Sonny Rollins Plays Jazz on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1977 Pioneer Electronics Ad

in Music | June 29th, 2012

In this 1977 tele­vi­sion ad for Pio­neer Elec­tron­ics, jazz sax­o­phone great Son­ny Rollins wails into the New York City night air while stand­ing on the Brook­lyn Bridge. A voice-over announc­er tells view­ers of Rollins’ 1959–61 hia­tus from the jazz scene, when he took his sound to the streets to redis­cov­er him­self musi­cal­ly. It’s most­ly a true sto­ry. Only trou­ble is, Rollins actu­al­ly retired to the Williams­burg Bridge—admit­ted­ly not quite as pic­turesque! Here’s the sto­ry as Rollins tells it:

In the 50s and 60s, Lucille and I had a small apart­ment on Grand Street on the Low­er East Side of New York. It was a nice time. I had a lot of friends there and I was wel­comed by the neigh­bor­hood peo­ple. Like most of New York, the Low­er East Side has under­gone gen­tri­fi­ca­tion but back then, it was a much more eth­nic place.

I start­ed prac­tic­ing in the house because I had to prac­tice, but I felt guilty because I’m a sen­si­tive per­son and I know that peo­ple need qui­et in their apart­ments.

I was walk­ing on Delancey Street one day, not far from where I lived on Grand Street and I just hap­pened to look up and see these steps that I decid­ed to check out. And there, of course, was the bridge, the Williams­burg Bridge. It was this nice big expanse going over the East Riv­er. There was nobody up there. So I start­ed walk­ing across the bridge and said, “Wow. This is what I have been look­ing for. This is a pri­vate place. I can blow my horn as loud as I want.” Because the boats are com­ing under, and the sub­way is com­ing across, and cars, and I knew it was per­fect, just serendip­i­ty. Then, I began get­ting my horn and going up there reg­u­lar­ly. I would be up there 15 or 16 hours at a time spring, sum­mer, fall and win­ter.

Rollins’ per­fec­tion­ism paid off. He returned to the music busi­ness with his bril­liant 1962 album The Bridge, a chron­i­cle of where he’d been those four years, some­times in freez­ing cold tem­per­a­tures, alone or with friends. British doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Dick Fontaine cap­tured Rollins dis­cussing his bridge sab­bat­i­cal and has released a 2012 film about Rollins called Beyond the Notes, which fea­tures live per­for­mances of the jazz great in his 80s, and has been show­ing in the UK since last spring. Rollins recent­ly took home three tro­phies from the annu­al Jazz Awards in New York, includ­ing a best-record award for his lat­est album of live record­ings, Road Shows, Vol. 2.

Josh Jones is cur­rent­ly a doc­tor­al stu­dent in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

The Spanish Earth: Ernest Hemingway’s 1937 Film on The Spanish Civil War

in Film, History, Literature | June 28th, 2012

Ger­man war­planes cross the sky. Explo­sions flash. Shell-shocked vil­lagers stag­ger out of their dam­aged homes and begin to grieve. “Before,” says Ernest Hem­ing­way in his flat Mid­west­ern accent, “death came when you were old or sick. But now it comes to all this vil­lage. High in the sky and shin­ing sil­ver, it comes to all who have no place to run, no place to hide.”

The scene is from the 1937 film The Span­ish Earth, an impor­tant visu­al doc­u­ment of the Span­ish Civ­il War and a rare record of the famous writer’s voice. Hem­ing­way went to Spain in the spring of 1937 to report on the war for the North Amer­i­can News­pa­per Alliance (NANA), but spent a good deal of time work­ing on the film. Before leav­ing Amer­i­ca, he and a group of artists that includ­ed Archibald MacLeish, John Dos Pas­sos and Lil­lian Hell­man band­ed togeth­er to form Con­tem­po­rary His­to­ri­ans, Inc., to pro­duce a film to raise aware­ness and mon­ey for the Span­ish Repub­li­can cause. The group came up with $18,000 in pro­duc­tion money–$5,000 of it from Hemingway–and hired the Dutch doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Joris Ivens, a pas­sion­ate left­ist, to make the movie.

