New Rosa Parks Archive is Now Online: Features 7,500 Manuscripts & 2,500 Photographs, Courtesy of the Library of Congress

in Archives, History, Letters, Life, Photography | February 29th, 2016

It’s telling that the Library of Con­gress, in dig­i­tiz­ing its vast Rosa Parks Col­lec­tion in close to its entire­ty, had to resort to a “rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple” of chil­dren’s greet­ing cards. The lady had no short­age of admir­ers at the ele­men­tary school lev­el.

Parks Kids Card

It’s not sur­pris­ing that Parks’ refusal to yield her bus seat to a white pas­sen­ger in Mont­gomery, Alaba­ma in 1955 res­onates with chil­dren. The sto­ry has the sim­plic­i­ty of a fable, and Parks’ pluck is irre­sistible. It’s as if she took a sling­shot and aimed it right between the eyes of the seg­re­gat­ed South.

It’s easy to con­vey how impor­tant her spon­ta­neous act of resis­tance was to the Civ­il Rights Move­ment. How­ev­er, those few min­utes on Bus 2857 can­not be all there is to a woman whose life spanned nine decades (1913–2005). They are just the his­tor­i­cal equiv­a­lent of a role that an actor can­not escape—great, but ulti­mate­ly lim­it­ing.

The online archive helps to flesh out this icon­ic fig­ure beyond the con­fines of a child’s cray­oned por­trait.

Among the trea­sures are:

Scanned book cov­ers from her per­son­al library…

Parks Gandhi
A busi­ness card from her stint as a staffer for Con­gress­man John Cony­ers of Michi­gan… (Parks moved to Detroit short­ly after the Mont­gomery Bus Boy­cott, after both she and her hus­band were dis­missed from their jobs.)

Parks Business Card

Hand­writ­ten rem­i­nis­cences about her rur­al Alaba­ma child­hood…

Parks Childhood

Doc­u­men­ta­tion of speak­ing engage­ments and oth­er pub­lic appear­ances…

Parks Baltimore

A hand­writ­ten pan­cake recipe…

Parks Pancakes

Cor­re­spon­dence from a bevy of high­ly rec­og­niz­able names

And of course, many, many reflec­tions hav­ing to do with the most pub­licly mem­o­rable day in an extreme­ly long life.

Most of the col­lec­tion can be viewed online and the Library has a teach­ing aid with sug­ges­tions on using these pri­ma­ry sources in the class­room. The video below con­tains some high­lights of the col­lec­tion, as well as tech­ni­cal infor­ma­tion on how its con­tents have been pre­served for future gen­er­a­tions.

                        

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘Tired of Giv­ing In’: The Arrest Report, Mug Shot and Fin­ger­prints of Rosa Parks (Decem­ber 1, 1955)

Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. Writes a List of 16 Sug­ges­tions for African-Amer­i­cans Rid­ing New­ly-Inte­grat­ed Bus­es (1956)

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Coffee Entrepreneur Renato Bialetti Gets Buried in the Espresso Maker He Made Famous

in Food & Drink, Life | February 22nd, 2016

At OC HQ you will find two Bialet­ti espres­so mak­ers on the stove–one small, the oth­er large–and togeth­er they pow­er us through the day. Invent­ed by Alfon­so Bialet­ti in 1933, the octag­o­nal, Art Deco-designed cof­fee mak­er even­tu­al­ly became a sta­ple in Ital­ian homes (90% of them), thanks to his son Rena­to, who died last week at the age of 93. A savvy mar­keter to the end, Bialet­ti went to the grave with his prod­uct, buried, as he was, in an espres­so mak­er that dou­bled as an urn. All in all, I can’t think of much bet­ter ways to spend eter­ni­ty.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paul Gia­mat­ti Plays Hon­oré de Balzac, Hopped Up on 50 Cof­fees Per Day

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

The Cof­fee Pot That Fueled Hon­oré de Balzac’s Cof­fee Addic­tion

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

J.S. Bach’s Com­ic Opera, “The Cof­fee Can­ta­ta,” Sings the Prais­es of the Great Stim­u­lat­ing Drink (1735)

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Umberto Eco Dies at 84; Leaves Behind Advice to Aspiring Writers

in Life, Writing | February 19th, 2016

Umber­to Eco, the Ital­ian semi­oti­cian, philoso­pher, lit­er­ary crit­ic, and nov­el­ist — and, of course, author of Fou­cault’s Pen­du­lum — has died at his home in Milan. He was 84.

