Free Courses on the Coronavirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerging Pandemic

in Health, Online Courses | February 24th, 2020

The coro­n­avirus has spread out of Chi­na, into South Korea, Japan and now Italy. We’re set­tling into the real­i­ty that we’re like­ly fac­ing a pan­dem­ic. It’s time to edu­cate ourselves–to take some free cours­es on COVID-19.

In response to the out­break, Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don has put togeth­er a free course (offered through Cours­era) called “Sci­ence Mat­ters: Let’s Talk About COVID-19.” The course will teach you the “sci­ence under­pin­ning the nov­el Coro­n­avirus out­break,” so that you can under­stand “how the spread of the epi­dem­ic is mod­eled, how trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty of infec­tions is esti­mat­ed, what the chal­lenges are in esti­mat­ing the case fatal­i­ty ratio, and also … the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­ty involve­ment in respond­ing to the epi­dem­ic.” You can get start­ed with this course right now.

Alter­na­tive­ly you can sign up for COVID-19: Tack­ling the Nov­el Coro­n­avirus. Cre­at­ed by Future­Learn and The Lon­don School of Hygiene and Trop­i­cal Med­i­cine, this course looks at “how COVID-19 emerged, was iden­ti­fied and spreads, the pub­lic health mea­sures for the virus world­wide, and what is need­ed to address COVID-19 and pre­vent it [from] spread­ing.” Although the course is now open for enroll­ment, it won’t offi­cial­ly start until March 22.

Both cours­es will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Note: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Hong Kong also offer a course on Epi­demics.

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:

Inter­ac­tive Web Site Tracks the Glob­al Spread of the Coro­n­avirus: Cre­at­ed and Sup­port­ed by Johns Hop­kins

New Digital Archive Will Bring Medieval Chants Back to Life: Project Amra Will Feature 300 Digitized Manuscripts and Many Audio Recordings

in History, Music, Religion | February 19th, 2020

Among his­to­ri­ans of Euro­pean Chris­tian­i­ty, it long seemed a set­tled ques­tion that Irish Catholi­cism, the so-called “Celtic Rite,” dif­fered sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the mid­dle ages from its Roman coun­ter­part. This despite the fact that the phrase Celtic Rite “must not be tak­en to imply any nec­es­sary homo­gene­ity,” notes the Catholic Ency­clo­pe­dia, “for the evi­dence such as it is, is in favour of con­sid­er­able diver­si­ty.” Far from an insu­lar reli­gion, Irish Catholi­cism spread to France, Ger­many, Switzer­land, Italy, and North­ern Spain through the mis­sions of St. Colum­banus and oth­ers, and both influ­enced and absorbed the Continent’s prac­tices through­out the medieval peri­od.

His­to­ri­ans have recent­ly set out to “restore [the Irish Church] to its right­ful place on the Euro­pean his­tor­i­cal map,” writes Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin’s Ann Buck­ley in her intro­duc­tion to a book of schol­ar­ly essays called Music, Litur­gy, and the Ven­er­a­tion of Saints of the Medieval Irish Church in a Euro­pean Con­text.

To vary­ing degrees, all of the schol­ars rep­re­sent­ed in this col­lec­tion write to counter the essen­tial­iz­ing “quest for what might be unique or ‘oth­er’ about Ire­land and Irish cul­ture” among all oth­er Euro­pean nation­al and reli­gious his­to­ries.

Buckley’s writ­ing on the ven­er­a­tion of Irish saints has made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to this effort, and her decade and a half of archival work has helped cre­ate the Amra project, which aims “to dig­i­tize and make freely avail­able online over 300 man­u­scripts con­tain­ing litur­gi­cal mate­r­i­al asso­ci­at­ed with some 40 Irish saints which are locat­ed in research libraries across Europe.” So write Medievalists.net, who also point out some of the most excit­ing aspects of this acces­si­ble resource:

The dig­i­tal archive, when com­plet­ed, will also incor­po­rate record­ings and per­form­ing edi­tions of all the chants and prayers from the orig­i­nal man­u­scripts, as well as trans­la­tions of the Latin texts into a num­ber of Euro­pean lan­guages. In this way, con­tem­po­rary audi­ences can enjoy first-hand the devo­tion­al songs asso­ci­at­ed with Irish saints, bring­ing them out of their slum­ber after more than half a mil­len­ni­um.

You can hear one antiphonal chant, “Mag­ni patris/Mente mun­di,” from the Office St. Patrick, just above. Per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, “no oth­er Irish saint is rep­re­sent­ed so exten­sive­ly or with such vari­ety in medieval litur­gi­cal sources,” writes Buck­ley. Man­u­script hymns, prayers, and offices for Patrick have been found in Dublin, Oxford, Cam­bridge, the British Library, and “in the Vien­na Schot­ten­kloster dat­ing from the time of its foun­da­tion by Irish Bene­dic­tine monks in the twelfth cen­tu­ry.” (See the open­ing of the Office of St. Patrick, “Veneren­da immi­nen­tis,” from a late-15th cen­tu­ry man­u­script, at the top.)