MacLeish and Ivens draft­ed a short out­line for the sto­ry, with a theme of agrar­i­an reform. It was MacLeish who came up with the title. The film, as they envi­sioned it, would tell the sto­ry of Spain’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary strug­gle through the expe­ri­ence of a sin­gle vil­lage. To do that, Ivens planned to stage a num­ber of scenes. When he and cam­era­man John Fern­hout (known as “Fer­no”) arrived in Spain they decid­ed to focus on the tiny ham­let of Fuent­e­dueña de Tajo, south­east of Madrid, but they soon real­ized it would be impos­si­ble to set up elab­o­rate his­tor­i­cal re-enact­ments in a coun­try at war. They kept the theme of agrar­i­an strug­gle as a coun­ter­point to the war. When Dos Pas­sos arrived in Fuent­e­dueña, he encour­aged that approach. “Our Dutch direc­tor,” wrote Dos Pas­sos, “did agree with me that, instead of mak­ing the film pure­ly a blood and guts pic­ture we ought to find some­thing being built for the future amid all the mis­ery and mas­sacre.”

That changed when Hem­ing­way arrived. The friend­ship between the two writ­ers was dis­in­te­grat­ing at the time, so they did­n’t work togeth­er on the project. It was agreed upon in advance that Hem­ing­way would write the com­men­tary for the film, but while in Spain he also helped Ivens and Fern­hout nav­i­gate the dan­gers of the war zone. “Hem­ing­way was a great help to the film crew,” writes Hans Schoots in Liv­ing Dan­ger­ous­ly: A Biog­ra­phy of Joris Ivens. “With a flask of whisky and raw onions in his pock­ets, he lugged equip­ment and arranged trans­port. Ivens gen­er­al­ly wore bat­tle dress and a black beret. Hem­ing­way went as far as a beret but oth­er­wise stuck to civvies. Although he rarely wore glass­es, he almost nev­er took them off in Spain, clear evi­dence of the seri­ous­ness of their task.” In “Night Before Bat­tle,” a short sto­ry based par­tial­ly on his expe­ri­ence mak­ing the movie, Hem­ing­way describes what it’s like film­ing in a place where the glint from your cam­era lens draws fire from ene­my snipers:

At this time we were work­ing in a shell-smashed house that over­looked the Casa del Cam­po in Madrid. Below us a bat­tle was being fought. You could see it spread out below you and over the hills, could smell it, could taste the dust of it, and the noise of it was one great slith­er­ing sheet of rifle and auto­mat­ic rifle fire ris­ing and drop­ping, and in it came the crack of the guns and the bub­bly rum­bling of the out­go­ing shells fired from the bat­ter­ies behind us, the thud of their bursts, and then the rolling yel­low clouds of dust. But it was just too far to film well. We had tried work­ing clos­er but they kept snip­ing at the cam­era and you could not work.

The big cam­era was the most expen­sive thing we had and if it was smashed we were through. We were mak­ing the film on almost noth­ing and all the mon­ey was in the cans of film and the cam­eras. We could not afford to waste film and you had to be awful­ly care­ful of the cam­eras.

The day before we had been sniped out of a good place to film from and I had to crawl back hold­ing the small cam­era to my bel­ly, try­ing to keep my head low­er than my shoul­ders, hitch­ing along on my elbows, the bul­lets whock­ing into the brick wall over my back and twice spurt­ing dirt over me.

The West­ern front at Casa de Cam­po on the out­skirts of Madrid was just a few min­utes’ walk from the Flori­da Hotel, where the film­mak­ers were stay­ing. Any doubt about whether the pas­sage from “Night Before Bat­tle” is auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal are dis­pelled in the fol­low­ing excerpt from one of Hem­ing­way’s NANA dis­patch­es, quot­ed by Schoots:

Just as we were con­grat­u­lat­ing our­selves on hav­ing such a splen­did obser­va­tion post and the non-exis­tent dan­ger, a bul­let smacked against a cor­ner of brick wall beside Iven­s’s head. Think­ing it was a stray, we moved over a lit­tle and, as I watched the action with glass­es, shad­ing them care­ful­ly, anoth­er came by my head. We changed our posi­tion to a spot where it was not so good observ­ing and were shot at twice more. Joris thought Fer­no had left his cam­era at our first post, and as I went back for it a bul­let whacked into the wall above. I crawled back on my hands and knees, and anoth­er bul­let came by as I crossed the exposed cor­ner. We decid­ed to set up the big tele­pho­to cam­era. Fer­no had gone back to find a health­i­er sit­u­a­tion and chose the third floor of a ruined house where, in the shade of a bal­cony and with the cam­era cam­ou­flaged with old clothes we found in the house, we worked all after­noon and watched the bat­tle.

