Disability, Eno, Pets, Met , Cheese, Sochi
J Stands Up
Marie Myung-Ok Lee | Paris Review | 27th April 2017
“My son, J, has many medical issues and severe cognitive disabilities. Yesterday, at one of the endless meetings we have about said disabilities, my husband and I were asked to describe how J. got that scar on his face. We shifted, almost in shame, as if it were someone’s fault. It wasn’t. He often bangs his head on things when he’s hurting. That day, he happened to be standing by a window. He put his head right through it, slashing his face open on a jagged piece of glass” (990 words)
Eno: Voyages In Time And Perception
Kristine McKenna | Musician | 1st October 1982
Interview. Interesting throughout. Topics include nostalgia, recording studios and gospel music. Includes this much-repeated aperçu: “My reputation is far bigger than my sales. I was talking to Lou Reed the other day and he said that the first Velvet Underground record sold 30,000 copies in the first five years. The sales have picked up in the past few years, but I mean, that record was such an important record for so many people. I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band!” (5,200 words)
The Great Cat And Dog Massacre
Colin Dickey | LA Review Of Books | 30th April 2017
Horrible history. During the first four days of World War II British pet-owners queued up at animal shelters to put down their dogs and cats. More than 400,000 animals died. There was no government order; there was no economic need. “It was a mass action that arose, apparently spontaneously, by a populace terrified by the new reality of war”. Remorse quickly set in. “Many of the animals who survived those first four days would last through the war. But the damage had been done” (2,400 words)
Excavating The Metropolitan Museum
Oliver Roeder | Five Thirty Eight | 6th April 2017
Consolidation of the New York Metropolitan Museum’s catalogue data into a single online database enables new adventures in cultural history. “It’s a data set born of paint and pens, of scepters and swords. One vase means little on its own, beyond perhaps illustrating a scene from daily life. But together with its contemporaries, it means the contours of a civilisation. And when juxtaposed against all vases, it helps create a first-hand account of the history of the world” (2,300 words)
More To Cheese Than Meets The Eye
Kathryn Murphy | Apollo | 11th March 2017
On the special place of cheese in still-life paintings of the Dutch Golden Age. “Cheese was a more mysterious substance in this period than we might expect. The production of worms and mites from cheese was both a common feature of the table and a subject of scientific debate. Though the cheese stacks may have the apparent stillness of the monumental, they are sites of latent animation, liable to spontaneous generation, the potential habitat of millions” (2,900 words)
Putin’s Paradise
Paul Starobin | City Journal | 27th April 2017
Ten years after the international derision poured on Russia for spending $50 billion to host the 2008 Winter Olympics in Sochi, the town and surrounding region are thriving, with scarcely a white elephant to be seen. In stark contrast to Athens or Rio, Sochi has repurposed almost everything built for the Olympics into holiday villages and leisure centres. Economically speaking, and at some environmental cost, this may have been the most efficient Olympics of modern times (4,500 words)
Video of the day: Sunday Morning
What to expect:
Animated tribute to the Velvet Underground classic, with notes of Munch, Van Gogh and Mad Men (2’55”)
Thought for the day
The people who can destroy a thing, they control it
Frank Herbert