1st ladyship

Having survived a probable case of the Spanish Flu picked up during his attendance at the Paris Peace Conference the previous fall, on this day in 1919, US president Woodrow Wilson (*1856 – †1924) suffered a debilitating stroke after an exhausting but ultimately unsuccessful barnstorming campaign push in the western states to rally support for the America’s membership in the League of Nations that left him incapacitated for the remainder of his term.

Unbeknownst to the public and most government officials, Wilson was sequestered from everyone except for his physician and wife, Edith (née Bolling Galt), who discharged the duties of the office effectively and efficiently—probably vetoing the Volstead Act which would have prevented Prohibition if it had not been overridden by Congress. The twenty-fifth amendment to the US constitution which redresses vagaries concerning the line of succession was ratified between 1965 and 1967 in response to the assassination of John F. Kennedy as by the time the public learned of the situation, there was only a few months left in the Wilson presidency, having lost his bid for a third term, and congressional leaders (probably just as well) declined to press the issue. 

 

october surprise

After ninety minutes of rabidly barking at his opponent, Joe Biden, at Tuesday night’s first general debate distanced but indoors with camera crew, moderator and a split audience and entourage (with one side of the aisle largely unmasked), it is revealed that Donald and Melania Trump have contracted the novel coronavirus, tested after a close aid started showing symptoms.

It is unclear how long Trump, who is now presenting with mild cold-like complaints, could have been contagious and whom else might have been exposed. This development—which arguably should not really come as a shock for someone spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and attempted to hide and downplay the danger to the public to enhance his credentials and ridiculed those who wear masks and take precautions or might at least learn from his British and Brazilian counterparts who had to deal with the same comeuppance—potentially ends the campaigning, effectively putting a stop to all junkets and rallies for Trump during the CDC mandated quarantine period.

twenty-first century digital boy

Via fellow-internet caretaker, Miss Cellania, we discover that the Hood Internet (previously here) has returned with their latest musical anthology mashing-up the top sixty hits from the year 1990 in a clever three-and-a-half-minute medley. I admit too that I had trouble placing these songs in the right decade. What are some of your favourites from thirty years ago that still sound fresh? I don’t know how to live but I’ve got a lot of toys. 

 

salon d'automne

In 1936 the MoMA published a textbook as a supplemental catalogue and historical (albeit a narrow and myopic one) survey of its retrospective exhibition on Cubism and Abstract Art with a flowchart conceived by the museum’s first director Alfred H. Barr, Jr. to show the connections and development of various movements. 

Overlooking the question of geopolitics and focusing on the assertion of the European dominance, the graphic receives an update from conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas for a new exhibit in Brussels that not only brings forward the timeline through the 1970s but also re-contextualises art history in terms of colonialism and social structures that informed and enabled their work with emphasis on Belgium’s own particularly cruel record. Click through to enlarge.  Though some of the connections might seem tenuous at first, one begins to penetrate the linkages, like epoch of Art Deco following more aggressive excavating for copper, to take one example.

imago dei

Via Maps Mania, we are directed to another scrollytelling instalment from the New York Times in their in depth study of perhaps the greatest selfie ever executed in the 1500 (with antecedents and precedents) self-portrait of Albrecht Dürer (see previously)—dissected fully and reintegrated as an object of gaze and reflection.  Finished early in the year, just before the artist’s twenty-ninth birthday, as stated in the caption at eye-level left, the work ascribes to the symmetries and conventions of religious subjects but there is something nuanced happening here as well.

Not merely a display of isolated virtuosity, the self-portrait and cameos of himself appearing in the background of other commissions are common and do not represent a departure from the mass-market appeal and branding that Dürer achieved with his woodcuts but rather a landing-spot, a forever home, couched in modern terms, for that signature identity.  Much more to explore of this iconic and complex work at the links above.

8x8

cheese tetrahedrons and synergetic stew: a celebrity cookbook presented to author and futurist Buckminster Fuller (previously) reissued for the one hundred twenty-fifth anniversary of his birth  

lüften: tried and true ventilation and fresh air may be the most effective way to stave off more infections  

heart of sharkness: winning images and honourable mentions from a drone photography contest  

föräldrapenning: a South Korean man living in Sweden documents his daily routine 

adobe flash: an appreciation of the platform that shaped the internet and the implications of suspending support for the multimedia plug-in and player—via Kottke  

disaster constitutionalism: EU taking the UK to court, despite only breaking international law in a “specific and limited way”  

can our government be competent: celebrating Jimmy Carter’s ninety-sixth birthday (previously) in campaign buttons

eat fresh: with tax implications for the franchise, Irish high court rules that one fast food chain’s bread cannot be called bread or a dietary staple due to its high sugar content—via Boing Boing

burdock and bindweed

Via our Oxford English Dictionary word of the day subscription, we are treated to a bonus pair of botanical epithets of Latinate origins in the infrequent but still in use terms ruderal and campestral.

While the latter is referring prosaically to the countryside and grasses and scrub native to rural expanses, the former from rūdera meaning rubble and the ruins of buildings applies to plants growing among rubbish or on the margins. Unfairly characterised as weeds, ruderal specimens are also accorded the sense of being forerunners, pioneers in finding a niche and thriving despite the stressful environment. A coordinate term—that is, a hypernym or subordinate word that’s in the same class—is agrestic, for uncultivated land.

freedom-loving

Via Kottke, we are directed towards Vox Media correspondent Ezra Klein’s reflection on how the failed, hierarchical response to the coronavirus pandemic lays bare and reframes the cultish sense of individualism and exceptionalism (the essay is written from an American perspective but there’s lessons for us all here) as not the foil of civics and collective action but rather is the source of it—and as with those wanton infants who feel entitled to use the public weal as they own personal racism concierge, and we lose our bearings in neglecting those institutions underpinning civil society.

The natural consequence of such fracturing and the intentional abrogation of responsibility down to ever smaller jurisdictions that can’t afford or enforce their choices—finally to individuals leaves us at liberty to select from a shrinking menu of with no good options. Weighing all these risks and likely bad outcomes is psychologically taxing and cause us to magnify the failings of others in our estimation to take the situation as seriously as we ought to—especially absent coordinated and clear guidance, and to become blind to our own lapses and mental anguish. Reliable governments are not only more resilient, through greater equanimity they facilitate us having more respect and reasonable expectations of one another.