To Ashes, to Dust: Decadent Berlin, late 1920’s

Posted on February 10, 2018 by Antonio Vantaggiato

Like Weimar’s Berlin, the world is crumbling around us. And I can’t help watching this video again and again. How can I say this… I have spent part of the night watching the segment from Babylon Berlin (the TV series on Netflix) where actress Severija Janušauskait? sings Zu Asche zu Staub at the historic club Moka Efti in pre-Hitler Berlin.

It’s a wonderful song, first of all, sung by her character, a woman playing a man on the stage. The choreography is so good, with all the people dancing in synch and singing too. The decadence of 20’s Berlin comes alive here, contrasted at the same time by the fresh look of the protagonist Charlotte, played by wunderbar Liv Lisa Fries.

Zu Asche, zu Staub
dem Licht geraubt
doch noch nicht jetzt

Wunder warten bis zuletzt
Ozean der Zeit
ewiges Gesetz
zu Asche, zu Staub
zu Asche
doch noch nicht jetzt

…

To ashes, to dust
robbed of the light
but not now

Miracles wait until the last
Ocean of time
eternal law
to ashes, to dust
to ashes
but not now

–Google Translation

Have a look!

Says The Guardian:

Babylon Berlin review: political maelstrom, a populist right on the march – sound familiar?

This big budget, Weimar-era German police drama has plenty of contemporary resonance. And even more debauchery …

A critic from Italy’s La Stampa says

Non capita spesso, ma capita, che si guardi un film o una puntata di una serie tv e ci si innamori totalmente, pazzamente di un brano.

It does not happen often, but it happens, that you watch a movie or an episode of a TV series and you fall in love totally, madly of a song.

…The audience that identifies with the singer / dancer and the notes of a piece that evolve on the beats of a drums masterfully played become second to second almost hypnotic. The singer then, this Severija Janušauskaité, is simply fantastic. Wonderful.

[Featured image from the TV Show. Severija: Zu Asches Zu Staub]

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A case of a lost tape, the Puerto Rico Connection podcast, and a lot of #care4sagrado from the Far East

Posted on February 9, 2018 by Antonio Vantaggiato

Damn, Alan got there first, once again. We had forgotten all about that tape, but before everything went sour he recovered the recording from January 1st, and this time at last & at least I did some work on TapeWrite to put together the show, finding images to complement what was being said. The title came naturally, Raiders of the lost tape!! But then Alan did his magik tricks  and came with a great cover art for the third episode, just in tone with the film-inspired title. See for yourself. He is too good.

 

 

Then Tuesday night I had a wonderful evening with my students of a grad course I’m teaching, EDU646 Learning Environments. I shared the package received from Parisa Mehran in Japan and it was all momentous. María Josefina titled her class post

The second class takes the name of “Parisa”

since she felt touched by the experience. I gave each of them one of the bookmarks received from Parisa and her students, and I intend to do the same with all my students (until supplies last…) for this semester. Yes, she mailed a whole lot of these beautiful handmade bookmarks.

And my students shot a selfie, which was then posted. Please go and read her post because it’s so good and so pretty comprehensive of all we did in that class, including plans.

This is the record of the moment I opened the package, earlier last week.

Bookmarks from Parisa in Japan!

[Photo by me. CC-Licensed, BY]

And all began with Alan’s initiative of #care4sagrado.

See the video Paris and her students made. And tell me this is not the definition of empathy. @Sagradoedu, please do a collaboration agreement with Osaka University!

Posted in bookmarking, education, podcast | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

The Well-Traveled Postcard

Posted on January 31, 2018 by Antonio Vantaggiato

In which a story is told about the routes a postcard took.

Said postcard, of a kangaroo, was first received in San Juan, Puerto Rico, December 2017. Huge jump did it take, first from Australia, east coast, to Strawberry. Arizona, where a certain Alan Levine aka CodDog realized he had forgotten to mail it. So he did and it eventually reached my students and me.

Aussie

Aussie-2

However, I was about to take flight to California to visit my daughter in Berkeley. And I decided–on a flash– to bring it with me and have it travel a little more.

Here I am pondering in front of San Francisco Bay at the Imbarcadero.

Postcard selfie 4b

Then, I took it on a stroll.

Postcard selfie 3

Nice jetset for a kangaroo, eh?

I love this postcard selfie, don’t I.

Postcard selfie 2

And this one too.

Postcard selfie 1

And so on and so forth.

Some do not like posting stuff late, after the fact. Me neither, but this is worth it. BTW, go check the San Francisco shots I did while accompanying the postcard across the city and in Berkeley: the gallery is here.

