Seems appropriate right now to share this, the first known television interview with Nelson Mandela:

Only twenty-four seconds long, the footage is believed to have been filmed during a break in the 1956 Treason Trial.

While we’re at it, here’s Paul Simon covering Peter Gabriel’s “Biko,” about the anti-apartheid activist who was murdered in 1977:

That pretty much sums it up for me.

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After moving to Argentina three years ago, Dominic Hilton remains frustrated with his inability to learn the language—and bemused at the locals’ misuse of English:

You see a lot of that in Buenos Aires. English swearwords, I mean. It’s as if swearing in a foreign language doesn’t count. Oh, those? I imagine people saying. Forget about those. They’re just some random four-letter words. No one understands, or bothers with translating them. Let’s go eat some more beef!

Meanwhile over at the Guardian, correspondents contributed to a list of 10 of the best words in the world (that don’t translate into English). Here’s my favorite:

Dating back to the 16^th century, the term Feierabend, or “celebration evening,” used to denote the evening before a public holiday, but has come to refer to the free time between leaving the office and bedtime on any working day.

The key to understanding Feierabend is that it isn’t time for going to the cinema or gym, but time for doing nothing. In 1880, the cultural historian Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl described the concept as “an atmosphere of carefree wellbeing, of deep inner reconciliation, of the pure and clear quiet of the evening.”

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Couple of cool stories from Humanities magazine: Ron Stanford rediscovers some photographs taken in 1972 while he and his wife were on an NEH-sponsored trip to Louisiana to document Cajun and Creole musicians, and Sheryl Kaskowitz writes about the Special Skills Division of the Resettlement Administration, “one of the New Deal’s most radical, far-reaching, and highly criticized programs.”

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“English is an immensely complicated language to get right,” writes Mark Forsyth, “and native speakers often have no idea of its strangeness.” In fact, he adds, it’s “largely made up of the rules we don’t know that we know.” For example:

You are utterly familiar with the rule of ablaut reduplication. You’ve been using it all your life. It’s just that you’ve never heard of it. But if somebody said the words “zag-zig” or “cross-criss” you would know, deep down in your loins, that they were breaking a sacred rule of language. You just wouldn’t know which one.

Speaking of loins, Forsyth explains how, when it comes to verse, rhythm is far more important than rhyme:

It’s the subtle difference when we record a record or present a present or tell a rebel to rebel. It’s a difference that is very hard for people to learn, and is the main reason that, in a strong French accent, there’s no difference between happiness and a penis.

His book, The Elements of Eloquence, would make a great gift for the word nerd in your life. Like, you know, me. I mean, I do have a birthday coming up.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the writing life  |  make a comment

There’s a new podcast in town, and it’s (predictably) great.

The Album Years, hosted by Steven Wilson and Tim Bowness, takes it as a given that the album, as an art form, is worth taking seriously—something I’ve been arguing for years—and that its heyday began in the mid-1960s and ended some thirty-five years later with the new millennium.

The intent is for each episode to focus on a single year. The first takes a look at 1980, with discussion around not only the obvious (Peter Gabriel’s third solo release, David Bowie’s Scary Monsters, The Talking Heads’ Remain in Light) but also some lesser-known stuff like Peter Hamill’s A Black Box and Common One from Van Morrison. Episode 2, which I haven’t listened to yet, dives into 1973.

Something worth mentioning: While it’s true that albums no longer seem to capture the zeitgeist (but then, what does these days?), there are musicians who still take the format seriously—like, say, Steven Wilson. So all is not lost.

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If you’ve been spending the pandemic sitting around the house in underwear you haven’t washed in a week, sculpting tiny figurines out of earwax and bellybutton lint, and eating Cheetos and Slim Jims for breakfast, then you probably shouldn’t watch Grey Gardens. Don’t get me wrong—it’s an amazing piece of filmmaking. It’s just, well…it might hit a little too close to home for you right now.

Instead, why not check out this free 90-minute documentary on the history of chairs from 1800 to today? No, really: It’s stylish and mod and German—just the sort of thing to pick you up out of the doldrums.

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So I finally got around to watching Friday the 13th over the weekend. Yeah, I know it’s been out for forty years. Yeah, I understand it’s become something of a pop cultural touchstone. Yeah, I know I’m lame. In fact, the missus could hardly believe it.

“Wait,” she said, confusion furrowing her brow. “When you guys got together in high school and rented movies, what did you watch?”

Mostly Monty Python, it turns out, which I recognize makes me sound even lamer.

The thing is, Friday the 13th just…didn’t interest fourteen-year-old me. The entire horror genre was something I shrugged off, probably because my annoying older sister was so into it. (She had terrible taste in music, so I just assumed that translated to film.) The one exception was An American Werewolf in London—which I saw in the theater and love to this day—but for some reason, I never thought of it as horror.

Anyway.

Friday the 13th is…okay, I guess. The setting isn’t all that creepy and the characters are so one-dimensional I was actually looking forward to each one’s (hopefully) gruesome demise. But I gotta say, I wasn’t expecting the ending. That was a shocker.

The other thing I wasn’t expecting? Bill—the guy pinned to the door of the generator shed near the end of the movie—was played by Harry Crosby, son of Bing. Sure, it’s tenuous, but there’s a Spokane connection to one of the foundational films of the slasher genre.

Go figure.

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