Oth­er saints rep­re­sent­ed in the archival mate­r­i­al include Brig­it, Colm­cille, Colum­banus, Canice, Declan, Cia­ran, Fin­ian, and Lau­rence O’Toole. The mis­sion­ary monks all received their own “offices,” litur­gi­cal cer­e­monies per­formed on their feast days. Many of the man­u­scripts, such as the open­ing of the Office of St. Brig­it, above, con­tain musi­cal nota­tion, allow­ing musi­col­o­gists like Buck­ley to recre­ate the sound of Irish Catholi­cism as it exist­ed in Ire­land, Britain, and Con­ti­nen­tal Europe sev­er­al hun­dred years ago.

The project is devel­op­ing a dig­i­tal archive of such record­ings, as well as “a ful­ly search­able data­base,” Medievalists.net notes, with “inter­ac­tive maps show­ing the geo­graph­i­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion of the cults of Irish saints across Europe, and of the libraries where the man­u­scripts are now housed. A series of doc­u­men­tary films is also envis­aged.” You don’t have to be a spe­cial­ist in the his­to­ry of the Irish Church, or an Irish Catholic, for that mat­ter, to get excit­ed about the many ways such a rich resource will bring this medieval his­to­ry to new life.

via Medievalists.net

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Where Did the Monk’s Hair­cut Come From? A New Vox Video Explains the Rich and Con­tentious His­to­ry of the Ton­sure

The Medieval Mas­ter­piece, the Book of Kells, Is Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

160,000 Pages of Glo­ri­ous Medieval Man­u­scripts Dig­i­tized: Vis­it the Bib­lio­the­ca Philadel­phien­sis

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

Watch More Than 400 Classic Korean Films Free Online Thanks to the Korean Film Archive

in Archives, Film | February 18th, 2020

Even if you don’t know much about Korea, or indeed about film, it’s safe to say that you know at least one Kore­an film: Bong Joon-ho’s Par­a­site, which has cir­cled the world gath­er­ing acclaim and awards since its release last spring. First it won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, becom­ing the first Kore­an pro­duc­tion to do so; more recent­ly, it made film his­to­ry even more dra­mat­i­cal­ly at the Acad­e­my Awards. There it won Oscars not just for Best Inter­na­tion­al Fea­ture Film, Best Orig­i­nal Screen­play, and Best Direc­tor, but also Best Pic­ture, becom­ing the first non-Eng­lish-lan­guage film to do so. For many view­ers, Par­a­site and its direc­tor seem to have come out of nowhere, but lovers of Kore­an cin­e­ma know full well that they come out of a rich tra­di­tion — and a robust indus­try.

Maybe you thrilled to Bong’s sus­pense­ful, fun­ny, and vio­lent tale of class war­fare as much as the Acad­e­my did. Maybe you’ve even seen the work of Bong’s con­tem­po­raries: Park Chan-wook, he of the con­tro­ver­sial hit Old­boy; the even more trans­gres­sive Kim Ki-duk; the pro­lif­ic Hong Sang­soo, with his Woody Allen-meets-Éric Rohmer sen­si­bil­i­ty.

But do you know their son­saeng­n­im, the gen­er­a­tions of Kore­an film­mak­ers who went before them? Now you can, no mat­ter where in the world you are, on the Kore­an Film Archive’s Youtube chan­nel. There, at no charge, you can expe­ri­ence decades of Kore­an cin­e­ma and hun­dreds of works of Kore­an cin­e­mat­ic art, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to those of mid-20th-cen­tu­ry mas­ters like Kim Ki-young, Im Kwon-taek, and my per­son­al favorite Kim Soo-yong, direc­tor of haunt­ing, even brazen pic­tures of the 1960s and 70s like Mist and Night Jour­ney.

I actu­al­ly met the then-octo­ge­nar­i­an Kim Soo-yong a few years ago, when he called me over to his table out of curios­i­ty about what a for­eign­er was doing at a screen­ing of Mist. It hap­pened at the Kore­an Film Archive’s cin­e­math­eque (known as Cin­e­math­eque KOFA) here in Seoul, where I’ve lived for the past few years. Dur­ing that time I’ve also been writ­ing a Korea Blog for the Los Ange­les Review of Books, which occa­sion­al­ly fea­tures essays on the clas­sic Kore­an films made avail­able online by the Kore­an Film Archive. I began the series with Night Jour­ney, and more recent­ly have writ­ten up pic­tures like the 1960s neo­re­al­ist cry of agony Aim­less Bul­let, the 1970s col­lege-under-dic­ta­tor­ship com­e­dy The March of Fools, the 1980s West­ern­iza­tion com­e­dy Chil-su and Man-su, the 1990s food-sex-hor­ror satir­i­cal mix­ture 301, 302, and oth­ers.