[All images by moi meme, except the postcards, of course, which were nevertheless carefully photographed also by me. All is CC licensed. Use.]
Posted in foto, general, postcards, stories | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Lists #2: Books of 2017

Posted on January 10, 2018 by Antonio Vantaggiato

I regularly read ProfHacker‘s blog posts, and like very much those recommending books. I also read often recommendations from NYT, The Guardian, El País and Corriere, and I love the end-of-year lists of “best” books. Now, here’s my own book recommendations (ie, books I read and liked in 2017), with both essays and literature. I favor noirs at this moment, so the majority of books falls in this category. I find that fidelity to one particular kind/style of literature brings happiness and depth.

I use my GoodReads account to save books, since it has an immense catalogue in the three languages that interest me, Italian, English and Spanish. It also has an iPhone app through which I can scan a book’s barcode and save it, thus bridging the gap between the physical and the digital bookstores. I am not very comfortable knowing that it is a property of Amazon, but for the time being I shall let it be. I don’t either particularly love the widget GoodReads generates: It doesn’t work well with WordPress (they say it’s an iframe issue–of “security”, I guess) and in this case I was unable to display the covers at a larger scale; however, it generates some static HTML that can be CSS-styled on one’s own. But that’s it.

I like it also because it facilitates my entering review info or notes on each book, which is quite useful. Plus, I can export a cvs file with all my books whenever I want, so I feel safe about archiving something on which I have no control and could disappear as Amazon sees fit. I could use LibraryThing, which is mostly independent of Amazon, but it has no scanning app.

Books of 2017

Antonio’s bookshelf: read

Mothering Sunday
liked it
Mothering Sunday
by Graham Swift
Teaching as a Subversive Activity
really liked it
Teaching as a Subversive Activity
by Neil Postman
The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception
really liked it
The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception
by Emmanuel Carrère
Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art
really liked it
Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art
by Virginia Heffernan
Very very good. I’ll write soon a post in my blog skateofweb.com. It is the first essay I read on the vernacular of the Web, the new language. Compelling, full of bright insights. Very instructive also from the point of view of education…
Las lágrimas de Claire Jones
liked it
Las lágrimas de Claire Jones
by Berna González Harbour
Pista nera
liked it
Pista nera
by Antonio Manzini
Era di maggio
liked it
Era di maggio
by Antonio Manzini
Roseanna
liked it
Roseanna
by Maj Sjöwall
L'altro capo del filo
really liked it
L’altro capo del filo
by Andrea Camilleri
Ofrenda a la tormenta
really liked it
Ofrenda a la tormenta
by Dolores Redondo
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
really liked it
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
by Yuval Noah Harari
L'impiccato di Saint-Pholien
liked it
L’impiccato di Saint-Pholien
by Georges Simenon
Irène
liked it
Irène
by Pierre Lemaitre

 


goodreads.com

[Featured image — “A shelf in my library”. Photo by me. Use: creativecommons License BY-NC-SA]

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Patti Smith & Instagram: Memory From 1979 in Florence.

Posted on January 9, 2018 by Antonio Vantaggiato

Here is one post sprung up when I searched Patti Smith on Instagram. She’s also a photographer, after all. And her music and work mean a lot to me. But this does not seem genuine. I think it’s the work of some fan, since there are almost no photos taken by her, and it’s mainly a collection of portraits of her. And no work of her as a photographer seems to appear there. Still, it’s a nice collection, worth seeing.

Robert.

A post shared by Patti Smith (@officialpattismith) on

I was in Florence 1979 with a bunch of friends and my sister too. And we lived her first concert in Italy in full with a huge expectation–hey, I was twenty, and I would do it again! Took a short train ride from Rome and slept cramped like eight in one hotel room. Got to the stadium so early, as soon as the gates opened, and we found a good spot on the grass, where we spent the afternoon. Began in the evening with Gloria and ended with Twist and Shout. It still reverberates through my mind. I know, I’m using whatever excuse to post a video of Patti singing Gloria.

I did various searches for photos of that concert, but found only few available online. One is the featured image of this post. Another gives the idea of the people amassed at the stadium.

Firenze, 10 settembre 1979: in attesa del concerto (dalla fotogalleria su

Firenze, 10 settembre 1979: in attesa del concerto (dalla fotogalleria su “La Repubblica – Firenze.it”). From http://www.storiadifirenze.org/?p=2696

Both photos are republished on the article 10 settembre 1979: il concerto di Patti Smith e la fine dell’innocenza. Un ricordo from storiadifirenze.org.

My own photos–I shot many–are probably at my mother’s, or unfortunately lost.

Posted in music | Tagged , , | 3 Comments