safer at home

In the style of ex-voto devotional miniatures, Los Angeles artist Esther Pearl Watson lets these small vignettes reflect the tumult and strangeness of the past year of isolation, uprising and uncertainty with the same sense of reverence and memorial that the folk art genre recognises inception and intercession in forces greater than us. Learn more and visit the artist’s exhibition at Hyperallergic at the link above.

honoured guests

Through this 1982 tribute by artist Roger Brown (*1941 – †1997), known for his portrayal of society, entertainment and politics with bold and distinctive storyboards, we are reminded of the individual selfish acts of heroism when it came to saving passengers of Air Florida Flight 90 that crash-landed on the frozen Potomac on this day the same year as the picture was created in honour of Washington, DC Congressional Budget Office employee Lenny Skutnik, whom didn’t hesitate to dive into the icy waters to save Priscilla Tirado, representing one of the hundreds of brave bystanders whom intervened.
Two weeks later, Ronald Regan invited Skutnik to attend the State of the Union Address and sit in the presidential box with First Lady Nancy Reagan, with the president acknowledging his heroism as the embodiment of the American ideal. Since then, other members of the public attending the State of the Union or other similar joint sessions of Congress at the invitation of the president and so honoured have been referred to by the generic name of “Lenny Skutniks.” Before reality television set in with the game-showification of the government and bully-pulpit of incumbency, though previously not universally without contention or political statement, the guests were usually limited to one or two individuals worthy of recognition, and not a singled-out victim vilified whose problems were at least in part systemic to US policies and priorities in the first place. The other subject of Brown’s piece is anti-nuclear weapons activist Norman Mayer, who was shot by police while threatening to dynamite the Washington Monument on 9 December of the same year, two diametrically different events bookending 1982 in the capital, unless a serious dialogue be held on the topic of disarmament and achieving peace.

walk the plank

Having been glancingly acquainted with the existence of Sea Shanty TikTok just last week (see also), we were delighted to see this retrospective of the old genre and new community experimenting with these traditional maritime work songs—often about piracy, colonialism and whaling, though also the instrument—voice of the disgruntled and impressed and a sometimes a form of diss track exchanges for rival crews.

2021 is the year of the sea shanty pic.twitter.com/ohOAGvkbtC

— Tim - Poster of Hugo Pics (@Beertheist) January 11, 2021

i’m sorry—did i break your concentration

The modified verse from Ezekiel 25:17 that Jules Winnfield recites—the one he’s been saying for years because he fancied it an especially cold-blooded thing to say to one’s victims before shooting them is a marked improvement on the original: And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay vengeance upon them.

In the fullness of the moment and perhaps to suggest that the creed is perhaps more mutable, modular, Samuel L. Jackson delivers in the longest iteration, a passable pastiche of Old Testament tropes: The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and goodwill shepherds the weak through the Valley of Darkness, for he is truly his Brother’s Keeper and the Finder of Lost Children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my Brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee. The fact that I didn’t know that this was not exactly canonical makes me feel like To overcome the spider’s curse, simply quote a Bible verse. Uh... Thou shalt not... uh... [Homer throws a rock at the spider's head] The scripted sentiment is nonetheless much better than its inspiration.

thaumatrope

From our infinitely engrossing antiquarian, JF Ptak Science Bookstore, not only do we learn the image for demonstrating the formation and oscillation of drops is the above titled optical toy or tool “wonder turner” that gives the illusion of motion and progression (see also here and here), moreover there is accidental poetry is addressing the airy gravity of the nature of bubbles and membranes. An excerpt from an early Nature article speaks to this: “He has studied the behaviour of big bubbles and of little ones, of bubbles in large and small tubes, of bubbles of air in a liquid, and of one liquid in another, of bubbles in heavy land in light liquids, of bubbles in liquids of various degrees of viscosity and with various degrees of surface tension at the surfaces.” Much more to explore at the link up top.

first fridays

Via the always excellent Nag on the Lake, we are given access behind the velvet rope to the Record-keepers’ Rave, a monthly happening that’s both a call-for-submissions and a bit of a friendly battle instigated and organised by the US National Archives and Records Administrative—see previously.

Archives Hashtag Parties are the chance for repositories, small museums and government bureaus to showcase, given a theme and prompt, some of the best seldom seen materials. We too enjoyed this handy cocktail engineering, conversion chart from the American Forest Service from 1974, dug up by the Archives’ Atlanta office—plus this recruiting poster for bakers from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library. Nearly three hundred institution take part, and after a winter break are scheduled to resume at the end of week one of February, hoping that the growing interest and participation will encourage the public to avail themselves of these resources and time-capsules.

logic gates

Via Pasa Bon! we are presented with an educational toy in the form of a mechanical computer invented and marketed in 1965 by John “Jack” Thomas Godfrey called the Digi-Comp II that used marbles rolling down an incline through customisable, programmable interventions, like a pinball game (Flipperkast) or pachinko to teach coding. These basic calculations were accomplished—less kinetically—on the predecessor game with gears and latch circuits as a demonstration of binary logic. Much more to explore at the link up top including a giant model and a Lego version of the visual calculator.

5x5

a public servant’s heart: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s message to America 

seven up: pioneering documentarian and ethnographer Michael Apted has passed away, aged seventy-nine 

der nacht der kurzen finger: fact-checking and myth-busting the deplatforming of Trump 

thought forms: revisiting a 1901 Theosophist “record of clairvoyant investigation” as a lens for art history—see also  

weeping in the promised land: a new song from John Fogerty speaks to our times