How to Send an E‑mail: A 1984 British Television Broadcast Explains This “Simple” Process

in Technology, Television | March 23rd, 2016

Ear­li­er this month, the world got news of the death of a man whose name many of us had nev­er heard but whose act of inno­va­tion shaped what we do every day. “When his­to­ri­ans of the future study the ways infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy affect­ed people’s lives in the late 20th cen­tu­ry,” said his Econ­o­mist obit­u­ary, “they will sure­ly recog­nise e‑mail as one of the most pro­found. Today, about 2.5m e‑mails are sent every sec­ond. The first e‑mail of all, though” — to be pre­cise, “the first mes­sage between ter­mi­nals attached to sep­a­rate CPUs, albeit that these two com­put­ers stood side-by-side in the same room” — “was sent 45 years ago by Ray Tom­lin­son.”

Fif­teen years after that qui­et­ly his­to­ry-mak­ing trans­mis­sion, e‑mail had evolved to the point that it had become a sub­ject in the news. This 1984 seg­ment of the Thames Tele­vi­sion com­put­er show Data­base shows how one ear­ly-adopt­ing cou­ple, Pat and Julian Green of north Lon­don, com­mu­ni­cate with the world by con­nect­ing their com­put­er to, of all things, the tele­phone line. “It’s sim­ple, real­ly,” says Julian, unplug­ging a British Tele­com cable from one sock­et and plug­ging it into a modem, plug­ging a dif­fer­ent wire from the modem into the first sock­et, switch­ing on the modem, and then hand-dial­ing the num­ber of a “main com­put­er” — with his rotary phone. “Extreme­ly sim­ple,” he reit­er­ates.

What can they do on Micronet, their ser­vice provider, once con­nect­ed? They might read the news, have a look at “reviews of the soft­ware that’s cur­rent­ly avail­able” and even down­load some of it, or use the fea­ture that Pat (in addi­tion to her use of the com­put­er for “keep­ing house­hold records, such as what I have in the freez­er, and people’s tele­phone num­bers and address­es,” as well as “a word proces­sor for my let­ters, which always come out per­fect now”) describes as most excit­ing of all: “the mail­box where I write to oth­er peo­ple.” We see how she can use this new elec­tron­ic mail to ask her doc­tor to refill a pre­scrip­tion, and even to send a mes­sage to the Data­base stu­dio.

All this must have intrigued the view­ers of the day, who, if they had their own com­put­ers at the ready, could even “down­load” soft­ware straight from the broad­cast by record­ing the tone that plays over the show’s end cred­its. (As long as their com­put­ers were BBC Micros, that is, at least in this par­tic­u­lar episode.) The past 32 years have seen enthu­si­asm for new tech­nol­o­gy spread all across the world, turn­ing us all, in some sense, into Pat and Julian Greens. Today we mar­vel at all what we can do with our smart­phones, devices that would’ve seemed mag­i­cal in 1984, but in three decades from now, even our cur­rent tech­no­log­i­cal lives will sure­ly look quaint­er than any­thing in the Data­base archives.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Inter­net Imag­ined in 1969

From the Annals of Opti­mism: The News­pa­per Indus­try in 1981 Imag­ines its Dig­i­tal Future

Where Is Tech­nol­o­gy Tak­ing Us?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Peter Sellers Recites The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” in the Style of Shakespeare’s Richard III

in Comedy, Music, Television | March 23rd, 2016

“Now is the win­ter of our dis­con­tent….” If you know noth­ing else of Shakespeare’s Richard III, you’ll know this famous open­ing line, and it’s like­ly many of us know it through Lau­rence Olivier’s per­for­mance of Richard as a “melo­dra­mat­ic bad­die” in the famous 1955 film. If not, take a look at the clip below to famil­iar­ize your­self with Olivier’s dis­tinc­tive man­ner­isms and speech. The ref­er­ence may large­ly be lost these days, but in 1965, at the very height of The Bea­t­les’ fame, Olivier’s per­for­mance was still fresh in the minds of the TV view­ing pub­lic. And the mer­cu­r­ial Eng­lish come­di­an Peter Sell­ers put it to good use in a Bea­t­les-trib­ute vari­ety pro­gram called The Music of Lennon and McCart­ney that aired in the UK. In the clip above, Sell­ers recites the lyrics to “A Hard Day’s Night” in char­ac­ter as Olivier’s dandy­ish Richard.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Sell­ers and the Bea­t­les had hit it off right away when they were intro­duced by George Mar­tin, and as we showed you in a recent post, the come­di­an milked their lyrics for more mate­r­i­al, read­ing “She Loves You,” in a vari­ety of accents. Sell­ers’ ren­di­tion of “A Hard Day’s Night” was hard­ly the first Shake­speare­an turn for the band.