If you need more sug­ges­tions as to where to start with the KOFA’s more than 400 free films online, pay a vis­it to the Kore­an Movie Data­base (KMDb), where KOFA reg­u­lar­ly post selec­tions from their cat­a­log. This mon­th’s picks are “spy thriller films from the 1950s to 1970s infused with the anti-com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy dur­ing the time.” Pre­vi­ous months have round­ed up “melo­dra­mas that are filled with women’s desire and crav­ing for love,” films about “indi­vid­ual or fam­i­ly tragedies lead­ing to his­tor­i­cal tragedies,” and “heart-warm­ing clas­si­cal movies all the fam­i­ly mem­bers can enjoy togeth­er.” You can watch all these films either on the KMDb (which requires free reg­is­tra­tion) or on KOFA’s ever-grow­ing Youtube chan­nel. Either way, as we say here in Korea, 재미있게 보세요.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Secret of the “Per­fect Mon­tage” at the Heart of Par­a­site, the Kore­an Film Now Sweep­ing World Cin­e­ma

Mar­tin Scors­ese Intro­duces Film­mak­er Hong Sang­soo, “The Woody Allen of Korea”

The Five Best North Kore­an Movies: Watch Them Free Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

America’s First Drag Queen Was Also America’s First LGBTQ Activist and a Former Slave

in Gender, History, Life | February 14th, 2020

Negro Dive Raid­ed. Thir­teen Black Men Dressed as Women Sur­prised at Sup­per and Arrest­ed. —The Wash­ing­ton Post, April 13, 1888

Some­times, when we are engaged as either par­tic­i­pant in, or eye­wit­ness to, the mak­ing of his­to­ry, its easy to for­get the his­to­ry-mak­ers who came ear­li­er, who dug the trench­es that allow our mod­ern bat­tles to be waged out in the open.

Take America’s first self-appoint­ed “queen of drag” and pio­neer­ing LGBTQ activist, William Dorsey Swann, born into slav­ery around 1858.

30 years lat­er, Swann faced down white offi­cers bust­ing a drag ball in a “qui­et-look­ing house” on Wash­ing­ton, DC’s F street, near 12th.

“You is no gen­tle­man,” Swann alleged­ly told the arrest­ing offi­cer, while half the guests broke for free­dom, cor­rect­ly sur­mis­ing that any­one who remained would see their names pub­lished in the next day’s news­pa­per as par­tic­i­pants in a bizarre and unseem­ly rit­u­al.

A lurid Wash­ing­ton Post clip­ping about the raid caught the eye of writer, his­to­ri­an, and for­mer  Ober­lin Col­lege Drag Ball queen, Chan­ning Ger­ard Joseph, who was research­ing an assign­ment for a Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ate lev­el inves­tiga­tive report­ing class:

An ani­mat­ed con­ver­sa­tion, car­ried on in effem­i­nate tones, was in progress as the offi­cers approached the door, but when they opened it and the form of Lieut. Amiss was vis­i­ble to the peo­ple in the room a pan­ic ensued. A scram­ble was made for the win­dows and doors and some of the peo­ple jumped to the roofs of adjoin­ing build­ings. Oth­ers stripped off their dress­es and danced about the room almost in a nude con­di­tion, while sev­er­al, head­ed by a big negro named Dorsey, who was arrayed in a gor­geous dress of cream-col­ored satin, rushed towards the offi­cers and tried to pre­vent their enter­ing.

Joseph’s inter­est did not flag when his report­ing class project was turned in. House of Swann: Where Slaves Became Queens will be pub­lished in 2021.

Mean­while you can bone up on Swann, Swann’s jail time for run­ning a broth­el, and the Wash­ing­ton DC drag scene of the Swann era in Joseph’s essay for The Nation, “The First Drag Queen Was a For­mer Slave.”

Please note that William Dorsey Swann does not appear in the pho­to at the top of the page. As per Joseph:

The dancers — one in striped pants, the oth­er in a dress — were record­ed in France by Louis Lumière. Though their names are lost, they are believed to be Amer­i­can. In the show, they per­formed a ver­sion of the cake­walk, a dance invent­ed by enslaved peo­ple, and the pre­cur­sor to vogue­ing.

via The Nation

Relat­ed Con­tent:

100 Years of Drag Queen Fash­ion in 4 Min­utes: An Aes­thet­ic Jour­ney Mov­ing from the 1920s Through Today

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

When John Waters Appeared on The Simp­sons and Changed America’s LGBTQ Views (1997)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join Ayun’s com­pa­ny The­ater of the Apes in New York City this March for her book-based vari­ety series, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, and the world pre­miere of Greg Kotis’ new musi­cal, I AM NOBODY. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Chick Corea (RIP) Offers 16 Pieces of “Cheap But Good Advice for Playing Music in a Group” (1985)

in Music | February 10th, 2020

Jazz instru­men­tal­ists who “play the changes” have learned to make impro­vi­sa­tion look easy. In live per­for­mance, the audi­ence shouldn’t see the years of study and prac­tice behind what Willie Thomas calls at Jazz Every­one, “a sys­tem that com­bines the basic jazz lan­guage with the impor­tant music the­o­ry con­cepts” and at the same time “allows a play­er to focus on how the music fits the tune and not the chord sym­bols and scales that often incum­ber per­for­mance.”