Eco’s pass­ing adds some poignan­cy to a video he record­ed just last year, on behalf of The Louisiana Chan­nel, a media out­let based, of all places, in Den­mark. In the clip above, Eco gives some coun­sel to aspir­ing writ­ers: Keep your ego in check, and your ambi­tions, real­is­tic. Put in the time and the hard work, and don’t shoot for the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture straight out of the gate. That, Eco says, kills every lit­er­ary career. And remem­ber that writ­ing is “10% inspi­ra­tion and 90% per­spi­ra­tion.” They’re truisms–you dis­cov­er after spend­ing decades as a writer–that turn out to be true. That con­fir­ma­tion is one of the gifts he leaves behind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Umber­to Eco’s How To Write a The­sis: A Wit­ty, Irrev­er­ent & High­ly Prac­ti­cal Guide Now Out in Eng­lish

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LIFE Magazine’s Guide to Kissing, Circa 1942

in Life | February 12th, 2016

Once upon a time, in the mid­dle of World War II, there was a right way to do it. And a wrong way to do it. Are there rules in 2016? And what would they look like? That’s your home­work assign­ment for this Valen­tine’s Day week­end.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Broke­back Before Broke­back: The First Same-Sex Kiss in Cin­e­ma (1927)

The Sto­ry Behind Rodin’s ‘The Kiss’

Three “Anti-Films” by Andy Warhol: Sleep, Eat & Kiss

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This is Your Brain in Love: The Stanford Love Competition Shows What Love Looks Like on an MRI

in Life, Neuroscience, Stanford | February 12th, 2016

We hear it so often it’s almost a cliché, one I’m sure I’ve repeat­ed with­out giv­ing it much thought: You can’t mea­sure love in a lab­o­ra­to­ry. But we prob­a­bly can, in fact. Or at least neu­ro­sci­en­tists can. Last year, one joint Chi­nese and Amer­i­can team of neu­ro­sci­en­tists did just that, defin­ing the feel­ing we call love as “a moti­va­tion­al state asso­ci­at­ed with a desire to enter or main­tain a close rela­tion­ship with a spe­cif­ic oth­er per­son.” This doesn’t cov­er the love of pets, food, or sun­sets, but it gets at what we cel­e­brate with can­dy and red tchotchkes every year around this time, as well as the love we have for friends or fam­i­ly.

Using fMRI scans of three groups of 100 men and women, the researchers found that an “in-love group had more increased activ­i­ty across sev­er­al brain regions involved in reward, moti­va­tion, emo­tion, and social func­tion­ing,” reports Med­ical Dai­ly. The longer peo­ple had been “in love,” the greater the brain activ­i­ty in these regions. Whether the brain states cause the emo­tion, or the emo­tion caus­es the brain states, or they are one in the same, I can’t say, but the fact remains: love can be quan­tifi­ably mea­sured.

Mean­while, Brent Hoff sep­a­rate­ly decid­ed to exploit this fact for what he calls a “Love Com­pe­ti­tion.” With the help of Stanford’s Cen­ter for Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal Imag­ing (CNI), Hoff enlist­ed sev­en con­tes­tants of vary­ing ages—from 10 to 75—and gen­ders to enter an fMRI machine and “love some­one as hard as they can” for five min­utes. Who­ev­er gen­er­ates the most activ­i­ty in regions “pro­duc­ing the neu­ro­chem­i­cal expe­ri­ence of love” wins. Gives you the warm fuzzies, right?

While “the idea that love can be mea­sured may seem deeply unro­man­tic,” writes Aeon mag­a­zine, “the results were any­thing but.” The con­tes­tants were not restrict­ed to roman­tic love. Ten-year-old Milo gives his love to a new baby cousin, because “she’s very cute.” Dr. Bob Dougher­ty of CNI pre­dicts ear­ly on that an “old­er guy” like him­self might win because expe­ri­ence would bet­ter help him con­trol the emo­tion. But at the begin­ning, it’s any­one’s game. Watch the com­pe­ti­tion above and find out who wins.

Giv­en that this is billed as the “1st Annu­al Love Com­pe­ti­tion,” might we expect anoth­er this year?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What is Love? BBC Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions Fea­ture Sartre, Freud, Aristo­phanes, Dawkins & More

This Is Your Brain on Jane Austen: The Neu­ro­science of Read­ing Great Lit­er­a­ture

Steven Pinker Explains the Neu­ro­science of Swear­ing (NSFW)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die: Stream a Huge Playlist of Songs Based on the Bestselling Book

in Life, Music | February 10th, 2016

love supreme list of 1000 recordings

Image by Hayeur­JF, via Flickr Com­mons

Though the buri­als of ancient Egypt­ian rulers offer at least one notable excep­tion, near­ly all the world’s reli­gions have agreed on one thing—if one thing only: you can’t take your stuff with you. You can leave it to the local church, mosque, or syn­a­gogue, your heirs, a char­i­ty of your choice, your dog; but your mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions will not go wher­ev­er you might when it’s over.



