Can You Pass This Test Originally Given to 8th Graders Living in Kentucky in 1912?

in Education, History, K-12, Math, Science | May 20th, 2016

Can you spell “con­ceive”?

Of course you can! All it takes is a device with a built-in spelling app, an inno­va­tion of which no eighth grad­er in the far west­ern reach­es of blue­grass area Ken­tucky could have con­ceived back in 1912.

They were, how­ev­er, expect­ed to be able to name the waters though which an Eng­lish ves­sel would pass en route to Mani­la via the Suez Canal.

Can you?

While we’re at it, how much do you real­ly know about the human liv­er? Enough to locate it, iden­ti­fy its secre­tions, and dis­course on its size rel­a­tive to oth­er bod­i­ly glands?

If you answered yes, con­grat­u­la­tions. There’s a good chance you’d be pro­mot­ed to high school back in 1912. Not bad for a kid attend­ing a one-room school in rur­al Bul­lit Coun­ty.

And now for some extra cred­it, name the last bat­tles of the Civ­il War, the War of 1812, and the French and Indi­an War. Com­mand­ing offi­cers, too…

That’s the sort of mul­ti­part ques­tion that await­ed the eighth graders con­verg­ing on the Bul­lit Coun­ty cour­t­house for 1912’s com­mon exam, above. The very same cour­t­house in which the mod­ern day Bul­litt Coun­ty His­to­ry Muse­um is locat­ed. A civic-mind­ed indi­vid­ual donat­ed a copy of the test to this insti­tu­tion, and the staff put it online, think­ing it might be fun for lat­ter-day spec­i­mens like you and me to see how we mea­sure up.

So—just for fun—try typ­ing the phrase “com­mand­ing offi­cer last bat­tle french & indi­an war” into your search engine of choice. For­get instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Embrace the anx­i­ety!

Com­mon wis­dom holds that stan­dard­ized tests are a lot hard­er than they used to be. But look­ing at the sort of stuff your aver­age eighth grad­er had to regur­gi­tate two years pri­or to the start of WW1, I’m not so sure…

Thank god the Inter­net was there to define “kalso­min­ing” for me. Even with the aid of a cal­cu­la­tor, math is not my strong suit. That said, I’m usu­al­ly good enough with words to get the nar­ra­tive gist of any sto­ry prob­lem.

Usu­al­ly.

I con­fess, I was so demor­al­ized by my igno­rance, I couldn’t have dreamed of attempt­ing to fig­ure out how much it would cost to “kalsomine” a 20 x 16 x 9 foot room, espe­cial­ly with a door and win­dow involved.

For­tu­nate­ly, the Bul­lit Coun­ty Genealog­i­cal Soci­ety has seen fit to pro­vide an online answer sheet, a dig­i­tal lux­u­ry that would have gob­s­macked their fore­bears.

SPOILER: $8.01. That’s the amount it would’ve cost to kalsomine your room at 1912 prices. (A steal, con­sid­er­ing that a quart of White Wash Pick­ling Water Based Stain will run you $12.37 a quart at a nation­al­ly known hard­ware super­store today.)

Go ahead, take that test.

If you quail at the prospect of far­ing poor­ly against a rur­al 1912 eighth grad­er, just imag­ine how well he or she would do, tele­port­ed to 2016, and forced to con­tend with such mys­ter­ies as cyber bul­ly­ing, gen­der pol­i­tics, and offen­sive egg­plant emo­jis…

via The Paris Review.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Open Syl­labus Project Gath­ers 1,000,000 Syl­labi from Uni­ver­si­ties & Reveals the 100 Most Fre­quent­ly-Taught Books

Take the 146-Ques­tion Knowl­edge Test Thomas Edi­son Gave to Prospec­tive Employ­ees (1921)

Take The Near Impos­si­ble Lit­er­a­cy Test Louisiana Used to Sup­press the Black Vote (1964)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She lives in fear that her youngest child will pen a mem­oir titled I Was a Home­schooled 8th Grad­er and Oth­er Chillling True Life Tales. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Werner Herzog Teaches His First Online Course on Filmmaking

in Education, Film | May 19th, 2016

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

One hears much, these days, about the mis­sions of new tech com­pa­nies to “dis­rupt” exist­ing indus­tries, from retail to pub­lish­ing to taxi cabs to edu­ca­tion. We’ve regard­ed that as pri­mar­i­ly the domain of Sil­i­con Val­ley twen­tysome­things, but why can’t a Ger­man film­mak­er with a near­ly 55-year career under his belt get in on the action? Wern­er Her­zog, hav­ing already done much to dis­rupt film as we know it, has in recent years turned his atten­tion toward dis­rupt­ing film schools, which com­pose an indus­try not espe­cial­ly com­pat­i­ble with his own vision of the hon­est and rig­or­ous craft of cin­e­ma.

