Pastrami, Ellsworth Kelly, Heaven, ISIS , Fletcher Henderson
NYC Jewish Delicatessens: The Ultimate Guide
Robert Sietsema et al | Eater | 22nd December 2015
Raft of articles on the history and cuisine of New York delicatessens, which first flourished in the 1880s selling Kosher food to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Katz's on East Houston Street has the most authentic pastrami, so moist and salty as to be "the sandwich equivalent of drinking seawater ... Even as a professional eater, I'd say a pastrami sandwich makes me feel the way I'd imagine a vegetarian feels after eating a steak." (4,300 words)
Ellsworth Kelly, 1923-2015
Louise Nicholson | Apollo | 28th December 2015
Interview conducted soon after Kelly's 90th birthday in 2013; republished to mark his death. "I worked on Broad Street. Jasper Johns and Bob Rauschenberg were up the street. In 1970 I went across the hallway to Sidney Janis who was always interested in what I was doing. He had the top artists: Pollock, De Kooning, Rothko, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still. They weren’t selling much. There wasn’t a big market for contemporary art then" (2,600 words)
Marriage In Heaven
Alexander Pruss | 7th December 2015
Jesus says there will be no "marrying" in Heaven. But will marriages contracted on Earth still be valid? Probably not, because "there is something about the exclusivity of marriage", and about the "privacy accorded to sexual activity", which seem contrary to the spirit of paradise. There again, there will probably be no "sexual activity" in Heaven, since there will be no need for reproduction. The discussion advances in the comments (641 words)
Confessions Of An ISIS Spy
Michael Weiss | Daily Beast | 19th November 2015
Syrian defector from ISIS intelligence service tells all. Much interesting detail about civil and military governance. Doctors are paid $5,000 a month "to stop them running off to Turkey". Russian-speakers are considered "troublemakers". Suicide bombers volunteer early: "When you join ISIS, during the clerical classes, they ask: Who will be a martyr? People raise their hands, and they go off to a separate group" (10,900 words)
Sugarfoot Stomp
Cynthia Shearer | Oxford American | 15th December 2015
"The fountainhead of swing is a little white frame house with a tin roof, on the black side of the tracks in Cuthbert, a red-dirt Georgia cotton-gin town. This is where they used to lock Fletcher Henderson in the parlor with a piano, beginning about 1903 when he was six. Cuthbert lynched black men at a rate slightly higher than other Georgia towns, at a time when Georgia was topping the lists they were keeping over at Tuskegee" (5,200 words)
Video of the day: What Is Something?
What to expect: Kurtzgesagt animation. What is matter? Can nothingness exist? (5'33")
Thought for the day
If you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn't plan your mission properly
David Hackworth