In May, Ivens returned to New York to over­see the work of edi­tor Helen van Don­gen. Hem­ing­way soon fol­lowed. When Ivens asked Hem­ing­way to clar­i­fy the theme of the pic­ture, accord­ing to Ken­neth Lynn in his biog­ra­phy Hem­ing­way, the writer sup­plied three sen­tences: “We gained the right to cul­ti­vate our land by demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions. Now the mil­i­tary cliques and absen­tee land­lords attack to take our land from us again. But we fight for the right to irri­gate and cul­ti­vate this Span­ish Earth which the nobles kept idle for their own amuse­ment.” (more…)

Discovered: Conversation with John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Timothy Leary at Montreal Bed-In (1969)

in History, Music, Politics, Psychology | June 28th, 2012

On May 26, 1969, John Lennon and Yoko One began their sec­ond “Bed-In,” a form of anti-Viet­nam War protest that com­bined the media impact of a press con­fer­ence with the com­fort of hotel sheets. Their first Bed-In, which hap­pened in var­i­ous rooms of the Ams­ter­dam Hilton in late March of that year, saw them grant inter­view after inter­view about peace all day long with­out mov­ing from the bed in which they had ensconced them­selves. They’d sched­uled its fol­low up in New York City, but Lennon found he could­n’t enter the Unit­ed States due to a pre­vi­ous con­vic­tion for mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion. They relo­cat­ed it to the Bahamas, where the heat soon prompt­ed them to move again to the entire­ly cool­er Queen Eliz­a­beth Hotel in Mon­tre­al. There they record­ed the song “Give Peace a Chance,” aid­ed by such vis­i­tors as Tom­my Smoth­ers, Dick Gre­go­ry, Mur­ray the K, and psy­che­del­ic drug advo­cate Tim­o­thy Leary.

But Leary did­n’t just come to pro­vide a back­ing vocal. With his wife Rose­mary, he record­ed a con­ver­sa­tion with Lennon and Ono about… well, about a vari­ety of sub­jects, but they’d all fall under the broad head­ing of Leary’s one great pur­suit, “con­scious­ness.” Only recent­ly did Leary archivist Michael Horowitz dis­cov­er the tran­script of this ses­sion in “an unmarked enve­lope in a box of mis­cel­la­neous papers,” and this week the Tim­o­thy Leary Archives made it avail­able to the pub­lic for the first time ever. The con­ver­sa­tion begins with the fin­er points of teepee life, moves on to the effects of place on one’s state of mind, touch­es on both cou­ples’ hav­ing found them­selves on the wrong side of drug law enforce­ment, and ends with Lennon and Leary com­par­ing notes on how they use the media to con­vey their mes­sage:

TIMOTHY: John, about the use of the mass media … the kids must be taught how to use the media. Peo­ple used to say to me–I would give a rap and some­one would get up and say, “Well, what’s this about a reli­gion? Did the Bud­dha use drugs? Did the Bud­dha go on tele­vi­sion? I’d say, “Ahh—he would’ve. He would’ve….”

JOHN: I was on a TV show with David Frost and Yehu­di Menuhin, some cul­tur­al vio­lin­ist y’know, they were real­ly attack­ing me. They had a whole audi­ence and every­thing. It was after we got back from Amsterdam…and Yehu­di Menuhin came out, he’s always doing these Hin­du num­bers. All that pious bit, and his school for vio­lin­ists, and all that. And Yehu­di Menuhi said, “Well, don’t you think it’s nec­es­sary to kill some peo­ple some times?” That’s what he said on TV, that’s the first thing he’s ever said. And I said, “Did Christ say that? Are you a Chris­t­ian?” “Yeah,” I said, and did “Christ say any­thing about killing peo­ple?” And he said, “Did Christ say any­thing about tele­vi­sion? Or gui­tars?”