We’ve fea­tured Her­zog’s in-per­son Rogue Film School work­shops before, but now, accord­ing to Enter­tain­ment Week­ly’s Derek Lawrence, “online edu­ca­tion plat­form Mas­ter­Class announced that Her­zog is teach­ing an online class on fea­ture and doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing, where the var­i­ous lessons will include sto­ry­telling, cin­e­matog­ra­phy, inter­view tech­niques, and how to work with actors.” The arti­cle quotes the mak­er of fea­tures like Fitz­car­ral­do and Aguirre, the Wrath of God and doc­u­men­taries like Lit­tle Dieter Needs to Fly and Griz­zly Man offer­ing some­thing like a mis­sion state­ment: “Ulti­mate­ly, my own goal is to be a good sol­dier of cin­e­ma and if I can inspire one or two of you out there, to become a good sol­dier, then I have done every­thing I should do here.”

You can learn more about Mas­ter­class from the New York Times’ Lau­ra M. Hol­son, who describes the enter­prise, the brain­child of Los Ange­les-raised Sil­i­con Val­ley entre­pre­neur David Rogi­er, as “a series of online cours­es taught by peo­ple who are the best in the world at what they do,” includ­ing Annie Lei­bovitz on Pho­tog­ra­phy, Her­bie Han­cock on Jazz, Jane Goodall on Con­serv­ing the Envi­ron­ment and Wern­er Her­zog on film­mak­ing. Her­zog’s course can be tak­en by sign­ing up for an All Access Pass, which gives you access to every course in the Mas­ter­class course cat­a­logue, includ­ing cours­es from many oth­er film­mak­ers.

“You spend way too much time in the film school, it costs way too much mon­ey,” says the self-taught film­mak­er in the course’s trail­er above. “You can learn the essen­tials of film­mak­ing on your own with­in two weeks.” Or, in the for­mat that Mas­ter­Class has devel­oped as they go along just like Her­zog did when he first began mak­ing movies (and, giv­en his endur­ing inven­tive­ness, con­tin­ues to do today), you can osten­si­bly learn it in five hours of online video. You may not cap­ture any of Her­zog’s beloved “ecsta­t­ic truth” imme­di­ate­ly after­ward, but you’ll sure­ly get your fee’s worth of thrilling sto­ries of the film­mak­ing life along the way. Sign up for Her­zog’s class here.

You can take this class by sign­ing up for a Mas­ter­Class’ All Access Pass. The All Access Pass will give you instant access to this course and 85 oth­ers for a 12-month peri­od.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Her­zog Cre­ates Required Read­ing & Movie View­ing Lists for Enrolling in His Film School

Wern­er Herzog’s Rogue Film School: Apply & Learn the Art of Gueril­la Film­mak­ing & Lock-Pick­ing

Wern­er Her­zog Picks His 5 Favorite Films

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog: The Director’s Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Short Film from 1986

Wern­er Her­zog Gets Shot Dur­ing Inter­view, Doesn’t Miss a Beat

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.

5 Books Bill Gates Wants You to Read This Summer

in Books | May 19th, 2016

Bill Gates — Microsoft CEO turned phil­an­thropist and life­long learner—has just rec­om­mend­ed five books to put on your sum­mer read­ing list. If you’re look­ing for a light beach read, you’ve come to the wrong place. But if you have a Gates-like mind, you might find that these books will make you “think in new ways” and per­haps keep you up past your bed­time. On his web­site, the video above comes accom­pa­nied by rea­sons for read­ing each work. Below we’re quot­ing direct­ly from Mr. Gates:

Sev­en­eves, by Neal Stephen­son. I hadn’t read any sci­ence fic­tion for a decade when a friend rec­om­mend­ed this nov­el. I’m glad she did. The plot gets going in the first sen­tence, when the moon blows up. Peo­ple fig­ure out that in two years a cat­a­clysmic mete­or show­er will wipe out all life on Earth, so the world unites on a plan to keep human­i­ty going by launch­ing as many space­craft as pos­si­ble into orbit. You might lose patience with all the infor­ma­tion you’ll get about space flight—Stephenson, who lives in Seat­tle, has clear­ly done his research—but I loved the tech­ni­cal details.Sev­en­eves inspired me to rekin­dle my sci-fi habit.

