to his stories. He’s able to make us feel like little kids again." 

Miyazaki is careful to steer his work towards child-like wonder and away from childishness. Instead, Miyazaki's films have three main themes:

1. A distaste for heedless violence and warmongering. 
2. Concern for the environment and a depiction of natural beauty as a counterweight to our increasingly industrialized world. 
3. Strong, brave, and resourceful main female characters. 


On the occasion of Miyazaki's film retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2005, AO Scott wrote that after viewing Miyazaki's films "you may find your perception of your own world refreshed, as it might be by a similarly intensive immersion in the oeuvre of Ansel Adams, J. M. W. Turner or Monet. After a while, certain vistas - a rolling meadow dappled with flowers and shadowed by high cumulus clouds, a range of rocky foothills rising toward snow-capped peaks, the fading light at the edge of a forest - deserve to be called Miyazakian."




Hayao Miyazaki at 22
(Courtesy NTV)






Hayao Miyazaki's tenacious spirit, imagination, and work-ethic allowed him to rise from entry-level animator to the co-founder of his own company.
 Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki in theaters Dec. 13 & 18, 2018
Tickets: GKIDS.com/NeverEndingMan






Hayao Miyazaki
Sketch for My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro)
pencil and watercolor on paper 1988
(Ghibli Museum, Mitaka, Japan)


In December 2010, I was fortunate to visit the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Japan where I learned much about Miyazaki and his art.  Filmmakers Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata founded their animation studio in 1985 and named it after an Italian airplane first produced before World War II: the Caproni Ca.309 Ghibli. The word ghibli in Italian refers to the hot dry winds that blow across the Sahara desert.




Caproni Ca.309 "Ghibli" In North Africa during WWII






Hayao Miyazaki 
Sketches for Porco Rosso (Kurenai no buta)
pencil and watercolor on paper 1992
(Ghibli Museum, Mitaka, Japan)


Hayao Miyazaki was born on January 5, 1941 just months before Pearl Harbor and the brutal battles in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. As a small child growing up in greater Tokyo, Miyazaki drew scenes of aircraft and aviation most likely inspired by his father's family business which built airplane parts for Japanese Zero fighter planes and also in the later years of the war, by his remembrances of the waves of Allied bombers which firebombed much of Tokyo into smoldering ruins.



Still from Grave of the Fireflies ((Hotaru no Haka)) 1988
Created by Studio Ghibli. Directed by Isao Takahata.





Hayao Miyazaki
Sketch for Porco Rosso (Kurenai no buta)
pencil and watercolor on paper 1992
(Ghibli Museum, Mitaka, Japan)








Hayao Miyazaki
Sketch for Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi)
pencil and watercolor on paper 2001
(Ghibli Museum, Mitaka, Japan)







Celluloid Dreams

Celluloid Dreams at the Ghibli Museum, Mitaka, Japan
photo by Gregg Chadwick



*(late December 2001, from a ceremony at "Spirited Away's" first European screening during the animation festival Nouvelles images du Japon where the French government bestowed on Miyazaki the title of 'Officier des Arts et des Lettres')

Much more at:
Studio Ghibli Website
Studio Ghibli Latest News from Nausicaa.net
Studio Ghibli Information Site (In French and excellent!)

Robot From Castle in the Sky (Laputa) at Ghibli Museum

Robot From Castle in the Sky (Laputa) at Ghibli Museum