That may seem like a wordy expla­na­tion, but Thomas is care­ful to expli­cate the cliché “play the changes” for max­i­mum mean­ing, draw­ing on over forty years of expe­ri­ence him­self learn­ing the prin­ci­ple as a “use­ful tool for self expres­sion through jazz music.” The idea of play­ing to the tune may seem fun­da­men­tal­ly obvi­ous, but the more one devel­ops as a stu­dent, the far­ther away one can get from lived expe­ri­ence.

How might musi­cians apply ideals about ensem­ble play­ing to actu­al ensem­ble play­ing? For answers to this ques­tion, we might turn to jazz leg­end Chick Corea, mem­ber of Miles Davis’s band dur­ing the path­break­ing In a Silent Way and Bitch­es Brew ses­sions; play­er in and leader of more Gram­my-win­ning ensem­bles than per­haps any­one else (he’s col­lect­ed 23 awards so far); and “one of the jazz world’s most thought­ful and lucid cham­pi­ons.”

This descrip­tion comes from a Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor write-up of Corea’s appear­ance in a two-hour Q&A ses­sion at Berklee Col­lege of Music in 1985, where the pianist and jazz fusion key­board mas­ter had stu­dents pick up the typed hand­out above at the door. He begins with the sim­plest, but most impor­tant advice, “Play only what you hear,” then elab­o­rates in 16 rules which you can read in full below.

Corea’s pri­ma­ry metaphor is architectural—performance, he says, is about cre­at­ing spaces and taste­ful­ly fill­ing them. Doing this well requires seri­ous study and prac­tice. Then it requires remem­ber­ing some basic rules, or Chick Corea’s “Cheap But Good Advice for Play­ing Music in a Group.” My favorite: “always release what­ev­er ten­sion you cre­ate.” Like much of you we find here, it’s good all-around advice for every endeav­or.

1. Play only what you hear.
2. If you don’t hear any­thing, don’t play any­thing.
3. Don’t let your fin­gers and limbs just wander—place these inten­tion­al­ly.
4. Don’t impro­vise on endlessly—play some­thing with inten­tion, devel­op it or not, but then end off, take a break.
5. Leave space—create space—intentionally cre­ate places where you don’t play.
6. Make your sound blend. Lis­ten to your sound and adjust it to the rest of the band and the room.
7. If you play more than one instru­ment at a time—like a drum kit or mul­ti­ple keyboards—make sure that they are bal­anced with one anoth­er.
8. Don’t make any of your music mechan­i­cal­ly or just through pat­terns of habit. Cre­ate each sound, phrase, and piece with choice—deliberately.
9. Guide your choice of what to play by what you like—not by what some­one else will think.
10. Use con­trast and bal­ance the ele­ments: high/low, fast/slow, loud/soft, tense/relaxed, dense/sparse.
11. Play to make the oth­er musi­cians sound good. Play things that will make the over­all music sound good.
12. Play with a relaxed body. Always release what­ev­er ten­sion you cre­ate.
13. Cre­ate space—begin, devel­op, and end phras­es with inten­tion.
14. Nev­er beat or pound your instrument—play it eas­i­ly and grace­ful­ly.
15. Cre­ate space—then place some­thing in it.
16. Use mim­ic­ry sparsely—mostly cre­ate phras­es that con­trast with and devel­op the phras­es of the oth­er play­ers.

via Nate Chi­nen

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thelo­nious Monk’s 25 Tips for Musi­cians (1960)

Wyn­ton Marsalis Gives 12 Tips on How to Prac­tice: For Musi­cians, Ath­letes, or Any­one Who Wants to Learn Some­thing New

John Coltrane Draws a Pic­ture Illus­trat­ing the Math­e­mat­ics of Music

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

Cooking with Wool: Watch Mouthwatering Tiny Woolen Food Animations

in Animation, Food & Drink, K-12 | January 17th, 2020

Our fas­ci­na­tion with tiny food can be traced to the mouth­wa­ter­ing illus­tra­tions in Beat­rix Potter’s The Tale of Two Bad Mice.

Just like the doll­house-sized comestibles that so con­found­ed the tit­u­lar rodents, Tom Thumb and Hun­ca­munca, ani­ma­tor Andrea Love’s minia­ture pas­ta with red sauce is as ined­i­ble as it is appe­tiz­ing.

The self-taught stop motion specialist’s medi­um of choice is wool.

In an inter­view with Drag­on Frame stop motion software’s com­pa­ny blog, when they fea­tured Cook­ing with Wool: Break­fast, above, Love explained:

I like to make short per­son­al projects exper­i­ment­ing with the dif­fer­ent ways to ani­mate wool. The tech­nique is called nee­dle felt­ing and it involves shap­ing wool with a barbed nee­dle. I love the fuzzy aes­thet­ic, and feel like the pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less. Every­thing in this video is made out of wool or felt, and is built over rigid insu­la­tion foam. This was a weekend/evening project, done over the course of three days… It is very chal­leng­ing work­ing with tiny bits of wool, but also amaz­ing how much detail can be achieved on a small scale when you con­sid­er that it is just tiny clumps of fur.