How Not to be Wrong, by Jor­dan Ellen­berg. Ellen­berg, a math­e­mati­cian and writer, explains how math plays into our dai­ly lives with­out our even know­ing it. Each chap­ter starts with a sub­ject that seems fair­ly straightforward—electoral pol­i­tics, say, or the Mass­a­chu­setts lottery—and then uses it as a jump­ing-off point to talk about the math involved. In some places the math gets quite com­pli­cat­ed, but he always wraps things up by mak­ing sure you’re still with him. The book’s larg­er point is that, as Ellen­berg writes, “to do math­e­mat­ics is to be, at once, touched by fire and bound by reason”—and that there are ways in which we’re all doing math, all the time.

The Vital Ques­tion, by Nick Lane. Nick is one of those orig­i­nal thinkers who makes you say: More peo­ple should know about this guy’s work. He is try­ing to right a sci­en­tif­ic wrong by get­ting peo­ple to ful­ly appre­ci­ate the role that ener­gy plays in all liv­ing things. He argues that we can only under­stand how life began, and how liv­ing things got so com­plex, by under­stand­ing how ener­gy works. It’s not just the­o­ret­i­cal; mito­chon­dria (the pow­er plants in our cells) could play a role in fight­ing can­cer and mal­nu­tri­tion. Even if the details of Nick’s work turn out to be wrong, I sus­pect his focus on ener­gy will be seen as an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to our under­stand­ing of where we come from.

The Pow­er to Com­pete, by Ryoichi Mik­i­tani and Hiroshi Mik­i­tani. I have a soft spot for Japan that dates back three decades or so, when I first trav­eled there for Microsoft. Today, of course, Japan is intense­ly inter­est­ing to any­one who fol­lows glob­al eco­nom­ics. Why were its companies—the jug­ger­nauts of the 1980s—eclipsed by com­peti­tors in South Korea and Chi­na? And can they come back? Those ques­tions are at the heart of this series of dia­logues between Ryoichi, an econ­o­mist who died in 2013, and his son Hiroshi, founder of the Inter­net com­pa­ny Rakuten. Although I don’t agree with every­thing in Hiroshi’s pro­gram, I think he has a num­ber of good ideas. The Pow­er to Com­pete is a smart look at the future of a fas­ci­nat­ing coun­try.

Sapi­ens: A Brief His­to­ry of Humankind, by Noah Yuval Harari. Both Melin­da and I read this one, and it has sparked lots of great con­ver­sa­tions at our din­ner table. Harari takes on a daunt­ing chal­lenge: to tell the entire his­to­ry of the human race in just 400 pages. He also writes about our species today and how arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, genet­ic engi­neer­ing, and oth­er tech­nolo­gies will change us in the future. Although I found things to dis­agree with—especially Harari’s claim that humans were bet­ter off before we start­ed farming—I would rec­om­mend Sapi­ens to any­one who’s inter­est­ed in the his­to­ry and future of our species.

You can get more ideas from Bill Gates at Gates Notes.

If you’re look­ing to do some more DIY edu­ca­tion this sum­mer, don’t miss the fol­low­ing rich col­lec­tions:

700 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

1200 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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!

245 Films by Female Directors You Can Stream Right Now on Netflix

in Film | May 19th, 2016

Sad­ly, despite great strides since the 1970s, Hol­ly­wood (and film­mak­ing in gen­er­al) is still a boys’ club, espe­cial­ly when it comes to those behind the cam­era. Until Kathryn Bigelow won her 2010 Oscar for The Hurt Lock­er, no female direc­tor had claimed the prize. And not a sin­gle woman has even been nom­i­nat­ed for Best Cin­e­matog­ra­phy.

Direc­tor Sal­ly Pot­ter calls it the cast-iron ceil­ing, and says it’s still very dif­fi­cult to get a film made, even for a direc­tor with her pedi­gree.

But as some­body on this Metafil­ter thread sug­gests, if we want to sup­port female direc­tors, we need to watch more films by female direc­tors. This Google Doc lists 245 films direct­ed by women that are cur­rent­ly avail­able on Net­flix. It’s a mix of art house and pop­corn fare, and all worth check­ing out…and no doubt many Open Cul­ture read­ers have seen quite a few already. Here’s our Top Ten sug­ges­tions from that list, with four more thrown in for good mea­sure. And yes, we know that Net­flix is a paid ser­vice, but, not to wor­ry, you can sign up for a month-long free tri­al.