To learn more about Lennon and Ono’s Bed-Ins, you can vis­it the 70-minute doc­u­men­tary Bed Peace (below), pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on Open Cul­ture and still freely view­able on YouTube:

Relat­ed con­tent:

Tim­o­thy Leary’s Wild Ride and the Fol­som Prison Inter­view

Beyond Tim­o­thy Leary: 2002 Film Revis­its His­to­ry of LSD

Bed Peace Star­ring John Lennon & Yoko Ono (Free for Lim­it­ed Time)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents a Chilling Tale by Roald Dahl (1960)

in Literature, Television | June 27th, 2012

“Good evening, ladies and gen­tle­men.” From 1955 to 1962, Alfred Hitch­cock greet­ed view­ers to his week­ly series Alfred Hitch­cock Presents with some ver­sion of this phrase, in his unmis­tak­able Eng­lish drawl. After the icon­ic intro­duc­to­ry sequence fea­tur­ing Hitch­cock step­ping into a caricature—drawn by himself—of his jow­ly pro­file, the vet­er­an direc­tor intro­duced the audi­ence to the week’s episode with a droll mono­logue writ­ten by long­time TV writer James B. Allardice, in which Hitch­cock would poke fun at him­self, the view­ers, and the show’s spon­sors. In addi­tion to Allardice, Hitchcock’s series relied on the tal­ents of sev­er­al well-known writ­ers, includ­ing lit­er­ary names like John Cheev­er, Robert Bloch (author of Psy­cho), and, most famous­ly, the much-loved Roald Dahl.

Pri­mar­i­ly known for his whim­si­cal, and often quite dark, children’s books (James and the Giant Peach, Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry, Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox), Dahl was also a nov­el­ist, screen­writer, and a writer of macabre short sto­ries for adults (he won three Edgars, or mys­tery writer awards). In 1958, Alfred Hitch­cock Presents adapt­ed Dahl’s sto­ry “Lamb to the Slaugh­ter.” And, two years lat­er in 1960, Dahl’s sto­ry “Man from the South” pro­vid­ed the basis for AHP’s most pop­u­lar episode (above). The episode stars Steven McQueen as a young man talked into a gris­ly wager by a mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure named Car­los, played by Peter Lorre. “Man from the South” was adapt­ed sev­er­al more times in the fol­low­ing years: in 1979 by Dahl him­self in a tele­vi­sion series called Tales of the Unex­pect­ed, again in the 1985 revival of AHP (star­ring John Hus­ton as Car­los), and in 1995 as the basis for Quentin Tarantino’s seg­ment in the film Four Rooms. With­out a doubt, how­ev­er, this orig­i­nal adap­ta­tion of Dahl’s sto­ry remains the most mem­o­rable and haunt­ing.

J. David Jones is cur­rent­ly a doc­tor­al stu­dent in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Nora Ephron’s Lists: “What I Will Miss” and “What I Won’t Miss”

in Books, Film, Life | June 27th, 2012

By now, you’ve almost cer­tain­ly heard that Nora Ephron, the screen­writer best known for “Sleep­less in Seat­tle” and “When Har­ry Met Sal­ly,” died yes­ter­day in Man­hat­tan. She was 71. Her bout with leukemia appar­ent­ly was­n’t wide­ly known, but dis­cern­ing read­ers of her 2010 book, I Remem­ber Noth­ing, could have sensed some­thing was wrong. The book clos­es with two lists, each reveal­ing on a cou­ple of lev­els.

What I Will Miss

My kids · Nick · Spring · Fall · Waf­fles · The con­cept of waf­fles · Bacon · A walk in the park · The idea of a walk in the park · The park · Shake­speare in the Park · The bed · Read­ing in bed · Fire­works · Laughs · The view out the win­dow · Twin­kle lights · But­ter · Din­ner at home just the two of us · Din­ner with friends · Din­ner with friends in cities where none of us lives · Paris · Next year in Istan­bul · Pride and Prej­u­dice · The Christ­mas tree · Thanks­giv­ing din­ner · One for the table · The dog­wood · Tak­ing a bath · Com­ing over the bridge to Man­hat­tan · Pie