The pre­vi­ous year, they appeared in anoth­er vari­ety tele­vi­sion spe­cial called Around the Bea­t­les, “pro­duced con­cur­rent­ly,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, “while A Hard Day’s Night was being shot.” (Around the Bea­t­les was direct­ed by pro­duc­er and man­ag­er Jack Good, a “Shake­speare fan,” who also, it turns out, con­vinced rock­a­bil­ly star Gene Vin­cent to dress up like Richard III.) In this ear­li­er pro­gram, the band—always good sports about this kind of thing—dressed up in Shake­speare­an garb and staged a rau­cous per­for­mance of a scene from A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ “She Loves You” in 4 Dif­fer­ent Accents: Dr. Strangelove, Cock­ney, Irish & Upper Crust

The Bea­t­les Sat­ur­day Morn­ing Car­toon Show: The Com­plete 1965–1969 Series

The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs: William Shat­ner, Bill Cos­by, Tiny Tim, Sean Con­nery & Your Excel­lent Picks

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

Watch David Bowie Star in His First Film Role, a Short Horror Flick Called The Image (1967)

in Film, Music | March 15th, 2016

Rock stars who became respect­ed actors… the pool is a small one, per­haps out­num­bered by the many musi­cians who have made less suc­cess­ful attempts at movie star­dom. But with­out a doubt, the for­mer cat­e­go­ry includes David Bowie. In his var­i­ous musi­cal guis­es, Bowie the cracked actor put to use the skills he honed for decades on movie after movie. Not every film is worth watch­ing, but near­ly every per­for­mance con­tains seeds of great­ness.

What you may not know is that Bowie the actor and Bowie the musi­cian grew up togeth­er. He had always been both, tak­ing his first film role in a short hor­ror flick, The Image, back in 1967, the same year he released his first, self-titled album. You can be for­giv­en for nev­er hear­ing about either. Nei­ther one made much of an impres­sion (and Bowie more or less dis­avowed the album). But the movie did have the rare dis­tinc­tion at the time of receiv­ing an X rat­ing. “I think it was the first short that got an X‑certificate,” says writer and direc­tor Michael Arm­strong, “for its vio­lence, which in itself was extra­or­di­nary.”

Tame by today’s stan­dards, the movie fea­tures 20-year-old Bowie as a paint­ing come to life. He got the part not because Armstrong—a fan of his first album—considered him “per­fect for the role. It was real­ly to give him a job.” Arm­strong described his star to The Wall Street Jour­nal as “very pret­ty” and “flir­ta­tious” and remem­bers Bowie’s impres­sive Elvis imper­son­ation. Bowie seems to have found the whole thing very fun­ny. On set, there were “a lot of issues with corpsing—bursting into laugh­ter dur­ing a take,” writes Metro.co.uk. When the film appeared in the­aters, view­ers expect­ed to see porn—not only because of its X‑rating but also because, writes Rolling Stone, it “briefly screened between two porn films at a Lon­don the­ater.” (The film’s star saw the movie by him­self in a the­ater filled with lone men in rain­coats.) Bowie, says Arm­strong, “thought it was hilar­i­ous.”

The Image has only recent­ly appeared online thanks to the WSJ, who received per­mis­sion from the David Bowie Archive to show it. You can watch the almost 14-minute film up top. (You can see a Youtube ver­sion below it.) Like Bowie’s first album, it may not her­ald the birth of a new star—his abil­i­ties as an actor may not have been ful­ly evi­dent until his first fea­ture-length star­ring part in The Man Who Fell to Earth. But as with music, so with act­ing: Bowie nev­er stopped work­ing at the craft, and the films that fell flat seemed only to inspire him to work hard­er and cre­ate even more ambi­tious char­ac­ters.