• The Punk Singer direct­ed by Sini Ander­son
• A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night direct­ed by Ana Lily Amir­pour
• Bride and Prej­u­dice direct­ed by Gurinder Chad­ha
• Fish Tank direct­ed by Andrea Arnold
• Har­ry Dean Stan­ton: Part­ly Fic­tion direct­ed by Sophie Huber
• Holy Smoke direct­ed by Jane Cam­pi­on
• Me and You and Every­one We Know direct­ed by Miran­da July
• Rav­en­ous direct­ed by Anto­nia Bird
• The Babadook direct­ed by Jen­nifer Kent
• The Incred­i­bly True Adven­ture of 2 Girls in Love direct­ed by Maria Maggen­ti
• The Pervert’s Guide to Ide­ol­o­gy direct­ed by Sophie Fiennes
• The Queen of Ver­sailles direct­ed by Lau­ren Green­field
• The Wolf­pack direct­ed by Crys­tal Moselle
• 30 for 30: The Price of Gold direct­ed by Nanette Burstein

There’s so many more choic­es at the link, from doc­u­men­tary to dra­ma and hor­ror to romance.

And while we’re at it, that oth­er stream­ing ser­vice, Hulu, has the full Cri­te­ri­on col­lec­tion, where many more female direc­tors can be found: Agnes Var­da, Cather­ine Breil­lat, Chan­tal Ack­er­man, Bar­bara Kop­pel, and more. Hulu offers a one-week free tri­al when you sign up.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

85 Com­pelling Films Star­ring and/or Direct­ed By Women of Col­or: A List Cre­at­ed by Direc­tor Ava DuVer­nay & Friends on Twit­ter

100 Over­looked Films Direct­ed by Women: See Selec­tions from Sight & Sound Magazine’s New List

An Ambi­tious List of 1400 Films Made by Female Film­mak­ers

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Watch Paul McCartney Perform Live, with 10-Year-Old Leila on Bass, in Buenos Aires Yesterday

in Life, Music | May 18th, 2016

A few weeks ago, I took my kids to see Paul McCart­ney launch his One on One Tour in Fres­no, Cal­i­for­nia. The high­light? See­ing him play “Hard Day’s Night” and “Love Me Do” live for the first time since the 1960s? Not real­ly. Watch­ing Sir Paul wave at my kids when they held up a “Chee­rio Paul” sign? Yeah, that was worth the price of the tick­ets alone.

But none of that com­pares to the scene that played out ear­li­er this week in Buenos Aires. Above, watch lit­tle Leila sweet­ly ask Paul to play a lit­tle bass, get her wish grant­ed, and rock to some “Get Back.” It’s pret­ty adorable.

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!

Behold the Sea Organ: The Massive Experimental Musical Instrument That Makes Music with the Sea

in Music | May 18th, 2016

If you ever find your­self in Zadar, Croa­t­ia, pay a vis­it to The Sea Organ, the exper­i­men­tal musi­cal instru­ment cre­at­ed by the archi­tect Niko­la Bašić. Unveiled in 2005, the organ–made of 35 poly­eth­yl­ene pipes tucked under white mar­ble steps–turns the wind and the waves into a nev­er-end­ing stream of avant-garde sounds. In 2006, the Sea Organ won the 2006 Euro­pean Prize for Urban Pub­lic Space. Hear it make its music above.

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!

Crowdsourced Database Will Locate the Burial Sites of Forgotten US Slaves

in Archives, History | May 18th, 2016

Image cour­tesy of Nation­al Bur­ial Data­base of Enslaved Amer­i­cans

The sto­ries are infre­quent but deeply com­pelling: one recent news item in the AP’s The Big Sto­ry describes the bones of 14 peo­ple from the 18th or ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry, dis­cov­ered in Albany, NY, “wrapped in shrouds, buried in pine box­es and—over centuries—forgotten.” Sev­en adults, five infants, and two chil­dren, soon to be “pub­li­cal­ly memo­ri­al­ized and [re]buried in per­son­al­ized box­es beside promi­nent fam­i­lies in old Albany.”

Over the 11 years since the bones’ dis­cov­ery by con­struc­tion work­ers, sci­en­tists have been able to piece togeth­er clues about what these lives were like: marked by con­stant toil and phys­i­cal hard­ship. Genet­ic mark­ers, and bro­ken bones, notched and miss­ing teeth, and arthrit­ic joints offer the only means of iden­ti­fy­ing the remains. A gran­ite head­stone donat­ed to the new gravesite will read, “Here lies the remains of 14 souls known only to God. Enslaved in life, they are slaves no more.”

In 1991, many miles south in low­er Man­hat­tan, a find of the remains of 419 peo­ple even­tu­al­ly gave rise to an even more impres­sive memo­r­i­al and muse­um, the African Bur­ial Ground Nation­al Mon­u­ment, a reminder of not only the slave labor that built New York City, but also of the peo­ple bought and sold in the once bustling slave mar­ket at what is now Wall Street.