What I Won’t Miss

Dry skin · Bad din­ners like the one we went to last night · E‑mail · Tech­nol­o­gy in gen­er­al · My clos­et · Wash­ing my hair · Bras · Funer­als · Ill­ness every­where · Polls that show that 32 per­cent of the Amer­i­can peo­ple believe in cre­ation­ism · Polls · Fox · The col­lapse of the dol­lar · Joe Lieber­man · Clarence Thomas · Bar mitz­vahs · Mam­mo­grams · Dead flow­ers · The sound of the vac­u­um clean­er · Bills · E‑mail. I know I already said it, but I want to empha­size it. · Small print · Pan­els on Women in Film · Tak­ing off make­up every night

via Showbiz411

Isaac Asimov Recalls the Golden Age of Science Fiction (1937–1950)

in Sci Fi | June 26th, 2012

In this short clip, Isaac Asi­mov dis­cuss­es the gold­en age of sci­ence fic­tion, which began in 1937 (and end­ed in 1950) when John W. Camp­bell Jr. took over as edi­tor of the mag­a­zine Astound­ing Sci­ence Fic­tion. Pri­or to Campbell’s edi­tor­ship, most sci-fi sto­ries were pub­lished in the “pulps,” and were in Asimov’s words “heav­i­ly adven­ture-fla­vored” because under­paid writ­ers often wrote in sev­er­al gen­res in order to com­pete in an over­crowd­ed mar­ket­place for escapist sto­ries of romance, war, jun­gle and sea adven­tures, and hor­ror tales. Unlike most of the “pulp” writ­ers, Camp­bell was a sci­en­tist who stud­ied physics at MIT and Duke, not to men­tion a pro­lif­ic writer of fic­tion. (Many of Campbell’s nov­els and short sto­ries are avail­able in full-text as ePUB and PDF files here).

Campbell’s ascen­sion was a water­shed moment for the genre since his “engi­neer­ing atti­tude” gave him a high regard for writ­ers of sci­ence fic­tion who under­stood the sci­ence of the day and could por­tray sci­en­tists authen­ti­cal­ly while still hav­ing the free­dom to “extrap­o­late wild­ly.” Astound­ing pub­lished some of the ear­li­est sto­ries by Asi­mov, Robert Hein­lein (an ear­ly sto­ry, pub­lished under the name “Anson Mac­Don­ald” in 1941 is here), and L. Ron Hub­bard. The rela­tion­ship between Camp­bell and Hub­bard is a fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry. Camp­bell pub­lished a very ear­ly ver­sion of what would become the found­ing text of Sci­en­tol­ogy in March 1950, and he claimed to be an ear­ly sup­port­er of Hubbard’s “sci­ence of dia­net­ics.”

Camp­bell is a com­pli­cat­ed fig­ure. In addi­tion to sup­port­ing Hubbard’s ideas, writer Har­lan Elli­son has claimed that Camp­bell was an adher­ent of pseu­do­science who would “believe any­thing,” and he appar­ent­ly held some very objec­tion­able racist and far right polit­i­cal views which he cham­pi­oned in his edi­to­ri­als and which made Asi­mov uncom­fort­able, as Asi­mov writes in his intro­duc­tion to the gold­en age col­lec­tion Astound­ing: John W. Camp­bell Memo­r­i­al Anthol­o­gy. Nev­er­the­less, Asi­mov acknowl­edges Camp­bell as a “Father of Sci­ence Fic­tion” who was indis­pens­able in bring­ing the genre out of the pulp era.

J. David Jones is cur­rent­ly a doc­tor­al stu­dent in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Hux­ley, Orwell, Asi­mov, Gaiman & Beyond

A Trip to the Moon (1902): Where Sci Fi Movies Began

Mathematics Made Visible: The Extraordinary Mathematical Art of M.C. Escher

in Art, Math | June 22nd, 2012

The eye and the intel­lect play off one anoth­er in sur­pris­ing and beau­ti­ful ways in the art of M.C. Esch­er. Where the Renais­sance mas­ters used shad­ing and per­spec­tive to cre­ate the illu­sion of three-dimen­sion­al depth on two dimen­sion­al sur­faces, Esch­er turned those tricks in on them­selves to cre­ate puz­zles and para­dox­es. He manip­u­lat­ed our fac­ul­ties of per­cep­tion not sim­ply to please the sens­es, but to stim­u­late the mind.

His cool, ana­lyt­ic ten­den­cy was appar­ent from the start. “Mau­rits Esch­er is a good graph­ic artist,” wrote the head­mas­ter of the Haar­lem School of Archi­tec­ture and Dec­o­ra­tive Arts in 1922, the year of Escher’s grad­u­a­tion, “but he lacks the right artis­tic tem­pera­ment.

