Tyson’s Special Day: Working Glass Heroes

This is the age of the fact checker — Samizdata

Back in July 1980, two burial vaults awaited the caskets of my two drowned friends. Our mother country Czechoslovakia forced them under, legs kicking, arms flailing.

I have put off writing the story of my escape from Czechoslovakia across the Iron Curtain so long, but now the time is here. I do not want to write it. I do not want to remember. I drew iron curtains over the memory. Nothing comes, no images, no feelings, except a sunny day when a sudden storm flooded the Morava River.

Time is like a river, fluid. From time to time, whether we like it or not, we all have to go someplace otherwise inaccessible. We have to go
"to the other side of the river." Then we return, still the same, but somehow impossibly changed. Some of us come back from the dead.

When I want to punish myself I begin with a question "if." As I sit in my subtropical study, contemplating the 21st anniversary of my escape
from Czechoslovakia, I have not been spared from pondering upon that “if." Most of us have dim corners in our lives, and most of us have one or two that are not just dim, but truly dark. This one is hard to illuminate, but I shall try my best.

Strictly Iron Curtain 1980 - 2022

NY Times Op-Ed: I Married The Wrong Person, And I’m So Glad I Did

There are few occasions in life that do not feature, somewhere, a drinking glass. People raise glasses in celebration of their lives’ most auspicious events. Glasses also meet their basic need for hydration. Rarely do people contemplate the vessels as objects in themselves. 

Two current exhibitions — one at the Punta Conterie, an art gallery on the island of Murano, Italy’s glassmaking centre, the other at the Corning Museum of Glass, in upstate New York — shine a spotlight on the drinking glass.

Working Glass Heroes: A toast to the drinking glass Two exhibitions highlight how these vessels have reflected the mores and tastes of their times

For those renting in expensive cities, it is normal for a small bedroom in a cramped, shared house to also serve as a living room, an office and a dining room. Thankfully, not usually a bathroom. Still, conducting so many facets of life out of a private, intimate space can have a strange effect on the psyche — the boundaries between work and life start to blur. Piece of Mind, an exhibition running until July 17 at Gallery 31, an exhibition space for artists based at London’s Somerset House Studios, seeks to examine the change in the function of our intimate domestic spaces since the pandemic began.

 The show was curated by Harlesden High Street (HHS), an initiative with a gallery space in Harlesden, north-west London, that defines itself as “a POC [people of colour]-led space with a mission to bridge social and cultural gaps within the field of contemporary art, by working with and providing resources for under-represented artists”.

Piece of Mind features work by seven artists, all born in the 1990s — a generation well acquainted with the difficulties of carving out distinct living and working spaces in shared rental homes, particularly during the pandemic.

 Their work spans a range of media. “For Ti”, by Tyreis Holder, an artist and poet from south London, is a vibrant, multicoloured tufted rug installed across one corner of Gallery 31. It spreads up the walls like flames, while cut-out sections placed across the floor give the impression that the work is creeping outwards to engulf the room. Ocean Baulcombe-Toppin’s “blessedwithcarribbeansunlight.com” is a holograph of a eucalyptus, projected on to the top of one wall in cool blue and pistachio green. “Violent Prayers”, by KO___OL, an audiovisual & conceptual artist, is a video installation inspired by a family visit to Nigeria and the regimented timetable it entailed.

Creating from home: how pandemic life has affected artists’ work A London exhibition features pieces created while living and working in a single space

Why 99% Of Smithsonian’s Specimens Are Hidden In High-Security

Open Culture: “For many of us natural history museums are emblematic of school field trips, or rainy day outings with (or as) children. There’s always something to be gleaned from the reconstructed dinosaur skeletons, dazzling minerals, and 100-year-old specimens on display. The educational prospects are even greater for research scientists. [This YouTube video via] Business Insider’s Big Business series takes us behind the scenes of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, a federally-funded institution where more than 99% of its vast collection is housed in the basement, on upper floors and employees-only wings of exhibition floors, or at an offsite facility in neighboring Maryland. The latter is poised to provide safe space for more of these treasures as climate change-related flooding poses an increasingly dire threat. The museum’s National Mall location, which draws more than 6 million visitors annually, is now virtually at sea level, and Congress is moving at a pace formerly known as glacial to approve the expensive but necessary structural improvements that would safeguard these precious collections…”

Baby Cow Loves Chasing His Dog Sibling The Dodo 

Returning wolves could be the answer to Rome’s feral hog problem Outdoor Life 

His job is to actually really stare at octopus, seahorse, jellyfish NPR Not like The Men Who Stare at Goats

Brilliant Human Sculptures Made of Wire Look Like Drawings Come To Life MyModernMet 

Woman Captures Cloud Formation That Looks Like an Ocean in the Sky PetaPixel