For­get the showstoppers—the melt­ing but­ter, the fried eggs flip­ping in the pan, the steam ris­ing from cup and ket­tle…

Let’s take a moment to admire the atten­tion to detail that went into the back­ground aspects—the rub­ber spat­u­la, the bananas, the cheery flecked wall­pa­per…

The only thing miss­ing is a pothold­er to han­dle that pip­ing hot cast iron skil­let.

Per­haps she ran out of wool?

The Port Townsend, Wash­ing­ton res­i­dent, who grad­u­at­ed from Hamp­shire Col­lege with a con­cen­tra­tion in film stud­ies and sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, whips up her tee­ny wee­ny wooly meals in the same base­ment stu­dio where she crafts pro­mo­tion­al videos for local busi­ness­es, includ­ing the yarn shop where she sources her wool rov­ings.

View more of Andrea Love’s fiber-art stop motion ani­ma­tions, includ­ing a “dig­i­tal” banana paint­ing cre­at­ed with a woolen tablet and sty­lus, on her web­site and Insta­gram page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Online Knit­ting Ref­er­ence Library: Down­load 300 Knit­ting Books Pub­lished From 1849 to 2012

Behold an Anatom­i­cal­ly Cor­rect Repli­ca of the Human Brain, Knit­ted by a Psy­chi­a­trist

20+ Knit­ters and Cro­chet Artists Stitch an Aston­ish­ing 3‑D Recre­ation of Picasso’s Guer­ni­ca

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 3 for New York: The Nation’s Metrop­o­lis the 21st install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

How Dick Cavett Brought Sophistication to Late Night Talk Shows: Watch 270 Classic Interviews Online

in Television | January 9th, 2020

Just as the avun­cu­lar pres­ence of Ed Sul­li­van helped ease mid­dle Amer­i­ca into accept­ing Elvis Pres­ley and The Bea­t­les, the aw-shucks mid­west­ern charm of Dick Cavett made Wood­stock hip­pies seem down­right cud­dly when he had Jef­fer­son Air­plane, David Cros­by, and Joni Mitchell on just after the leg­endary music fes­ti­val in 1969. He had a way of mak­ing every­one around him com­fort­able enough to reveal just a lit­tle more than they might oth­er­wise. (See Jimi Hen­drix talk about his Nation­al Anthem per­for­mance, below.)

Born in Nebras­ka in 1937, “the only per­sona [Cavett] both­ered to, or need­ed to, devel­op for work­ing on cam­era was of a boy from Nebras­ka daz­zled by the bright lights of New York,” as Clive James writes in an appre­ci­a­tion of the TV host. As he inter­viewed the biggest stars of late six­ties, sev­en­ties, and eight­ies on the long-run­ning Dick Cavett Show, Cavett’s easy­go­ing Mid­west­ern demeanor dis­armed both his guests and audi­ences. He kept them engaged with his eru­di­tion, quick wit, and breadth of cul­tur­al knowl­edge.

Cavett, writes James, was “the most dis­tin­guished talk-show host in Amer­i­ca… a true sophis­ti­cate with a daunt­ing intel­lec­tu­al range.” He was also an empath­ic inter­view­er who could lead his guests beyond the stock respons­es they were used to giv­ing in TV inter­views. (David Bowie, below, reveals how he was influ­enced by his fans.)

A trained gym­nast and self-taught magician—Cavett met fel­low magi­cian John­ny Car­son in the ear­ly 50s at a mag­ic convention—the talk-show host left Nebras­ka for Yale and nev­er looked back. (He once joked, quot­ing Abe Bur­rows, “How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm, after they’ve seen the farm?”) After col­lege, he moved to New York to pur­sue act­ing. There, he got his first com­e­dy writ­ing job, when he hand­ed some of his jokes to Tonight Show host Jack Paar in an ele­va­tor. He befriend­ed Stan Lau­rel, Grou­cho Marx, and all the biggest names in com­e­dy, and wrote for Jer­ry Lewis and Merv Grif­fin.

Once he had his own late-night talk show, how­ev­er, which ran oppo­site John­ny Carson’s Tonight Show, it became clear that he was doing some­thing very dif­fer­ent. “Cavett nev­er mugged, nev­er whooped it up for the audi­ence, rarely told a for­mal­ly con­struct­ed joke, and lis­tened to the guest,” writes James. He became “famous enough not to be able to go out except in dis­guise,” but “his style did not suit a mass audi­ence.” This is what made—and still makes—Cavett worth watch­ing.

He had Bri­an de Pal­ma and Mar­tin Scors­ese on to talk about how they’re each other’s best crit­ics, and Scors­ese revealed that he did addi­tion­al shoot­ing for The Last Waltz after De Pal­ma saw it.

Robin Williams came on to demon­strate his devel­op­ing Pop­eye voice dur­ing the shoot­ing of the Robert Alt­man film in 1979. In the clip above, he talks about feel­ing like “a mon­key on a string” and work­ing through his depres­sion.