Cre­ative Com­mons pho­to by Bruce Guthrie

Memo­ri­als like this one and the recent Albany bur­ial site do not change the facts or right the wrongs of his­to­ry, but they do make vis­i­ble lives and his­to­ries long buried and for­got­ten. “Among the scars left by the her­itage of slav­ery,” writes Edward Roth­stein at The New York Times, “one of the great­est is an absence: where are the memo­ri­als, ceme­ter­ies, archi­tec­tur­al struc­tures or stur­dy sanc­tu­ar­ies that typ­i­cal­ly pro­vide the ground for a people’s mem­o­ry?” This is pre­cise­ly the ques­tion San­dra Arnold is now ask­ing, in a very lit­er­al sense, for a project called The Nation­al Bur­ial Data­base of Enslaved Amer­i­cans (NBDEA).

A Grad­u­ate Fel­low at Brown Uni­ver­si­ty, Arnold found­ed the Peri­win­kle Ini­tia­tive, “a pub­lic human­i­ties and edu­ca­tion ini­tia­tive ded­i­cat­ed to pre­serv­ing cul­tur­al her­itage asso­ci­at­ed with enslaved Amer­i­cans.” The NBDEA—Periwinkle’s core project in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty, the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties, and the 1772 Foun­da­tion—aims, writes Arnold at The New York Times, to “be the first nation­al repos­i­to­ry of infor­ma­tion on the grave sites of indi­vid­u­als who died while enslaved or after they were eman­ci­pat­ed.”

The grave sites The NBDEA com­piles will depend in some part on the pub­lic: “Any­one who comes to the web­site will even­tu­al­ly be able to sub­mit infor­ma­tion about these places and con­duct search­es.” Cur­rent­ly, the site remains in devel­op­ment, unavail­able for pub­lic search­es, but users can make pre­lim­i­nary sub­mis­sions. Arnold describes the process of sift­ing through the sub­mis­sions she has received as “painful.”

Bur­ial grounds that should be revered spaces… instead are cov­ered by play­grounds and apart­ment com­plex­es. I have learned that many grave sites of for­mer­ly enslaved Amer­i­cans are aban­doned, undoc­u­ment­ed, des­e­crat­ed by the asphalt of “devel­op­ment,” and lack any type of memo­ri­al­iza­tion or recog­ni­tion. The bur­ial grounds are often found inci­den­tal­ly by devel­op­ers under parks and office build­ings, and for many of the sites, oral his­to­ry is their only source of doc­u­men­ta­tion.

Just such an oral his­to­ry pre­served the unmarked gravesite of one of Arnold’s ances­tors in her home­town in West Ten­nessee. Alli­son Meier at Hyper­al­ler­gic points to some specif­i­cal­ly trou­bled sites like those Arnold describes, includ­ing “a slave ceme­tery… bull­dozed in Hous­ton,” anoth­er “cov­ered with asphalt in Atlanta,” and a third “found below a Harlem bus depot.”

Arnold hopes that record­ing and memo­ri­al­iz­ing these “sacred spaces… can con­tribute to heal­ing, under­stand­ing and poten­tial­ly even rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.” Addi­tion­al­ly, she cites a “prag­mat­ic” ratio­nale for the project, since “bur­ial grounds are valu­able resources for schol­ars and his­to­ri­ans, serv­ing as road maps for genealog­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal research.”

The project presents a tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty for the many thou­sands of cit­i­zen his­to­ri­ans scat­tered across the coun­try to come togeth­er and fill in the absences in our his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry; and the cen­tral­ized data­base will also draw more atten­tion to the few memo­ri­als that do exist, many of which, writes Meier, “are often stag­ger­ing­ly small in rela­tion to the num­ber of lives they remem­ber.” She refers to the exam­ple of a “minia­ture mass grave mon­u­ment” in Mem­phis’ Elm­wood Cemetary (above), a “sin­gle stone [that] memo­ri­al­izes over 300 slaves who died between 1852 and 1865.”

Like The Freedman’s Bureau Project, a recent online data­base of 1.5 mil­lion his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments relat­ed to slav­ery, The NBDEA will fur­ther his­tori­cize and human­ize “over­looked lives,” writes Arnold, that “are an inex­tri­ca­ble part of the his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive of our coun­try.”