How­ev­er, should con­scious­ness some­how sur­vive the body, or get uploaded to a new one in some sci-fi future, per­haps you can take with you the expe­ri­ences, mem­o­ries, sen­sa­tions, and ideas you’ve accu­mu­lat­ed over a life­time. And if that’s the case, we should all be greedy for knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence rather than prop­er­ty and con­sumer goods. And the “1,000… Before You Die” series of books, might be con­sid­ered guides to curat­ing your after­life.

The series has rec­om­mend­ed 1,000 places to see, 1,000 foods to eat, and, in 2012, 1,000 record­ings to hear before you dent the buck­et. Musi­cian and crit­ic Tom Moon, author of 1,000 Record­ings to Hear Before You Die, has cre­at­ed a list that ranges far and wide, leav­ing seem­ing­ly no genre, region, or peri­od out: from gang­ster rap, to opera, to krautrock, to coun­try, to met­al, to blues, to Zim­bab­wean folk, to… well, you name it, it’s prob­a­bly in there some­where.

For all the songs, artists, and albums I might have added to my own ver­sion of such a list, I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to find on Moon’s such indie clas­sics as Bon­nie “Prince” Billy’s haunt­ing I See a Dark­ness, hard­core mas­ter­pieces as Bad Brains’ i against i, and sem­i­nal elec­tron­i­ca as Aphex Twin’s Select­ed Ambi­ent Works. These less well-known record­ings sit next to those of John Coltrane (see A Love Supreme fea­tured above), Mar­i­an Ander­son, Son House, Pat­sy Cline, The Bea­t­les, Bach, Brahms, and vir­tu­al­ly any­one else you might think of, and dozens more you would­n’t.

One would have a very hard time mak­ing a case that Moon has any par­tic­u­lar bias against one form of music or anoth­er. (See the com­plete list here, and browse by genre, title, or artist at the 1,000 Record­ings web­site, where you can read Moon’s com­men­tary on each selec­tion.) When it came to select­ing songs or albums from artists with embar­rass­ing­ly rich cat­a­logs, Moon told NPR that he went with his gut. “I didn’t want to have a stan­dard cri­te­ria,” he said, “With­in any giv­en artist, you could go 10 dif­fer­ent direc­tions.” Agree or dis­agree with his choic­es, but mar­vel at his breadth and inclu­sive­ness.

In the past, it would have tak­en you a life­time just to track down all of these record­ings, much less find time to lis­ten to all of them. Now, you can hear 793 tracks from Moon’s 1,000 picks in the Spo­ti­fy playlist above. (Brought to us by Ulysses Clas­si­cal; down­load Spo­ti­fy here if you need it). Spend the rest of your life not only mulling them over, but dis­cov­er­ing 1,000s more. Despite the title’s ref­er­ence to mor­tal­i­ty, and my some­what face­tious intro­duc­tion, Moon real­ly means his “Listener’s Life List,” as he calls it, to be a guide for living—and for becom­ing immersed in music in a pro­found­ly expan­sive way. (For this same pur­pose, I also thor­ough­ly endorse The Guardian’s series “1,000 Albums to Hear Before You Die,” and its read­er-sourced adden­da. If any­one cares to turn the Guardian list into a Spo­ti­fy playlist, we’ll fea­ture it here too.)

As Moon sum­ma­rizes his intent, “the more you love music, the more music you love.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Free Music from 150+ Clas­si­cal Com­posers, Cour­tesy of Musopen.org

1200 Years of Women Com­posers: A Free 78-Hour Music Playlist That Takes You From Medieval Times to Now

Music from Star Wars, Kubrick, Scors­ese & Tim Bur­ton Films Played by the Prague Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra: Stream Full Albums

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear Strung Out in Heaven, a Gorgeous Tribute to David Bowie by Amanda Palmer & Jherek Bischoff’s, Made with Help from Neil Gaiman

in Art, Life, Music | February 8th, 2016

Strung Out in Heaven

The last four weeks have seen thou­sands of trib­utes to rock­er David Bowie.

Strung Out In Heav­en: A Bowie String Quar­tet Trib­ute by Aman­da Palmer and her The­atre is Evil col­lab­o­ra­tor, pop poly­math Jherek Bischoff, is both gor­geous and ambi­tious.

It came togeth­er quick­ly. Bischoff arranged the album’s five tracks and spent three and a half hours record­ing the strings (Ser­e­na McK­in­ney and Alyssa Park​ on vio­lin, Ben Ullery​ on vio­la, and Jacob Braun on cel­lo).

