Earthquake! Eclipse! Cailin’s solar return!
Other things that have really taken ahold of me this week…
Operation Olive Branch’s continuously updated spreadsheet of Palestinian escape funds. It lists donation pages for families and individuals in Gaza to help them evacuate, rebuild, or obtain medical aid.
This Kickstarter campaign for a documentary about Amílcar Cabral, who was one of Africa's leading anti-colonialists fighting against Portuguese rule in Guinea-Bissau. He entrusted four young Bissau-Guinean filmmakers to document the country’s fight for independence but he was assassinated before they could finish the film. Now the two surviving members, Flora Gomes and Sanha Na N’hada, are finally hoping to complete their work over fifty years later.
Learning that the Bièvre, the secret sister river to the Seine that runs under the fifth and thirteenth arrondissements, was named after the beavers that lived on its banks (from the Gaul bèbros). The river became so polluted that in 1875 it was concealed and is now part of the sewage system.
“In Italian, there is no direct translation for the word “wilderness.” At conservation events and on nature reserve signs, you are just as likely to see it rendered in English — la wilderness — as its closest Italian correlates: deserto (desert), riserva naturale (nature reserve); or zona naturale incontaminata (uncontaminated nature area).”
The “pay what you want” policy of certain museums in New York started when the Met reported a $1M deficit for 1969–1970. Director Thomas P. F. Hoving knew the issue stemmed from its 1870 lease with the city, which promised free admission four days a week in exchange for free rent and other costs. Instead they made a new deal - they could charge a daily admission fee as long as the fee amount was “left entirely to the individual’s discretion.”
This album:
Pierpaolo Mittica’s haunting photos of Abkhazia, a region located in the Caucasus Mountains on the eastern coast of the Black Sea. It is internationally recognized as part of Georgia but has declared itself an independent state, although its independence is recognized by only a few countries. He writes: “While the arm wrestle between the Abkhazia government and its Georgian counterpart continues, the population struggles to establish a semblance of normality in that lost paradise that many still remember. As daily life in the region seems trapped in a permanent state of limbo, buildings that date back to the Soviet era and the time of the Tsars, such as hotels, spas, sanatoria, castles, railway stations as well as entire towns built in the Stalinist neoclassical style, are crumbling and this cultural heritage risks disappearing forever.
What is believed to be the first surviving astronomical film in the world: a solar eclipse on May 28, 1900 filmed by celebrated magician (and astronomy enthusiast) Nevil Maskelyne.
The six people incarcerated at New York's Woodbourne Correctional Facility who sued for the right to watch the eclipse on Monday and won their settlement. They will get to watch from a prison yard — but this doesn't apply to any other inmates who want to see it.
Annie Dillard’s 1982 essay “Total Eclipse.” She drove five hours to watch a solar eclipse from a hilltop in Washington State in 1979 and wrote about the surreal experience two years later: “What you see in an eclipse is entirely different from what you know. It is especially different for those of us whose grasp of astronomy is so frail that, given a flashlight, a grapefruit, two oranges, and 15 years, we still could not figure out which way to set the clocks for daylight saving time. Usually it is a bit of a trick to keep your knowledge from blinding you. But during an eclipse it is easy. What you see is much more convincing than any wild-eyed theory you may know.”
La Chimera by Alice Rohrwacher. Do whatever you can to see this gem of a movie. Come for the grave-robbers looting Etruscan tombs, stay for the transcendent cinematography and the ending that is just crackling with magic. Rohrwacher says “it's about how we can break this excess of individualism in our society by making a movie. This is a huge deal for me, because movies in and of themselves amplify individualism because normally, one watches a movie, and one identifies with the hero, and therefore, they feel like they're an individual. And I thought that we could overcome this hurdle by breaking the identification mechanism, with the protagonist, by stating right at the outset that this movie is a communal story.”
New York Restoration Project (founded in 1995 by Bette Midler!) doing their yearly free native trees giveaway across all five boroughs. Options include American Persimmon, Eastern Redbud, Elderberry, Flowering Dogwood, Red Maple, Witchhazel and more, register for yours here.
The free zine Spike Jonze made about the day he met Björk, available to download on WeTransfer.
This medieval death quilt hand-quilted by
of who writes: “In case anyone is wondering, I’ve given up on the idea of somehow making a living off of pictorial quilts. I have a new plan: make a quilt every year for the rest of my life and then dole them solemnly out to my loved ones from my deathbed.”Till next time,
ASK
Love this cosmic wonder!! 🌓