Can can vis­it The Nation­al Bur­ial Data­base of Enslaved Amer­i­cans here.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

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)

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

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

The Night John Belushi Cartwheeled Onstage During a Grateful Dead Show & Sang “U.S. Blues” with the Band (1980)

in Comedy, Music | May 18th, 2016

Sure, I know ice truck­ers and snow crab fish­er­men have it rough, but I’ve always thought the hard­est job in the world is to be a come­di­an. You walk out on stage, night after night, throw­ing your­self on the mer­cy of the fick­le crowd, with noth­ing but your wits to keep you afloat. It’s nev­er been any won­der to me that so many come­di­ans turn to var­i­ous sub­stances to cope with the heck­ling, chilly silences, and dis­in­ter­est­ed, half-emp­ty rooms. Even suc­cess­ful, beloved comics face tremen­dous per­for­mance pres­sures. Some of them crack. And some, like John Belushi, hop onstage dur­ing a Grate­ful Dead show at the Capi­tol The­atre, cart­wheel over to a micro­phone before the cho­rus of “U.S. Blues,” and join in on back­ing vocals.

Belushi’s impromp­tu 1980 prank per­for­mance with the Dead was not, ini­tial­ly, wel­comed. He had, reports Live for Live Music, “met with some resis­tance from the band” when he asked to join in dur­ing the encore, and drum­mer Bill Kreutz­mann “had to nix Belushi’s wish­es.”

So Belushi, true to form, took mat­ters into his own anar­chic hands, stag­ing what Kreutz­mann called in his 2015 auto­bi­og­ra­phy a “comedic ambush.”

He had on a sport coat with small Amer­i­can flags stuffed into both of his breast pock­ets and he land­ed his last cart­wheel just in time to grab a micro­phone and join in on the cho­rus. The audi­ence and every­one in the band—except for Phil—ate it up. It could­n’t have been rehearsed bet­ter. Belushi had impec­ca­ble comedic tim­ing, musi­cal­i­ty, balls, the works. And appar­ent­ly, he did­n’t take no for an answer.

Belushi’s musi­cal antics, and sur­pris­ing acro­bat­ic agili­ty, are already well-known to fans of The Blues Broth­ers. His pen­chant for real-life musi­cal chaos—such as his stag­ing of an authen­ti­cal­ly riotous punk show on Sat­ur­day Night Live—have also become part of his estimable com­ic leg­end.

Sad­ly, no video of the stunt seems to exist, but you can see Kreutz­mann tell the Belushi sto­ry in the inter­view at the top of the post and, just above, hear that night’s encore per­for­mance of “U.S. Blues.” Lis­ten close­ly at around the 1:50 mark and you’ll hear Belushi join in on the cho­rus. We’ll have to imag­ine the cart­wheels, but it prob­a­bly looked some­thing like this.

Hear the full Dead show from that night here. And if you’re crav­ing more musi­cal Belushi, check out his spas­mod­ic impres­sion of the late, great Joe Cock­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Young John Belushi Imi­tates Tru­man Capote & Per­forms Live on Sec­ond City Stage (1972)

The Night John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on Sat­ur­day Night Live, And They Got Banned from the Show

Stream 36 Record­ings of Leg­endary Grate­ful Dead Con­certs Free Online (aka Dick’s Picks)

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

Please Touch the Art: Watch a Blind Man Experience His Own Portrait for the First Time

in Art | May 18th, 2016

We all know the rules of art muse­ums: look, but don’t touch. This does­n’t both­er most of us most of the time, but for art-lovers who hap­pen to be blind and thus use feel­ing as a sub­sti­tute for see­ing, it presents a prob­lem indeed — but it also opens up an artis­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty. “Can­tor Fine Art, a just-launched gallery by father and son team Lar­ry and Sam Can­tor, offers a sto­ry of a dif­fer­ent kind of phys­i­cal inter­ac­tion with art in their project, Please Touch the Art,” writes The Cre­ator’s Pro­jec­t’s Gabrielle Bruney. “They part­nered with artist Andrew Myers to cre­ate a tac­tile paint­ing that is appre­cia­ble by both sight­ed and blind art lovers.”

In the five-minute video above, you can see — or if visu­al­ly impaired, hear — Myers dis­cussing the begin­nings of his “screw pieces,” images made by dri­ving count­less screws into a piece of wood, each one ulti­mate­ly act­ing as a kind of phys­i­cal, three-dimen­sion­al pix­el. Though Myers did­n’t begin these works with the blind in mind, one such gallery-goer’s vis­it to his show, and the “huge smile on his face” when he put his hand to the screw pieces, got him think­ing of the pos­si­bil­i­ties in that direc­tion. Thanks to his art, “there was a blind man who could almost see for a sec­ond.”