The Image will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via The Wall Street Jour­nal/Metro

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 17-Year-Old David Bowie Defends “Long-Haired Men” in His First TV Inter­view (1964)

Hear Demo Record­ings of David Bowie’s “Zig­gy Star­dust,” “Space Odd­i­ty” & “Changes”

How “Space Odd­i­ty” Launched David Bowie to Star­dom: Watch the Orig­i­nal Music Video From 1969

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

Free: Read All of George Orwell’s War Diaries Online (1938–1942)

in History, Literature, Politics | March 8th, 2016

Jour­nal­ist, essay­ist, and nov­el­ist Eric Blair, bet­ter known as George Orwell, has the dis­tinc­tion of writ­ing not just one, but two of the most well-known cau­tion­ary nov­els about total­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments: 1984 and Ani­mal Farm. You’ve like­ly read at least one of them, per­haps both, and you’ve like­ly seen either or both of the film adap­ta­tions based on these books. Were this the total­i­ty of Orwell’s lega­cy, it would sure­ly be secure for many decades to come—and per­haps many hun­dreds of years. Who knows how our descen­dants will remem­ber us; but whether they man­age to ful­ly tran­scend author­i­tar­i­an­ism or still wres­tle with it many gen­er­a­tions lat­er, the name of Orwell may for­ev­er be asso­ci­at­ed with its threat­en­ing rise.

And yet, had Orwell nev­er writ­ten a word of fic­tion­al prose, we would prob­a­bly still invoke his name as an impor­tant jour­nal­is­tic wit­ness to the 20th century’s blood­i­est con­flicts over fas­cism. He direct­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Span­ish Civ­il War, fight­ing with the Marx­ist resis­tance group POUM (Par­tido Obrero de Unifi­cación Marx­ista). The hor­rif­ic takeover of Spain by Fran­cis­co Fran­co, with help from Hitler’s Luft­waffe, par­al­leled the Nazi’s grad­ual takeover of West­ern Europe, and the expe­ri­ence changed not only Orwell’s out­look, but that of Euro­peans gen­er­al­ly. As he wrote in his per­son­al account of the war, Homage to Cat­alo­nia, “Peo­ple then had some­thing we haven’t got now. They didn’t think of the future as some­thing to be ter­ri­fied of….”

Orwell’s tour of duty in Spain end­ed in 1937 when he was shot in the throat; lat­er he and his wife Eileen were charged with “rabid Trot­sky­ism” by pro-Sovi­et Span­ish com­mu­nists. The Orwells retired to Moroc­co to recu­per­ate. There, Orwell began keep­ing a diary, which he main­tained until 1942, chron­i­cling his impres­sions and expe­ri­ences through­out the war years as he and Eileen made their way out of Moroc­co and back to Eng­land. You can fol­low their jour­neys in a Google Maps project here. And you can read all of Orwell’s diary entries at the web­site of The Orwell Prize, “Britain’s most pres­ti­gious prize for polit­i­cal writ­ing.” The Prize site began blog­ging Orwell’s entries in 2008—70 years to the day after the first entry—and con­tin­ued in “real time” there­after until 2012.

The first entries reveal lit­tle, show­ing us “a large­ly unknown Orwell, whose great curios­i­ty is focused on plants, ani­mals, wood­work,” and oth­er domes­tic con­cerns. Then, from about Sep­tem­ber, 1938 on, we see “the Orwell whose polit­i­cal obser­va­tions and crit­i­cal think­ing have enthralled and inspired gen­er­a­tions since his death in 1950. Whether writ­ing about the Span­ish Civ­il War or sloe gin, gera­ni­ums or Ger­many, Orwell’s per­cep­tive eye and rebel­lion against the ‘gramo­phone mind’ he so despised are obvi­ous.” These diaries—post­ed with explana­to­ry footnotes—preserve a keen eye­wit­ness to his­to­ry, one who had been test­ed in war and seen first­hand the dan­ger fas­cism posed. Orwell’s expe­ri­ences gave him mate­r­i­al for the nov­els for which we best remem­ber him. And his per­son­al and jour­nal­is­tic accounts give us a grip­ping first­hand por­trait of life under the threat of Nazi vic­to­ry.

