Category Archives: Recommendations

Damascus in the 19th Century-Images

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Bayt Shama’ya Afandi, Damascus, Syria

I work on some fascinating projects at the AKDC@MIT.  One that we’ve just started on, and will be uploading in small increments over an extended period is a a new Special Collection in Archnet, the Michel Ecochard Archive.  A  collection of images of 19th-century Damascus is the first installment to be made available.  I’m so intrigued by the images, I wanted to tell you about them here, and about the larger collection you will eventually see more of.

French architect and urban planner Michel Ecochard, 1905-1985, spent much of his career working in the Muslim world, starting in Damascus following his graduation from École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1929, then Beirut from 1931 to 1944, Rabat from 1946 to 1952 and finally Paris from 1953 to 1983.  Continue reading →

"Forward" Music Video

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There’s always a part of me that feels just a little naive and sentimental when I post a video like this one.  But I suppose I am a little of both those things.  I strongly believe in the essential goodness of human nature, and that when a society offers people an opportunity to excel, most will rise to the occasion.  Congressman Barney Frank once said, that government is simply the name we give to those things we choose to do together.  That is the view taken in this video, and it is one thing I like about it.

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Happy National Voter Registration Day!

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Sharon Jones says “Register to Vote”


Tomorrow is National Voter Registration Day and volunteers all over the country will be out in communities helping people be sure they are registered to vote in the upcoming elections.  In this photo Sharon Jones urges you to take advantage of the opportunity provided by Head Count volunteers with clipboards.
She’s an amazing artist.  Listen to her singing “This Land is Your Land” here. Then check out some of the many photos of Rock Stars and celebrities urging you to get out and vote at these links:

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Lyric Videos for New Singles by Two of my Absolute Faves

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‘Nuff said!

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SAR Academic Freedom Media Review-April 7-13, 2012

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The Scholars at Risk media review seeks to raise awareness about academic freedom issues in the news. Subscription information and archived media reviews are available at here. The views and opinions expressed in these articles are not necessarily those of Scholars at Risk.

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Jadavpur University professor arrested over anti-Mamata cartoons
The Times of India, 4/13
Finally on solid ground (in Norwegian – Google translation)
Aksel Kjaer Vidnes, Forskerforum, 4/13
Colombia all ears after students vote with their feet
Graham Jarvis, Times Higher Education, 4/12
Tenuous Tenure
Kaustuv Basu, Inside Higher Ed, 4/12
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Help Me with a Concert List: My Memory Doesn't Serve Me Well

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Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses in Boston MA. Always a great show!

If you have ever been to a concert with me, I need your help! I’ve been trying to come up with complete list of every musical act I’ve seen in concert, from the cradle to now. Well, not every act.  They have to be nationally or internationally known, because if I list every band I’ve seen at a local event, I’d never stop listing.  I’d also never be able to do it.  I’m also not including choruses, orchestras, musicals or theatrical events.  Let’s take Harry Connick Jr. or Bernadette Peters for example.  Both of these people have done concerts on Broadway and been in shows.  Harry Connick Jr. I list because I have seen him in concert.  I have not seen him in a musical, but even if I had, I wouldn’t list him unless I had also seen him in concert.  I have seen Bernadette Peters in musicals, but I have yet to see her in concert, except recorded.  So she is not on my list.

Anyway, I can’t remember them all.  I know I am missing some.  One act came back to me today since I originally developed this list and posted in on Facebook last night.  Something brought them to mind.  It was a good show, too!  It’s just hard to bring all acts to mind in a list like this.
So if you’ve been to a show or festival with me, could you look at this list and make sure all the artists we saw are included here. The band has to have made enough of an impression on my that I remember seeing them of course.  If I don;t remember them, I’m not going to add them, but I know the list should be longer than this.  Plus I keep finding duplicates, so it isn’t even really this long!

  • Bruce Springsteen
  • Dave Matthews Band
  • James Morrison
  • The Gaslight Anthem
  • Suzanne Vega
  • Idir
  • Najat Attabou
  • Cheb Mami
  • Khaled
  • Cesaria Evora
  • Red Hot Chilli Peppers
  • Prince
  • Foreigner
  • Bryan Adams
  • Tinariwen
  • Ashley MacIsaac
  • Tina Turner
  • Midnight Oil

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The Bodyguard, Netflix, and Your Right to Access Promised Content