We also meet the blind wood­work­er George Wurtzel, cur­rent­ly at work on “con­vert­ing an old grape crush­ing barn into a Tac­tile Art Cen­ter” which com­bines a wood­work­ing shop with a “tac­tile gallery space where the visu­al­ly impaired can expe­ri­ence and sell art­work.” Dis­cov­er­ing their shared pas­sion for tac­tile art, Myers decides to make a sur­prise for Wurtzel, “the first por­trait of him­self he can actu­al­ly feel,” the first new piece for his tac­tile art gallery. The video cap­tures the big reveal, which con­verts Wurtzel from his skep­ti­cism about the screw-piece form. Still, even as he runs his fin­gers over his own metal­li­cized fea­tures, he has his objec­tions: “My nose is not that big. I’m sor­ry. I like the beard, though. The beard is good. The beard is real­ly good.”

You can read more about the project at Can­tor Fine Art’s web site. “The one thing I wish,” Myers adds, “is that George could see the piece the way I see it, but at the same time, I would like to look at things the way he sees the world.” You can get more a sense of art as seen, as Bil­ly Joel once sang, by the eyes of the blind in our pre­vi­ous posts on the Prado’s 3D-print­ed exhi­bi­tion for the visu­al­ly impaired and the expe­ri­ence of the col­or­blind see­ing art in col­or for the first time. It seems we’ve found our­selves at the dawn of a new gold­en age for art that does­n’t require sight. If a gallery boom fol­lows, will they serve cof­fee roast­ed by the Unseen Bean?

via The Cre­ator’s Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pra­do Muse­um Cre­ates the First Art Exhi­bi­tion for the Visu­al­ly Impaired, Using 3D Print­ing

What It’s Like to Be Col­or Blind and See Art in Col­or for the First Time

Jorge Luis Borges, After Going Blind, Draws a Self-Por­trait

Wake Up and Smell the Cof­fee with Blind Mas­ter Roast­er Ger­ry Leary

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.

1,000+ Haunting & Beautiful Photos of Native American Peoples, Shot by the Ethnographer Edward S. Curtis (Circa 1905)

in History, Photography | May 17th, 2016

From the fig­ure­heads of ships to cig­ar store stat­ues to the car­i­ca­ture mas­cots of var­i­ous sports teams…. Unfor­tu­nate or den­i­grat­ing images of Native Amer­i­can peo­ples have per­sist­ed in pop­u­lar cul­ture, folk sym­bols of what Elis­a­beth W. Rus­sell refers to in her his­to­ry of the cig­ar store Indi­an as “The Van­ish­ing Amer­i­can.” The phrase comes from the title of a Zane Grey nov­el, which then became a 1925 silent film deal­ing, wrote the New York Times that year, “with the pass­ing of the Amer­i­can Indi­an.” Although both the nov­el and film attempt to protest the treat­ment of Native peo­ple by the U.S. gov­ern­ment, both under­write a com­mon, trou­bling assumption—that Native Amer­i­cans, like the Buf­fa­lo and the wild Mus­tang, were a threat­ened (and threat­en­ing) sep­a­rate species, whose “van­ish­ing” from the picaresque West (as they had “van­ished” from the East) was a lam­en­ta­ble, but per­haps unavoid­able, side effect of the march of Euro-Amer­i­can progress.

Each sym­bol­ic memo­ri­al­iz­ing of Native Amer­i­cans in U.S. iconog­ra­phy, how­ev­er solemn or offen­sive­ly car­toon­ish, ges­tures toward some mea­ger recog­ni­tion of a trag­ic loss, while eras­ing the cir­cum­stances that occa­sioned it. Of course Native Amer­i­cans didn’t van­ish, but were slow­ly killed or hound­ed into pover­ty and dis­pos­ses­sion, and out of sight of white America—their dress, reli­gions, and cul­tures made to dis­ap­pear through forced assim­i­la­tion, only to reap­pear in roman­ti­cized images of trag­i­cal­ly con­quered, but admirably war­like, prim­i­tives.

Those images pro­lif­er­at­ed dur­ing the mid-to-late 19^th cen­tu­ry, the peri­od of intense West­ern set­tle­ment and expan­sion and the so-called Indi­an Wars. “It is a giv­en today,” writes his­to­ri­an Bri­an Dip­ple, “that the idea of the Amer­i­can Indi­an has been his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant. It shaped the atti­tudes of those in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry who shaped Indi­an pol­i­cy. Indi­an policy—be it removal of the East­ern tribes in the 1830s, reser­va­tion iso­la­tion­ism begin­ning in the 1850s, or allot­ment of reser­va­tion lands and assim­i­la­tion in the 1880s—cannot be under­stood with­out an aware­ness of the ideas behind it. Lit­er­a­ture and the visu­al arts pro­vide reveal­ing guides to nine­teenth cen­tu­ry assump­tions about the Indi­an.”

