skyline

We quite enjoyed this historical survey of the ever-upwardly mobile skyscrapers of New York City commencing with the Latting Observatory, a wooden tower erected the 1853 World’s Fair and decreased in stature afterwards in deference to the steeple of Trinity Church, which held the title of tallest building in the United States until 1869. The pictured 15 Park Row (Wolkenkratzer) was completed 1908 and was a pioneering edifice for its use of structural steel and was accorded protected status as a historic monument in 1999. More to explore from design boom at the link up top.

show dna or presque vue

In what looks to be (for now) a one-off investigation into sitcom set recycling from the always excellent Poseidon’s Underworld into the earlier cameo appearance of the Golden Girls’ kitchen in a short-lived show with Richard Crenna, Helen Hunt, Patty Duke and Billie Bird—It Takes Two (1982), which became the focal point of the long-running series. No other screen memories seemed to be shared under that particular tag but I for one would like to see more comparisons—recalling myself (though this like the term screen memory might be a false one—though the former was notoriously popularised in support of suppressed trauma) an interview with Margaret Cho after her show All-American Girl (1994) was cancelled and her being a bit miffed that her kitchenette was recycled wholesale into the apartment of Rachel and Monica on Friends. Cho herself was a regular on The Golden Palace, a spin-off where Blanche, Rose and Sophia run a hotel, with the help Don Cheadele and Cheech Marin.

television and the public interest

The titular speech given on this day in 1961 by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Newton N. Minow (previously) to a convention of the trade and lobby group the National Association of Broadcasters, compared to the Golden Age of TV in the 1950s, contemporary programming of violence, cartoons, Westerns, commercials and game shows was assuredly a “vast wasteland.” Acknowledging that when television is good, nothing—not theatre nor any other forms of media—is can surpass it in terms of quality and potential to engage, Minow went on to advise his audience that “television and all who participate in it are jointly accountable to the American public for respect for the special needs of children, for community responsibility, for the advancement of education and culture, for the acceptability of the programme materials chosen, for decency and decorum in production—and for propriety in advertising. This responsibility cannot be discharged by any given group of programmes, but rather only through the highest standards of respect for the American home and applied to every moment of every programme presented. Programme materials should enlarge the horizons of the viewer, provide him with wholesome entertainment, afford helpful stimulation and remind him of the responsibilities which the citizen has towards his society.” Reforms brought about in reaction to the address led to the creation of US Public Television and National Public Radio.

europawoche

Celebrated today on the anniversary of the 1950 Schuman Declaration which proposed the pooling of French and Wester German coal and steel industries and the first European Community, Europe Day was introduced in 1985 by the EU predecessor organisation the European Communities. The Council of Europe marked its own Europe Day earlier in the week with the anniversary on the fifth marking the council’s founding in 1949, both observances commemorating pan-European identity and integration.

parahawk

Via Cynical-C, we learn of a new (to us) sporting activity that combines gliding with falconry (previously), developed in 2001 with a round-the-world trip starting in Nepal to soar with birds of prey who graciously share the airspace with human interlopers and guide them to thermals and updrafts that keep their flightless companions aloft.

a touch of honey

Lampooned first by Mystery Science Theater 3000 on this day back in 1998, the 1967 British horror vehicle directed by Freddie Francis, The Deadly Bees, is sort of a low-budget homage, snowclone of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds with similar tropes and devices and is based off the above titled detective novel by H. F. Heard. A pop singer (played by Suzanna Leigh) suffering from physical and mental exhaustion after a series of shows is sent off to an island cottage for rest and recuperation and finds herself in the midst of an apicultural arms race with two competing beekeepers claiming to have developed a colony of killer bees that they control variously by pheromones and taped recordings of a moth. Well, I’m off to become Lulu. 

 

hair like mine

This candid, spontaneous photograph—taken on this day in 2009 by White House official photographer Pete Souza has become an iconic image and represents a milestone in the civil rights struggle in the US.
The five-year-old Jacob Philadelphia was visiting President Obama in the Oval Office along with his family—his father having served as a member of the National Security Staff for the past two years and was departing for another assignment—and quietly asked the above question. In response, Obama bowed down and invited Jacob to touch it and see.

8x8

take-away: flatpack pasta designed to morph and fold into containers when cooked  

bogland: photographing the marshes and alluvial plains of Belarus 

baby’s breath: biodegradable face masks blossom into wildflowers  

private issue new age: a soothing 1984 ambient recording that’s a psychoacoustic catalyst designed for release of spiritual and emotional energies 

children’s television workshop: the creators behind Sesame Street’s Teeny Little Super Guy  

forced perspective: giant Bidens and tiny Carters were keeping us awake—an explanation of the confluence of factors via Miss Cellania’s Links 

tableau muet: visualising history and charting epochs with Antoni Jażwiński’s “Polish System” 

baibaojia: make your own thread book for safekeeping of sewing items, notions and other small treasures