Start read­ing Orwell’s War Diaries, begin­ning with the last one, at the Orwell Prize site. Along with the diaries them­selves, you’ll find con­tex­tu­al arti­cles and an image gallery with scanned clip­pings and doc­u­ments like the 1938 ID cards for George and Eileen Orwell, above.

Orwell’s War Diaries will be added to our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell’s Five Great­est Essays (as Select­ed by Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning Colum­nist Michael Hiltzik)

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

George Orwell’s Final Warn­ing: Don’t Let This Night­mare Sit­u­a­tion Hap­pen. It Depends on You! 

Clock­work Orange Author Antho­ny Burgess Lists His Five Favorite Dystopi­an Nov­els: Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Island & More

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

Mark Bittman’s Most Loved Recipes from The New York Times: Learn to Cook Healthy, Earth-Friendly Meals

in Food & Drink, How to Learn for Free, Life | March 7th, 2016

Food writer and healthy eat­ing advo­cate Mark Bittman has “no patience” for those who say, “I’d love to cook but I have a lousy kitchen,” but that does­n’t make him a hec­tor­ing meanie in the Top Chef pan­elist mold:

To me the ques­tion was not, “Would I cook this as a native would?” but rather, “How would a native cook this if he had my ingre­di­ents, my kitchen, my back­ground?” It’s obvi­ous­ly a dif­fer­ent dish. But as Jacques Pépin once said to me, you nev­er cook a recipe the same way twice, even if you try. I nev­er main­tained that my way of cook­ing was the “best” way to cook, only that it’s a prac­ti­cal way to cook. (I’m lazy, I’m rushed, and I’m not all that skill­ful, and many peo­ple share those qual­i­ties.)

If you’ve made it to adult­hood with­out learn­ing how to cook, or for that mat­ter, how to eat for the good of your body and the plan­et, Bittman is your man.

With the excep­tion of his baroque, James Beard-inspired scram­bled eggs, his recipes are swift and sim­ple, and his well doc­u­ment­ed flex­i­bil­i­ty makes him a good fit for any num­ber of palates and dietary restric­tions.

Hav­ing intro­duced the world to the idea of eat­ing “veg­an before six,” he ditched his cushy New York Times colum­nist gig to start a plant-based meal kit ser­vice in San Fran­cis­co. The Pur­ple Car­rot’s stat­ed goal is not to get peo­ple to give up meat, but rather to up their intake of home cooked dish­es that are good for their health as well as the envi­ron­ment.

Ergo, he’s like­ly not too cha­grinned that this col­lec­tion of Bittman’s “most-loved recipes,” in a career span­ning more than 1500 bylines at the New York Times, includes such ingre­di­ents as chori­zo, may­on­naise, chick­en, and eggs.

Below you can find a selec­tion (a bak­er’s dozen) of favorite Bittman recipes for chefs at all lev­els, includ­ing absolute begin­ners, to try. (The com­plete list is here.) Their ingre­di­ents are fair­ly straight­for­ward, though Hol­ly Golight­ly types who store books in the oven, may have to upgrade the kitchen with some ramekins and a pas­try cut­ter.

• Clas­sic Scones [top]: Those with­out a food proces­sor can do as my grand­ma, an excel­lent, unfussy farm cook did, and cut the but­ter into the dough with two forks.
• Roast­ed Brus­sels Sprouts With Gar­lic:  The liv­er­wurst of veg­eta­bles no more! This is so sim­ple it’s bare­ly a recipe. More of a phi­los­o­phy. His sweet pota­to fries fall into the same cat­e­go­ry.
• Sim­plest Roast Chick­en: Per­fect to pack along on a Hem­ing­way pic­nic.

• Veg­etable Soup: This one pre­sumes a microwave. You can do it the old fash­ioned way by adding some water or boxed veg­etable stock to a stove­top pot. See? Cook­ing is easy!

• Roast­ed Sweet Pota­to Sal­ad With Black Beans and Chili Dress­ing: Home­made dress­ing is a skill worth acquir­ing.
• Fried Chick­peas With Chori­zo and Spinach: Lose the chori­zo and boom! It’s a veg­an entree.
• Corn and Crab Cakes: Don’t care for crab? Take a stab at one of Bittman’s 103 fish recipes and use the left­overs in place of the crus­tacean.
• Spiced Red Lentil Dal: This recipe costs less than the print edi­tion of the Times.