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UPDATE:  Check with TechDirt for a significant correction on this story. Apparently this video was removed from the streaming catalog before Whitney Houston’s death.  While that does mean Warner Brothers did not behave as cynically as I believed, the fact that that there was confusion about the date really rather supports my point.  If you expect a video to be in the catalog, you expect it to find it.  
If you were planning to watch The Bodyguard on Netflix, you’re out of luck. According to this post on TechDirt, it’s been pulled. Unless you’re a huge Whitney Houston fan, you probably won’t notice. It’s not a good movie and you probably weren’t planning to watch it. It’s got some great music, but the soundtrack is available separately. If you were planning to watch it, you are probably really annoyed and need to make other plans. I feel your pain, because I’ve been there. It happens far too often, digitally distributed media has a tendency to just disappear, usually due to rights issues.
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Amnesty International's 50th, 80+ Acts, 76 Dylan Songs, $20, 5+ hours… No Matter How You Count, It Equals Awesome

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Amnesty International is one of the most important human rights organizations operating in the world today, and it celebrating its 50th Anniversary this year. Started in 1961 with a worldwide “Appeal for Amnesty” on behalf of individuals imprisoned for the peaceful expression of their beliefs written by British lawyer Peter Benenson, the movement now counts more than 3 million people worldwide.

What better way to celebrate this milestone anniversary than with an album of songs by a man whose songs include the anthems “I Shall Be Released” and “Chimes of Freedom”?  Bob Dylan has long been a supporter of Amnesty International, and Chimes of Freedom was also the unofficial anthem for the amazing Human Rights Now Tour, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1988.
The collection is available now directly from Amnesty International, on iTunes, or at Amazon.  I downloaded the digital tracks, 76 of them, for $19.99 and it’s the best $20 I’ve spent in recent memory.  I’m not exaggerating.  By and large it’s great music, but more on that in a minute.  Let’s get some math out of the way first, if you’re budget conscious like me.  I don’t buy much music these days.  For the most part, I rely on a subscription service, Rhapsody, for my music.  I only purchase music when there’s are really good reason to.  This is worth buying, a bargain by any standards.
It is a 76 song digital download for $19.99, or 4 CDs for $24.99.  Moreover, all profits go to help Amnesty International in its work.  That’s well over 5 hours of music and the satisfaction of helping out one of my favorite causes, for the price of two album downloads on iTunes.  Your average digital LP on iTunes or most other legal sites is usually $9.99 (increasingly $11.99) and it usually includes 10-12 songs.  This is 76 songs.  If that were sold at 12 songs per record , it would be 6 1/3 records.  Nobody like fractions, so let’s just say this collection equals 6 iTunes LPs + 4 free bonus tracks.   If Amnesty International were a record label and not a human rights nonprofit, they’d have known to more slickly market this collection typical price of $59.94, but tell us it’s on sale now for $19.99,  $24.99 for the 4 CDs.  Then we’d know we’re getting a bargain!
Of course it’s only a bargain if the music is good.  It could contain twice as many tracks, but if you only like 9 of them, then you still don’t want to pay $20.
So then, is it any good?
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The Steel Wheels Coming to Town

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If you are fortunate enough to live in or near Marlinton in Pocahontas County, WV, make your way to the Opera House this Saturday, November 12 to see The Steel Wheels in concert at 7:30 pm.  I’ll be there!  I’ve been a fan of these guys for a while now, but this is the first chance I’m getting to see them live.  I can’t wait.  I learned about them from Bicycle Times magazine’s June 2010 issue which reported on their  pedal-powered, seven night, concert tour.  They strapped their instruments and merchandise to their bikes and headed from town to town, covering nearly 300 miles.  This wasn’t some stunt, followed by a support vehicle in case they got tired and needed a lift; this was a genuine concert tour on bicycles.  In fact, they did another this year.  As I read I learned that they were based in Harrisonburg, VA, a place I knew well having gone to James Madison University for my first two years of college.
Those two things alone were reason enough reason to like these guys.  They hail from Virginia, and they tour by bicycle.  (Not always, of course.  They have a national following, and a bicycle tour across the entire country is impractical, at best.)
They were praiseworthy, but were they any good?  Now I had yet to check out the music.
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Hillsboro, West Virginia. Who knew?

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Just a field down the road from me. It's still beautiful, even in October.

(Composed on October 4) Who had Hillsboro, West Virginia when I was graduating from high school and we were betting on where I would be when my 46th birthday rolled around? Anyone? Because if you had that kind of foresight, you win big! I suspect no one even came close. I sure didn’t see myself living here or in any place like it. Nor did I at any of the subsequent milestones such as when I graduated from college or completed two higher degrees. All that education was supposed to take me to far away and exotic places, which it it did when I went to Morocco in the 1990s. Hillsboro, on the other hand, is a mere 4 hours drive from where I spent the first two decades of my life. That’s hardly far away….
But it is a little exotic! I’ve only been here a couple days so far, but it’s already clear to me that life in rural West Virginia is very different from life in suburban Richmond, Virginia. Too many of us fail to appreciate the internal diversity in this vast land of ours, and when we do, we tend to indulge in negative stereotypes. My experience in life has shown us how wrong those can be.
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