Lucille Ball told the sto­ry of her ear­ly years in show busi­ness, and her time work­ing as a mod­el, and Dick Van Dyke talked frankly about his alco­holism and the stig­ma sur­round­ing addic­tion.

These are just a few of the 270+ sur­pris­ing clips you’ll find on the Dick Cavett Show YouTube chan­nel, where George Car­lin, Muham­mad Ali, Mar­lon Bran­do, George Har­ri­son, John Lennon, Ian McK­ellen, Julie Andrews, and too many more stars to name say things they rarely said any­where else, as Cavett draws them out and keeps them talk­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dick Cavett’s Wide-Rang­ing TV Inter­view with Ing­mar Bergman and Lead Actress Bibi Ander­s­son (1971)

George Har­ri­son in the Spot­light: The Dick Cavett Show (1971)

John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Two Appear­ances on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 and 72

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

A Brief History of John Baldessari (RIP) Narrated by Tom Waits: A Tribute to the Late “Godfather of Conceptual Art”

in Art | January 6th, 2020

All mod­ern art is con­cep­tu­al in some way, bound to aes­thet­ic the­o­ries and com­bat­ive man­i­festoes against com­pla­cen­cy. But only in the move­ment known as cap­i­tal “C” Con­cep­tu­al Art do the ideas become more impor­tant than the objects. Con­cep­tu­al Art traces its his­to­ry to Mar­cel Duchamp and the Sur­re­al­ists who declared war on the bour­geois cul­tur­al sta­tus quo.

Lat­er exper­i­men­tal artists did the same by ele­vat­ing mass cul­ture to the sta­tus of high art: adver­tis­ing, com­ic books, Hol­ly­wood spec­ta­cle, and—in the past twen­ty-five years or so—the Inter­net: Pop Art fore­ground­ed con­cepts over objects by means of pas­tiche and meta­com­men­tary. The work of L.A. artist Ed Ruscha, for exam­ple, cen­ters slo­gans and clichés over ambigu­ous images that some­times look like stock desk­top back­grounds.

Both Duchamp and Ruscha were influ­ences on Amer­i­can Con­cep­tu­al­ist John Baldessari, who passed away yes­ter­day at age 88, leav­ing behind a lega­cy as “arguably America’s most influ­en­tial Con­cep­tu­al artist,” accord­ing to L.A. Times crit­ic Christo­pher Knight. Born of Euro­pean par­ents and raised in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Baldessari incor­po­rat­ed humor, satire, and Pop Art ele­ments into his work.

He did not begin his career, how­ev­er, as part of a move­ment, and he nev­er expect­ed to have much of an audi­ence. In the ear­ly six­ties, he was teach­ing high school art in San Diego and felt “total­ly iso­lat­ed,” he says in the inter­view with Knight below. Baldessari resigned him­self to a “nor­mal life,” paint­ing when he could on the week­ends. These con­di­tions inspired him to “try to fig­ure out what art meant for me, what was the bot­tom line.”

Baldessari answers the ques­tion, to laughs from the audi­ence, with typ­i­cal lacon­ic wit: “any­thing you put on can­vas is art.” Baldessari reversed Duchamp’s for­mu­la. Put a cin­derblock in a muse­um, he says, and it becomes art through con­text, but put a can­vas on the street and it doesn’t become some­thing else. It always retains its sta­tus as an art object. Such objects, for Baldessari, served main­ly as mate­r­i­al plat­forms for ideas.

“Pic­tures are not enough, Baldessari seems to sug­gest,” writes Alex Green­berg­er in an ART­news trib­ute. “Con­cepts mat­ter equal­ly, if not even more.” Baldessari has been called “the god­fa­ther of Con­cep­tu­al Art” for this insight, says Tom Waits says in his nar­ra­tion of “A Brief His­to­ry of John Baldessari” at the top. He’s also been called a “mas­ter of appro­pri­a­tion” and “Sur­re­al­ist for the dig­i­tal age.” He nev­er lim­it­ed him­self to just can­vas but worked in almost every medi­um of visu­al and tex­tu­al art.

Those media includ­ed cred­it card and iPhone app design. Art isn’t only mate­r­i­al: it is vir­tu­al, ephemer­al, and dis­pos­able. Baldessari demon­strat­ed his own com­mit­ment to destroy­ing the past when, in 1970, he burned all of the work he had made between 1953 and 1966 for a con­cep­tu­al piece called The Cre­ma­tion Project. But he wasn’t an art world anar­chist. As he toyed with and chal­lenged tra­di­tion, he also helped instill it.

Baldessari become famous enough to have war­rant­ed a guest spot on The Simp­sons (and was award­ed a Nation­al Medal of Arts). He became wealthy enough by far to quit his day job. But he nev­er stopped teach­ing, from high school to posts at CalArts, UCLA, and UC San Diego. “I’ve taught all my life,” he said in 2003, “Every­thing from grade school to col­lege to juve­nile delin­quents.”