• Sautéed Shrimp With Capers and Olives: Unless your veg­an­ism is shap­ing up to be a 24/7 com­mit­ment, you’re gonna have to learn how to devein shrimp some­time, pal.

• Grilled Corn: You don’t even have to have a work­ing kitchen! Just a hibachi and a bowl!
• Fastest Pas­ta With Spinach Sauce: Love carbs? So does Bittman, as evi­denced by the num­ber of pas­ta recipes he’s pub­lished.
• Mex­i­can Choco­late Tofu Pud­ding: If one might frame a veg­an dessert in terms of killing birds, this is the stone that will pol­ish off your fear of tofu, ramekins…and veg­an desserts!
• Cham­pagne Cock­tail: Con­grat­u­la­tions! You’re a chef! Toast your accom­plish­ments.

Find all of Bittman’s New York Times recipes here. And even more on his web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michael Pol­lan Explains How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life; Rec­om­mends Cook­ing Books, Videos & Recipes

53 New York Times Videos Teach Essen­tial Cook­ing Tech­niques: From Poach­ing Eggs to Shuck­ing Oys­ters

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Food All at Once (Free Online Course)

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

A Complete Collection of Wes Anderson Video Essays

in Film | March 4th, 2016

What with the lav­ish atten­tion he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors pay to art, design, cos­tum­ing, fram­ing, com­po­si­tion, and edit­ing — and espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing the pains he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors take to ref­er­ence and adapt pieces of the art of cin­e­ma that came before them — who does it sur­prise that Wes Ander­son become such a fruit­ful sub­ject for video essay­ists? His films, from the hum­ble fea­ture debut Bot­tle Rock­et and sopho­more break­out Rush­more to more recent exten­sions of his project like Moon­rise King­dom and The Grand Budapest Hotel, can seem made espe­cial­ly for cinephiles handy with Final Cut to take apart, and put back togeth­er again.

“I will NOT be doing a Wes Ander­son video essay,” says Tony Zhou, cre­ator of the video essay series Every Frame a Paint­ing. “The mar­ket is sat­u­rat­ed and I have noth­ing to add.” Those who have enjoyed Zhou’s astute break­downs of the work of Mar­tin Scors­ese, Jack­ie Chan, Michael Bay, Edgar Wright, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, David Finch­er, Buster Keaton, and the Coen Broth­ers (as well as the use and abuse of his home­town of Van­cou­ver) pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here might con­sid­er that a shame. But he has put togeth­er a list of all the oth­er video essay­ists’ work on Ander­son, which includes Matt Zoller Seitz’s thir­teen pieces:

Bot­tle Rock­et
Rush­more
The Roy­al Tenen­baums
The Life Aquat­ic with Steve Zis­sou
The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed
Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox
Moon­rise King­dom
The Grand Budapest Hotel

[Note: All of the videos above are gath­ered here in one place.]

Wes Ander­son: The Sub­stance of Style (five parts)

And Zhou’s list fea­tures video essays from oth­er cre­ators:

Kog­o­na­da

Wes Ander­son // Cen­tered
Wes Ander­son // From Above

Jaume R. Lloret
Wes Ander­son // Vehi­cles

Rishi Kane­r­ia
Red & Yel­low: A Wes Ander­son Super­cut

Paul Waters
Wes Ander­son: A Mini Doc­u­men­tary

Way Too Indie
Mise en Scène & The Visu­al Themes of Wes Ander­son

Zhou also includes three in-depth blog posts by film schol­ar David Bor­d­well on Ander­son­’s shot-con­scious­ness, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Moon­rise King­dom. “Now, nev­er ask me about Wes Ander­son again,” hav­ing already re-empha­sized that he does not, in any case, take video essay requests. But if you’d like to con­tin­ue see­ing him make video essays on whichev­er sub­jects he does choose going for­ward, have a look at Every Frame a Paint­ing’s Patre­on page to find out how you can sup­port his always-stim­u­lat­ing exam­i­na­tions of nev­er-Ander­son auteurs.