His work is to too cerebral–neither emo­tion­al nor lyri­cal enough.” Escher’s work became even more cere­bral over time, as it grew in geo­met­ric sophis­ti­ca­tion. In describ­ing what went into the cre­ation of his wood­cuts and engrav­ings, Esch­er wrote:

The ideas that are basic to them often bear wit­ness to my amaze­ment and won­der at the laws of nature which oper­ate in the world around us. He who won­ders dis­cov­ers that this is in itself a won­der. By keen­ly con­fronting the enig­mas that sur­round us, and by con­sid­er­ing and ana­lyz­ing the obser­va­tions that I had made, I end­ed up in the domain of math­e­mat­ics. Although I am absolute­ly inno­cent of train­ing or knowl­edge in the exact sci­ences, I often seem to have more in com­mon with math­e­mati­cians than with my fel­low artists.

The affin­i­ty between Esch­er and math­e­mati­cians is described in the scene above from the the BBC doc­u­men­tary, The Math­e­mat­i­cal Art of M.C. Esch­er. “Math­e­mati­cians know their sub­ject is beau­ti­ful,” says Ian Stew­art of the Uni­ver­si­ty of War­wick. “Esch­er shows us that it’s beau­ti­ful.”

If the BBC clip whets your appetite, be sure to watch Meta­mor­phose: M.C. Esch­er, 1898–1972, a 2002 doc­u­men­tary by Jan Bro­driesz. The one-hour film gives an excel­lent overview of the Dutch artist’s life and work, and fea­tures a rare inter­view with Esch­er, along with scenes of him cre­at­ing his art. If you’re a fan of Esch­er, this film is a must-see.

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:

Free Online Math Cours­es

M.C. Escher’s Per­pet­u­al Motion Water­fall Brought to Life: Real or Sleight of Hand?

Inspi­ra­tions: A Short Film Cel­e­brat­ing the Math­e­mat­i­cal Art of M.C. Esch­er

Historic Barn Etchings Tell Tale of Hard-Working Children

in History | June 20th, 2012

Since Cana­di­an Con­fed­er­a­tion, it was the pol­i­cy of the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment to pro­vide edu­ca­tion to Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ples through a sys­tem of church-run Res­i­den­tial Schools. The idea was that by sep­a­rat­ing the chil­dren at an ear­ly age from their par­ents’ influ­ence, they might be more eas­i­ly assim­i­lat­ed into white Cana­di­an soci­ety, includ­ing the Chris­t­ian reli­gion. (A very sim­i­lar fate befell Aus­tralian Abo­rig­i­nal chil­dren after 1931.) The Methodist and Pres­by­ter­ian church­es, and the Unit­ed Church of Cana­da, explic­it­ly sup­port­ed the goals of assim­i­la­tion and Chris­tian­iza­tion.

Mount Elgin Indus­tri­al School, oper­at­ing near Lon­don, Ontario between 1851 and 1946, was one such insti­tu­tion. Apart from attend­ing school itself, the native chil­dren had to work day and night at a near­by barn. Recent­ly, schol­ars dis­cov­ered words and draw­ings all over the barn walls left behind by some of the 1,200 chil­dren forced to work there. Described as the “Dead Sea Scrolls” of this dark chap­ter in Cana­di­an his­to­ry, the words tell a mov­ing tale of chil­dren iso­lat­ed from friends and fam­i­lies, work­ing very hard under less than ide­al cir­cum­stances.

On June 20 2012, a mon­u­ment to the sur­vivors of Cana­di­an res­i­den­tial schools will be unveiled on the site of Mount Elgin Res­i­den­tial School.

Here are some his­tor­i­cal pho­tos of Mount Elgin Res­i­den­tial School.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

Peefeeyatko: A Look Inside the Creative World of Frank Zappa

in Film, Music | June 19th, 2012

In the last years of his life, Frank Zap­pa spent much of his remain­ing time doing what he loved best: com­pos­ing.

The 1991 doc­u­men­tary Peefeey­atko, by Ger­man-born film­mak­er and com­pos­er Hen­ning Lohn­er, takes us inside Zap­pa’s seclud­ed world to watch and lis­ten as he cre­ates sym­phon­ic com­po­si­tions on an ear­ly dig­i­tal syn­the­siz­er called a Syn­clavier. The film was made not long after Zap­pa learned he had ter­mi­nal can­cer. Like its sub­ject, Lohn­er’s film is eccen­tric, with scenes from mon­ster movies spliced in with footage of Zap­pa work­ing and talk­ing. “Peefeey­atko,” we learn at the end, is Big­foot-lan­guage for “Give me some more Apples.”