Native his­to­ri­an Vine Delo­ria describes the cul­tur­al sit­u­a­tion with more inci­sive wit in his “Indi­an Man­i­festo,” Custer Died for Your Sins: “The Amer­i­can pub­lic feels most com­fort­able with the myth­i­cal Indi­ans of stereo­type-land who were always THERE. These Indi­ans are fierce, they wear feath­ers and grunt. Most of us don’t fit this ide­al­ized fig­ure since we grunt only when overeat­ing, which is sel­dom.” By the ear­ly 20^th cen­tu­ry, “myth­i­cal Indi­ans” had become firm­ly embed­ded in pop­u­lar cul­ture, thanks to art and enter­tain­ment like the pre­sum­ably seri­ous attempts of Zane Grey and Fred­er­ic Rem­ing­ton, and J.M. Barrie’s deeply unse­ri­ous Peter Pan. It is in this cul­tur­al atmos­phere that pho­tog­ra­ph­er Edward Sher­iff Cur­tis’ huge, 20-vol­ume ethno­graph­ic project, The North Amer­i­can Indi­an emerged.

Begin­ning in 1904, and with the even­tu­al back­ing of J.P. Mor­gan, writes Mash­able, Cur­tis “spent more than 20 years criss­cross­ing North Amer­i­ca, cre­at­ing over 40,000 images of more than 80 dif­fer­ent tribes. He made thou­sands of wax cylin­der record­ings of native songs and lan­guage, and wrote down oral his­to­ries, leg­ends and biogra­phies.” You can view and down­load more than 1,000 of these pho­tographs at the Library of Con­gress. Cur­tis thought of his work as doc­u­ment­ing “what he saw as a van­ish­ing way of life.” Moti­vat­ed by assump­tions about Native peo­ple as semi-myth­ic rem­nants from the past, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er “some­times med­dled with the doc­u­men­tary authen­tic­i­ty of his images. He posed his sub­jects in roman­ti­cized set­tings stripped of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion, more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of an imag­ined pre-Colom­bian exis­tence than the sub­jects’ actu­al lives in the present.”

The pho­tographs are beau­ti­ful, their sub­jects enno­bled by the dra­mat­ic light­ing and styl­ized pos­es, and the breadth and scope of the entire project is noth­ing less than breath­tak­ing. It set the stage for the sig­nif­i­cant work of lat­er pho­tog­ra­phers and ethno­g­ra­phers like Walk­er Evans, Dorothea Lange, and the Lomax­es. Cur­tis has even been cred­it­ed with pro­duc­ing the first doc­u­men­tary film. The images, his­to­ries, tra­di­tions, and biogra­phies Cur­tis pre­served con­sti­tute an invalu­able his­tor­i­cal record. That said, we should bear in mind that The North Amer­i­can Indi­an comes to us framed by Cur­tis’ assump­tions about Native Amer­i­can cul­tures, formed by a cli­mate in which myth vied with, and usu­al­ly sup­plant­ed, fact. What do we see in these staged images, and what do we not see?

One of Cur­tis’ enthu­si­as­tic ear­ly back­ers, Theodore Roosevelt—who authored the intro­duc­tion to Vol­ume One—was, “like many of Cur­tis’ even­tu­al sup­port­ers,” writes Valerie Daniels, “more inter­est­ed in obtain­ing a record of van­ish­ing Native Amer­i­can cul­tures as a tes­ta­ment to the supe­ri­or­i­ty of his own civ­i­liza­tion than out of any con­cern over their sit­u­a­tion or recog­ni­tion of his own role in the process.” Though Cur­tis did not nec­es­sar­i­ly share these views, and lat­er became “rad­i­cal in his admo­ni­tion of gov­ern­ment poli­cies toward Native Amer­i­cans,” he also had to please his financiers and his audi­ence, most of whom would have felt the way Roo­sevelt did. We should bear this cul­tur­al con­text in mind as we take in Cur­tis’ work, and ask how it shaped the cre­ation and recep­tion of this tru­ly impres­sive record of both Amer­i­can his­to­ry and Amer­i­can myth. Enter the archive of images here.

via Mash­able

Relat­ed Con­tent:

226 Ansel Adams Pho­tographs of Great Amer­i­can Nation­al Parks Are Now Online

200 Ansel Adams Pho­tographs Expose the Rig­ors of Life in Japan­ese Intern­ment Camps Dur­ing WW II

Hand-Col­ored 1860s Pho­tographs Reveal the Last Days of Samu­rai Japan

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

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