(And if you still can’t do with­out more Ander­son, spend some time with the relat­ed con­tent below.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 7 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums & More

What’s the Big Deal About Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel? Matt Zoller Seitz’s Video Essay Explains

Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Film­mak­ing Tech­niques of Mar­tin Scors­ese, Jack­ie Chan, and Even Michael Bay

The Geo­met­ric Beau­ty of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Wes Anderson’s Films

Watch a Super Cut of Wes Anderson’s Sig­na­ture Slo-Mo Shots

Wes Ander­son Likes the Col­or Red (and Yel­low)

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

A Glimpse Into How Wes Ander­son Cre­ative­ly Remixes/Recycles Scenes in His Dif­fer­ent Films

Wes Ander­son & Yasu­jiro Ozu: New Video Essay Reveals the Unex­pect­ed Par­al­lels Between Two Great Film­mak­ers

Books in the Films of Wes Ander­son: A Super­cut for Bib­lio­philes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Anti-Slavery Alphabet: 1846 Book Teaches Kids the ABCs of Slavery’s Evils

in History | March 3rd, 2016

Fre­quent­ly, I see sto­ries in the edu­ca­tion news report­ing on a text­book com­pa­ny, school board, or cur­ricu­lum attempt­ing to min­i­mize or erase the his­to­ry of slav­ery in the Unit­ed States. One recent exam­ple made nation­al news: a text­book pub­lished by McGraw-Hill that described the Atlantic slave trade as bring­ing “mil­lions of work­ers from Africa to the Unit­ed States to work on agri­cul­tur­al plan­ta­tions.”

Roni Dean-Burren—mother of the stu­dent who noticed the “error” and her­self an educator—pointed out, writes NPR, that “while the book describes many Euro­peans immi­grat­ing as inden­tured ser­vants,” there was “no men­tion in this les­son of Africans forced to the U.S. as slaves.” It’s pret­ty egre­gious­ly bad his­tor­i­cal fram­ing; describ­ing slaves as migrant “work­ers” is at best gross under­state­ment and at worst dis­in­for­ma­tion.

The text­book com­pa­ny main­tains it was a mis­take, oth­ers have alleged a delib­er­ate white­wash of a his­to­ry that makes many peo­ple uncom­fort­able. Sim­i­lar­ly heat­ed con­tro­ver­sies have arisen around cer­tain puz­zling­ly cheer­ful chil­dren’s books. I won’t weigh in here on the pol­i­tics of these debates, but I am very curi­ous about why teach­ing the his­to­ry of slav­ery is such a con­tentious issue in class­rooms across the coun­try.

If you were to ask most teach­ers, they would—one hopes—denounce U.S. slav­ery as a great moral wrong and praise its end as self-evi­dent­ly nec­es­sary. So what would it look like to teach the sub­ject that way? Well, for one thing, teach­ers and par­ents might refer to pri­ma­ry doc­u­ments like “The Anti-Slav­ery Alpha­bet,” an abo­li­tion­ist teach­ing tool writ­ten by Quak­ers Han­nah and Mary Townsend and sold at the Philadel­phia Female Anti-Slav­ery soci­ety fair in 1846.

The alpha­bet, writes The Man in the Gray Flan­nel Suit, “con­sists of six­teen leaves, print­ed on one side, with the print­ed pages fac­ing each oth­er and hand-sewn into a paper cov­er. Each of the let­ter illus­tra­tions is hand-col­ored.” Cer­tain­ly a labor of love, and though tar­get­ed to young chil­dren, it is instruc­tive for stu­dents of all ages to see how abo­li­tion­ist ped­a­gogy framed these issues, refus­ing to soft-ped­al the “wretched” con­di­tions slaves endured.

Nor does this text shy away from direct­ly relat­ing these con­di­tions to the com­mod­i­ty mar­ket that sus­tained them. In the page below, for exam­ple, chil­dren learn that the sug­ar “put into your pie and tea / Your can­dy, and your cake,” comes from slave labor. Dit­to the “poi­so­nous and nasty” tobac­co the gen­tle­men chew.

The lan­guage, as is typ­i­cal of the time, is occa­sion­al­ly sen­ti­men­tal or stern­ly moral­is­tic, but the facts do not suf­fer much for it. Is this pro­pa­gan­da? Cer­tain­ly, for a point of view that would take anoth­er 20 years, a bloody civ­il war, and a long strug­gle through a failed Recon­struc­tion and bru­tal Jim Crow era to take hold nation­wide, pock­ets of reac­tionar­ies notwith­stand­ing.