Mean­while new moth­er Palmer lined up three days worth of babysit­ting in order to dive back into the stu­dio. She also tapped some famous friends, who con­tributed in small­er ways.

The record­ing, coor­di­na­tion, guest appear­ances… and babysit­ting were financed by a stock­pile from Palmer’s 7000-some sup­port­ers on the crowd­fund­ing site Patre­on.

It doesn’t sound like a whip out.

Here’s Palmer’s hus­band, author Neil Gaiman, count­ing down to lift-off on “Space Odd­i­ty:

And writer/director John Cameron Mitchell, who record­ed the “Heroes” call and response on an iPhone in his apart­ment…

…and chan­neled Hed­wig for the Ger­man ver­sion:

Gaiman ques­tioned Palmer’s choice to lead with the title track of Bowie’s final album, but as she told New Musi­cal Express, a lot of fresh­ly mint­ed mil­len­ni­al Bowie fans among her Patre­on sup­port­ers list­ed “Black­star” as a favorite. Singer Anna Calvi duets and plays gui­tar on this stripped down ver­sion:

Each tune is matched to a Bowie-cen­tric image by a visu­al artist. On Palmer’s Patre­on blog,“Blackstar” artist, ele­men­tary school teacher, and can­cer sur­vivor Cas­san­dra Long writes about dis­cussing Bowie’s death with a room­ful of kinder­garten­ers. Palmer plans to pro­vide a sim­i­lar plat­form to the oth­er par­tic­i­pat­ing artists in the days to come.

The fin­ished prod­uct is both pro­fes­sion­al and a labor of love.

Music is the bind­ing agent of our mun­dane lives. It cements the moments in which we wash the dish­es, type the resumes, go to the funer­als, have the babies. The stronger the agent, the tougher the mem­o­ry, and Bowie was NASA-grade epoxy to a sprawl­ing span of freaked-out kids over three gen­er­a­tions. He bond­ed us to our weird selves…Bowie worked on music up to the end to give us a part­ing gift. So this is how we, as musi­cians, mourn: keep­ing Bowie con­stant­ly in our ears and brains. 

 — Aman­da Palmer

The com­plete track­list is below. You can lis­ten for free, but an ante-up will help Palmer cov­er 9¢ in licens­ing fees every time one of the songs is streamed. Any left­over pro­ceeds from sales through March 5th will be donat­ed to Tufts Med­ical Cen­ter’s can­cer research wing in mem­o­ry of David Bowie.

Strung Out in Heav­en:

01 “Black­star”  fea­tur­ing Anna Calvi

02 “Space Odd­i­ty” fea­tur­ing Neil Gaiman

03 “Ash­es to Ash­es”

04 “Heroes” fea­tur­ing John Cameron Mitchell

05 Helden” fea­tur­ing  John Cameron Mitchell

06 “Life on Mars?”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Gives Grad­u­a­tion Speech At Berklee Col­lege of Music: “Music Has Been My Door­way of Per­cep­tion” (1999)

David Bowie (RIP) Sings “Changes” in His Last Live Per­for­mance, 2006

Aman­da Palmer Ani­mates & Nar­rates Hus­band Neil Gaiman’s Uncon­scious Mus­ings

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Animated Interview: Sally Ride Tells Gloria Steinem About the Challenge of Being the First American Women in Space (1983)

in Animation, Life, Science | February 3rd, 2016

Blank on Blank returned this week with the lat­est episode in “The Exper­i­menters,” a minis­eries high­light­ing the icons of STEM. This new ani­ma­tion brings to life a 1983 inter­view fea­tur­ing one trail­blaz­er, Glo­ria Steinem, talk­ing with anoth­er, Sal­ly Ride, a physi­cist who became the first Amer­i­can woman in space, and endured a lot of gen­der stereo­typ­ing along the way. Oth­er episodes in “The Exper­i­menters” series have focused on Buck­min­ster Fuller, Richard Feyn­man, and Jane Goodall.

Note: Glo­ria Steinem recent­ly pub­lished a new mem­oir called My Life on the Road. You can down­load it as a free audio­book if you head over to Audible.com and reg­is­ter for a 30-day free tri­al. The tri­al lets you down­load two audio­books for free. Then, when the tri­al is over, you can con­tin­ue your sub­scrip­tion, or can­cel it, and still keep the audio books. The choice is yours. Get more info here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Buck­min­ster Fuller Tell Studs Terkel All About “the Geo­des­ic Life”

What Ignit­ed Richard Feynman’s Love of Sci­ence Revealed in an Ani­mat­ed Vide

Ani­mat­ed: The Inspi­ra­tional Sto­ry of Jane Goodall, and Why She Believes in Big­foot

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