We might be inclined to see in his teach­ing phi­los­o­phy a key to under­stand­ing his con­cep­tu­al uni­verse: “I set out to right all the things wrong with my own art edu­ca­tion. But I found that you can’t real­ly teach art, you can just sort of set the stage for it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Mar­cel Duchamp Read “The Cre­ative Act,” A Short Lec­ture on What Makes Great Art, Great

Roy Licht­en­stein and Andy Warhol Demys­ti­fy Their Pop Art in Vin­tage 1966 Film

When Bri­an Eno & Oth­er Artists Peed in Mar­cel Duchamp’s Famous Uri­nal

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

The Names of 1.8 Million Emancipated Slaves Are Now Searchable in the World’s Largest Genealogical Database, Helping African Americans Find Lost Ancestors

in Archives, History, Museums | January 3rd, 2020

The suc­cess­es of the Freedman’s Bureau, ini­ti­at­ed by Abra­ham Lin­coln in 1865 and first admin­is­tered under Oliv­er Howard’s War Depart­ment, are all the more remark­able con­sid­er­ing the intense pop­u­lar and polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion to the agency. Under Lincoln’s suc­ces­sor, impeached South­ern Demo­c­rat Andrew John­son, the Bureau at times became a hos­tile enti­ty to the very peo­ple it was meant to aid and protect—the for­mer­ly enslaved, espe­cial­ly, but also poor whites dev­as­tat­ed by the war. After years of defund­ing, under­staffing, and vio­lent insur­gency the Freedman’s Bureau was offi­cial­ly dis­solved in 1872.

In those first few years after eman­ci­pa­tion, how­ev­er, the Bureau built sev­er­al hos­pi­tals and over a thou­sand rur­al schools in the South, estab­lished the His­tor­i­cal­ly Black Col­lege and Uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem, and “cre­at­ed mil­lions of records,” notes the Nation­al Muse­um of African Amer­i­can His­to­ry and Cul­ture (NMAAHC), “that con­tain the names of hun­dreds of thou­sands of for­mer­ly enslaved indi­vid­u­als and South­ern white refugees.” Those records have enabled his­to­ri­ans to recon­struct the lives of peo­ple who might oth­er­wise have dis­ap­peared from the record and helped geneal­o­gists trace fam­i­ly con­nec­tions that might have been irrev­o­ca­bly bro­ken.

As we not­ed back in 2015, those records have become part of a dig­i­ti­za­tion project named for the Bureau and spear­head­ed by the Smith­son­ian, the Nation­al Archives, the Afro-Amer­i­can His­tor­i­cal and Genealog­i­cal Soci­ety, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter Day Saints, whose Fam­il­y­Search is the largest geneal­o­gy orga­ni­za­tion in the world. “Using mod­ern, dig­i­tal and web-based tech­nol­o­gy and the pow­er of [over 25,000!] vol­un­teers,” says Hol­lis Gen­try, a genealog­i­cal spe­cial­ist at the NMAAHC, the Freedman’s Bureau Project “is unlock­ing infor­ma­tion from a trans­for­ma­tive era in the his­to­ry of African Amer­i­can fam­i­lies and the Amer­i­can nation.”

That infor­ma­tion is now avail­able to the gen­er­al pub­lic, “glob­al­ly via the web” here, as of June 20th, 2016, allow­ing “all of us to enlarge our under­stand­ing of the past.” More specif­i­cal­ly, the Freedman’s Bureau Project and Fam­il­y­Search allows African Amer­i­cans to recov­er their fam­i­ly his­to­ry in a data­base that now includes “the names of near­ly 1.8 mil­lion men, women and chil­dren” record­ed by Freedman’s Bureau work­ers and entered by Freedman’s Bureau Project vol­un­teers 150 years lat­er. This incred­i­ble data­base will give mil­lions of peo­ple descend­ed from both for­mer slaves and white Civ­il War refugees the abil­i­ty to find their ances­tors.

There’s still more work to be done. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the NMAAHC, the Smith­son­ian Tran­scrip­tion Cen­ter is cur­rent­ly rely­ing on vol­un­teers to tran­scribe all of the dig­i­tal scans pro­vid­ed by Fam­il­y­Search. “When com­plet­ed, the papers will be key­word search­able. This joint effort will help increase access to the Freedmen’s Bureau col­lec­tion and help the pub­lic learn more about the Unit­ed States in the Recon­struc­tion Era,” a crit­i­cal time in U.S. his­to­ry that is woe­ful­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed or delib­er­ate­ly white­washed in text­books and cur­ric­u­la.

“The records left by the Freed­men’s Bureau through its work between 1865 and 1872 con­sti­tute the rich­est and most exten­sive doc­u­men­tary source avail­able for inves­ti­gat­ing the African Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence in the post-Civ­il War and Recon­struc­tion eras,” writes the Nation­al Archives. Soon, all of those doc­u­ments will be pub­licly avail­able for every­one to read. For now, those with roots in the U.S. South can search the Freedman’s Bureau Project data­base to dis­cov­er more about their fam­i­ly her­itage and his­to­ry.