To see all of “The Anti-Slav­ery Alpha­bet,” vis­it The Man in the Gray Flan­nel Suit or the Mis­sis­sip­pi Depart­ment of Archives and His­to­ry, who allow you to zoom in and exam­ine each page close­ly. For more con­tem­po­rary books for chil­dren on the his­to­ry of slav­ery, see this list of “13 Hon­est Books About Slav­ery.” And for a wealth of pri­ma­ry abo­li­tion­ist doc­u­ments from the late 18th to the late 19th ( as well as more recent texts on mod­ern slav­ery) see the archive of “50 Essen­tial Doc­u­ments” at the Abo­li­tion Sem­i­nar, an “edu­ca­tion­al tool for teach­ers, stu­dents, and all who fight for free­dom.

via Mash­able

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

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

Freed Slave Writes Let­ter to For­mer Mas­ter: You Owe Us $11,680 for 52 Years of Unpaid Labor (1865)

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

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

Nina Simone’s Live Performances of Her Poignant Civil Rights Protest Songs

in Music | March 2nd, 2016

When armored troops and tanks arrived in the St. Louis sub­urb of Fer­gu­son, advanc­ing on civil­ians with guns drawn and launch­ing tear gas can­is­ters into the crowd, more than a few peo­ple watch­ing it hap­pen exclaimed, “Mis­souri God­dam!” After the Charleston, SC mas­sacre last sum­mer, many exclaimed, “South Car­oli­na God­dam!” The phras­es direct­ly ref­er­ence an ear­li­er, all too sim­i­lar, time in the vio­lent his­to­ry of civ­il rights strug­gles, 1964, when Nina Simone wrote and per­formed “Mis­sis­sip­pi God­dam” (above in Hol­land). It was “a song that would change her career,” writes Matt Stag­gs at Sig­na­ture, “com­pli­cat­ing her rela­tion­ship with the white estab­lish­ment while cement­ing her alle­giance with the civ­il rights move­ment.”

After her ambi­tions as a con­cert pianist were frus­trat­ed, Simone rose to fame as a bril­liant­ly tal­ent­ed per­former of clas­si­cal, jazz, folk, blues, and cabaret music. She “did not so much inter­pret songs,” writes Adam Shatz in the New York Review of Books, “as take pos­ses­sion of them.” But her most famous remains her own com­po­si­tion, “Mis­sis­sip­pi God­dam,” a pas­sion­ate response to the mur­der of Medgar Evers, the Six­teenth Street Church bomb­ing in Birm­ing­ham, and oth­er shock­ing acts of bru­tal­i­ty by mem­bers of the White Cit­i­zens Coun­cil and the Ku Klux Klan, as well as the retal­ia­to­ry police vio­lence and mass arrests at Ten­nessee sit-ins.

After her first per­for­mance of the song at a 1964 Carnegie Hall con­cert (dur­ing which she shout­ed at the shocked audi­ence, “You’re all gonna die!”), it would become “a civ­il rights anthem.” The per­for­mance itself was a sly bait-and-switch; “deter­mined to bring a taste of the era’s injus­tice to her most­ly white audi­ence,” Simone intro­duced the song as a “show tune, but the show has­n’t been writ­ten for it yet.” And indeed it sounds like one, “at least for a few moments.” The song, writes Shatz, “rep­re­sent­ed a rev­o­lu­tion in black polit­i­cal ora­to­ry.”

Now, many peo­ple born long after Simone’s that first bomb­shell per­for­mance of “Mis­sis­sip­pi God­dam” are dis­cov­er­ing her life and work through the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed Net­flix doc­u­men­tary What Hap­pened, Miss Simone!, as well as the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing a two-year-old unre­leased biopic (so heat­ed even its star dis­avowed the film). Released on the day of mur­dered pas­tor and State Sen­a­tor Clemen­ta Pinck­ney’s funer­al, the doc­u­men­tary renews the focus on Simone’s role as a fierce activist on and off the stage. In songs like “Back­lash Blues,” writ­ten by Langston Hugh­es (above, in a live 1968 Paris record­ing ses­sion), Simone protest­ed “sec­ond class hous­es / and sec­ond class schools” as well as the Viet­nam War draft and frozen wages.