Zap­pa talks about his wide range of musi­cal tastes–how from an ear­ly age he would lis­ten to rhythm and blues one minute and the French exper­i­men­tal com­pos­er Edgard Verèse the next. The film includes inter­views with his fel­low avant-garde com­posers John Cage, Pierre Boulez, Ian­nis Xenakis and Karl­heinz Stock­hausen. To describe his rad­i­cal eclec­ti­cism, Zap­pa says: “The eas­i­est way to sum up the aes­thet­ic would be: any­thing, any­time, any­place for no rea­son at all. And I think with an aes­thet­ic like that you can have pret­ty good lat­i­tude for being cre­ative.”

Peefeey­atko runs 59 min­utes, and will be added to our expand­ing col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Frank Zap­pa Debates Cen­sor­ship on CNN’s Cross­fire (1986)

A Young Frank Zap­pa Plays the Bicy­cle on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on “I’ve Got a Secret” (1960)

Inside the 1969 Bob Dylan-Johnny Cash Sessions

in Music | June 14th, 2012

Bob Dylan and John­ny Cash had formed a mutu­al admi­ra­tion soci­ety even before they met in the ear­ly 1960s.

“Of course, I knew of him before he ever heard of me,” Dylan wrote short­ly after Cash’s death in 2003. “In ’55 or ’56, ‘I Walk the Line’ played all sum­mer on the radio, and it was dif­fer­ent than any­thing else you had ever heard. The record sound­ed like a voice from the mid­dle of the Earth. It was so pow­er­ful and mov­ing.”

When the young Dylan arrived on the scene in 1962, Cash was impressed.

“I was deeply into folk music in the ear­ly 1960s,” he wrote in Cash: The Auto­bi­og­ra­phy, “both the authen­tic songs from var­i­ous peri­ods and areas of Amer­i­can life and the new ‘folk revival’ songs of the time, so I took note of Bob Dylan as soon as the Bob Dylan album came out in ear­ly ’62 and lis­tened almost con­stant­ly to The Free­wheel­in’ Bob Dylan in ’63. I had a portable record play­er I’d take along on the road, and I’d put on Free­wheel­in’ back­stage, then go out and do my show, then lis­ten again as soon as I came off.”

Cash wrote the young Dylan a fan let­ter, and they began cor­re­spond­ing. When they met at the 1964 New­port Folk Fes­ti­val, Cash gave Dylan his gui­tar as a ges­ture of respect and admi­ra­tion. Five years lat­er, when Dylan was in Nashville record­ing his ninth stu­dio album, Cash was record­ing in the stu­dio next door. He decid­ed to drop in. On Feb­ru­ary 17 and 18, 1969, Cash and Dylan record­ed more than a dozen duets. Only one of them, a ver­sion of Dylan’s “Girl From the North Coun­try,” made it onto the album, Nashville Sky­line. The oth­ers were nev­er offi­cial­ly released, but have long been cir­cu­lat­ing as bootlegs. In the video above, Dylan and Cash work on one of two ver­sions they made of “One Too Many Morn­ings,” a song orig­i­nal­ly record­ed by Dylan in 1964 for The Times They Are a‑Changin’.  The out­takes Dylan and Cash record­ed togeth­er are all scat­tered around Youtube. One Youtu­ber post­ed a com­pi­la­tion back in 2013.

A few weeks after the release of Nashville Sky­line, Dylan and Cash per­formed “Girl From the North Coun­try” on The John­ny Cash Show. It was taped on May 1, 1969 at the Ryman Audi­to­ri­um in down­town Nashville. A rough video clip (around the 30 minute mark) cap­tures the moment. Despite Dylan’s report­ed ner­vous­ness, the per­for­mance was well-received. “I did­n’t feel any­thing about it,” Cash said lat­er. “But every­body said it was the most mag­net­ic, pow­er­ful thing they ever heard in their life. They were just rav­ing about elec­tric­i­ty and mag­net­ism. And all I did was just sit there hit­ting G chords.”

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