And while the Smithsonian’s tran­scrip­tion project is under­way, those who want to learn more can vis­it the Freedman’s Bureau Online, which has tran­scribed hun­dreds of doc­u­ments, includ­ing labor records, nar­ra­tives of “out­rages com­mit­ted on freed­men,” and mar­riage reg­is­ters.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1.5 Mil­lion Slav­ery Era Doc­u­ments Will Be Dig­i­tized, Help­ing African Amer­i­cans to Learn About Their Lost Ances­tors

Visu­al­iz­ing Slav­ery: The Map Abra­ham Lin­coln Spent Hours Study­ing Dur­ing the Civ­il War

The Civ­il War and Recon­struc­tion: A Free Course

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

“Don’t Try”: The Philosophy of the Hardworking Charles Bukowski

in Creativity, Life, Literature | December 13th, 2019

If Charles Bukows­ki were alive today, what would you ask him? Best to avoid the stan­dard ques­tions put to writ­ers about how or why they chose to become writ­ers — not just because Bukows­ki would sure­ly respond with a few col­or­ful­ly choice words of dis­missal, but because he embod­ied the lack of choice that char­ac­ter­izes the life of every seri­ous cre­ator. Accord­ing to the Pur­suit of Won­der video essay above, Bukows­ki dropped out of col­lege halfway through in order to write. After a peri­od spent “bounc­ing around the Unit­ed States, doing short-term blue-col­lar jobs while writ­ing hun­dred of short sto­ries,” none of which broke him into the lit­er­ary big time, came a high­ly unpro­duc­tive peri­od of blue-col­lar jobs with­out the accom­pa­ny­ing writ­ing.

At the end of a writ­ing-free decade, Bukows­ki “near­ly died from a seri­ous bleed­ing ulcer.” This got him back on track, as brush­es with mor­tal­i­ty tend to do: he sub­se­quent­ly quit his job at the post office and returned to writ­ing full-time. It was only a few years before he went back to work at the post office, but this time he kept writ­ing, putting in the real work at the type­writer before each shift at the day job. He did so with­out the prospect of suc­cess any­where in the off­ing, at least not before he reached mid­dle age. “It took Bukows­ki years and years of writ­ing and toil­ing and try­ing to final­ly have cir­cum­stances work out in his favor so he could gain trac­tion and find suc­cess as a writer,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor. And yet, as we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly not­ed here at Open Cul­ture, into Bukowski’s grave­stone are chis­eled these words: “Don’t try.”

“How could a man who became suc­cess­ful in ful­fill­ing his idea of him­self — a man who, although it took a while, found immense respect and recog­ni­tion for his craft, all because of his relent­less try­ing — how could this man leave the words don’t try as his final offer­ing?” We might inter­pret them in light of a let­ter from Bukows­ki to a friend, the writer and pub­lish­er William Packard. “Too many writ­ers write for the wrong rea­sons,” declared Bukows­ki. “They want to get famous or they want to get rich or they want to get laid by the girls with the blue­bells in their hair… When every­thing goes best, it’s not because you chose writ­ing, but because writ­ing chose you.” Bukows­ki did­n’t decide to be a writer; nobody actu­al­ly ded­i­cat­ed to a pur­suit ever had to decide which pur­suit it would be.

“We work too hard. We try too hard,” Bukows­ki writes to Packard. “Don’t try. Don’t work. It’s there. Look­ing right at us, aching to kick out of the closed womb.” He may have meant, as the video’s nar­ra­tor puts it, that “if you have to try to try, if you have to try to care about some­thing or have to try to want some­thing, per­haps you don’t care about it, and per­haps you don’t want it.” And “if the thought of not doing the thing hurts more than the thought of poten­tial­ly suf­fer­ing through the process, if the thought of a life with­out it or nev­er hav­ing tried it at all ter­ri­fies you, if it comes to you, through you, out of you, almost as if you’re not try­ing, per­haps Bukows­ki might say here, try, and ‘if you’re going to try, go all the way.’ ” That quote comes from Bukowski’s nov­el Fac­to­tum — the sto­ry of a writer in search of blue-col­lar work that won’t get in the way of his one true craft — and we might do well to take it one sen­tence fur­ther: “Oth­er­wise, don’t even start.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Don’t Try”: Charles Bukowski’s Con­cise Phi­los­o­phy of Art and Life

Inspi­ra­tion from Charles Bukows­ki: You Might Be Old, Your Life May Be “Crap­py,” But You Can Still Make Good Art

Charles Bukows­ki Explains What Good Writ­ing and the Good Life Have in Com­mon

Is Charles Bukows­ki a Self-Help Guru? Hear Five of His Bru­tal­ly Hon­est, Yet Odd­ly Inspir­ing, Poems and Decide for Your­self

Charles Bukows­ki Explains How to Beat Depres­sion: Spend 3–4 Days in Bed and You’ll Get the Juices Flow­ing Again (NSFW)

Charles Bukows­ki Reads His Poem “The Secret of My Endurance” 

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.