In “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free,” above in a 1976 per­for­mance, she express­es pro­found long­ing to “share / All the love that’s in my heart” and “Remove all the bars / That keep us apart.” As Shatz tells us, Simone once defined what free­dom meant to her when an inter­view­er asked in 1968: “I’ll tell you what free­dom is to me: no fear. I mean real­ly, no fear!” She seemed to embody fear­less­ness onstage as she devot­ed her career to activism.

And yet, writes Clau­dia Roth Pier­pont in The New York­er, she “had been hes­i­tant at first.” It was play­wright Lor­raine Hans­ber­ry who pushed her into speak­ing, though she “only start­ed a process that events in Amer­i­can quick­ly accel­er­at­ed.” After the Birm­ing­ham bomb­ing, Simone recalled want­i­ng to “go out and kill some­one… I could iden­ti­fy as being in the way of my peo­ple.” Instead she took her out­rage to the stage, and she memo­ri­al­ized Hans­ber­ry after her friend’s death at age 34 with a song she called “the Black nation­al anthem,” also the title of Hans­ber­ry’s posthu­mous auto­bi­og­ra­phy, “To Be Young, Gift­ed and Black.” Before the per­for­mance above, at a More­house Col­lege record­ing ses­sion in 1969, Simone emo­tion­al­ly describes the gen­e­sis of the song in an inter­view. The song itself hints broad­ly at the pain of her own child­hood, and that of so many oth­ers, then con­cludes with pride, hope, and affir­ma­tion.

Young, gift­ed and black
How I long to know the truth
There are times when I look back
And I am haunt­ed by my youth

Oh but my joy of today
Is that we can all be proud to say
To be young, gift­ed and black
Is where it’s at

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nina Simone Sings Her Break­through Song, ‘I Loves You Por­gy,’ in 1962

Watch a New Nina Simone Ani­ma­tion Based on an Inter­view Nev­er Aired in the U.S. Before

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

Brian Greene Breaks Down Einstein’s Theory of Gravitational Waves for Stephen Colbert

in Physics | February 29th, 2016

Ear­li­er this month, we gave you this news bul­letin: “sci­en­tists announced that they had record­ed the sound of two black holes col­lid­ing a bil­lion light years away, pro­vid­ing the first real proof that grav­i­ta­tion­al waves actu­al­ly exist–something Albert Ein­stein pre­dict­ed 100 years ago in his famous paper on gen­er­al rel­a­tiv­i­ty.” This news actu­al­ly gets much more inter­est­ing if you wrap your minds around the whole con­cept of Grav­i­ta­tion­al Waves, which is exact­ly what physi­cist Bri­an Greene–fea­tured on this site many times before–set out to do when he appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Col­bert last week. Watch his visu­al-rich expla­na­tion above, and you’ll start get­ting a hang of the con­cepts. Below, for extra cred­it, you can watch anoth­er pop­u­lar­iz­er of sci­ence, Neil deGrasse Tyson, tak­ing his own stab at explain­ing this phe­nom­e­non.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Grav­i­ta­tion­al Waves Sound Like: New Audio of Black Holes Col­lid­ing Con­firms Pre­dic­tions Ein­stein Made 100 Years Ago

Free Online Physics Cours­es, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1150 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Grav­i­ty Visu­al­ized by High School Teacher in an Amaz­ing­ly Ele­gant & Sim­ple Way

Sergei Eisenstein’s Ten Days That Shook the World (1928)

in | February 26th, 2016

Behold Sergei Eisen­stein and Grig­ori Alek­san­drov’s acclaimed drama­ti­za­tion of the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion that unfold­ed in Octo­ber of 1917. Com­mis­sioned by the Sovi­et gov­ern­ment to com­mem­o­rate the tenth anniver­sary of that Rev­o­lu­tion, the film was orig­i­nal­ly released in 1928 as Okto­ber in the Sovi­et Union, and lat­er inter­na­tion­al­ly as Ten Days That Shook The World, bor­row­ing from John Reed’s well-known book on the Rev­o­lu­tion. Cour­tesy of Archive.org, you can watch the film below, and find it in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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!