Use the “Eisenhower Matrix” to Manage Your Time & Increase Your Productivity: The System Designed by the 34th President of the United States

“What is impor­tant is sel­dom urgent,” said Dwight D. Eisen­how­er, “and what is urgent is sel­dom impor­tant.” Or at least many believe Eisen­how­er said that, even if he might have been quot­ing some­one else. Whether or not the 34th Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca ever spoke those exact words, he must have had a high­ly effec­tive method of deal­ing with life’s tasks. Dur­ing Eisen­how­er’s two terms in office, writes Atom­ic Habits author James Clear, “he launched pro­grams that direct­ly led to the devel­op­ment of the Inter­state High­way Sys­tem in the Unit­ed States, the launch of the inter­net (DARPA), the explo­ration of space (NASA), and the peace­ful use of alter­na­tive ener­gy sources (Atom­ic Ener­gy Act).”

Eisen­how­er accom­plished all that after “plan­ning and exe­cut­ing inva­sions of North Africa, France, and Ger­many” as Supreme Com­man­der of the Allied Forces in Europe dur­ing World War II” (and while being the most avid golfer ever to reside in the White House).

Though we may nev­er boast such a range of accom­plish­ments our­selves, we can still inject a shot of Eisen­how­er­ian pro­duc­tiv­i­ty into our lives with the “Eisen­how­er Matrix” — or, in the plain­er phras­ing “Ike” might have pre­ferred, the “Eisen­how­er Box.”

Its ver­ti­cal axis of impor­tance and hor­i­zon­tal axis of urgency cre­ate four box­es for cat­e­go­riz­ing tasks. Clear explains these cat­e­gories as fol­lows:

  • Urgent and impor­tant (tasks you will do imme­di­ate­ly)
  • Impor­tant, but not urgent (tasks you will sched­ule to do lat­er)
  • Urgent, but not impor­tant (tasks you will del­e­gate to some­one else)
  • Nei­ther urgent nor impor­tant (tasks that you will elim­i­nate)

Impor­tant tasks, writes Life­hack­er’s Thorin Klosows­ki, “are things that con­tribute to our long-term mis­sion, val­ues, and goals,” pur­suits that put us into a “respon­sive mode, which helps us remain calm, ratio­nal, and open to new oppor­tu­ni­ties.” At Busi­ness Insid­er, Drake Baer pro­vides exam­ples of all four cat­e­gories of tasks. The urgent and impor­tant include “attend­ing to a cry­ing baby, tack­ling a cri­sis at work, and mail­ing your rent check.” The impor­tant but not urgent include “sav­ing for the future, get­ting enough exer­cise, sleep­ing your sev­en to nine hours a night.” The urgent but not impor­tant include “book­ing a flight, shar­ing an arti­cle, answer­ing a phone call.” The nei­ther urgent nor impor­tant include “watch­ing Game of Thrones, check­ing your Face­book, eat­ing cook­ies.”

Eisen­how­er had it easy, you may say: he lived before binge-watch­ing, before social media, and before cook­ies were quite so addic­tive. Hence the greater impor­tance today of a time-man­age­ment sys­tem with the stark clar­i­ty of the Eisen­how­er Matrix, and not just for pres­i­dents. (Barack Oba­ma, Baer points out, made time for din­ner with the fam­i­ly when he was in the White House as well as an hour’s work­out every evening, both impor­tant but not urgent tasks.) So as not to lose sight of what’s impor­tant, Clear rec­om­mends keep­ing in mind two ques­tions: “What am I work­ing toward?” and “What are the core val­ues that dri­ve my life?” And though Eisen­how­er did­n’t have to deal with nui­sances like app noti­fi­ca­tions, he also did­n’t get to see the day when a pro­duc­tiv­i­ty app (whose expla­na­tion of the Eisen­how­er Matrix appears at the top of the post) has his name on it.

via James Clear, author of Atom­ic Habits

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dai­ly Rou­tines of Famous Cre­ative Peo­ple, Pre­sent­ed in an Inter­ac­tive Info­graph­ic

The Dai­ly Habits of High­ly Pro­duc­tive Philoso­phers: Niet­zsche, Marx & Immanuel Kant

The Dai­ly Habits of Famous Writ­ers: Franz Kaf­ka, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Stephen King & More

Richard Feynman’s “Note­book Tech­nique” Will Help You Learn Any Subject–at School, at Work, or in Life

Eisen­how­er Answers Amer­i­ca: The First Polit­i­cal Adver­tise­ments on Amer­i­can TV (1952)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The City of Nashville Built a Full-Scale Replica of the Parthenon in 1897, and It’s Still Standing Today

Pho­to by Mayur Phadtare, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

A recent exec­u­tive order stat­ing that “the clas­si­cal archi­tec­tur­al style shall be the pre­ferred and default style” for fed­er­al build­ings in the U.S. has remind­ed some of oth­er exec­u­tives who enforced neo­clas­si­ci­cism as the state’s offi­cial aes­thet­ic dog­ma. In the case of the U.S., how­ev­er, neo­clas­si­cal build­ing does not draw from ancient sources, but from “a 19th cen­tu­ry inter­pre­ta­tion of what peo­ple were doing in Rome and Athens mil­len­nia ago,” as Steve Rose writes at The Guardian.

In oth­er words, con­tem­po­rary “clas­si­cal archi­tec­tur­al style” in the U.S. is a copy of a copy. Kitsch. But maybe the cre­ation of sim­u­la­tions is what Amer­i­ca does best, though not typ­i­cal­ly under threat of gov­ern­ment sanc­tion should one do oth­er­wise. “Liv­ing in the rel­a­tive­ly youth­ful coun­try that’s a mere 241 years old,” Isaac Kaplan wrote at Art­sy in 2017, “it’s under­stand­able that some Amer­i­cans might decide to import a lit­tle extra his­to­ry from abroad,” by mak­ing ver­sions of ancient mon­u­ments in their back­yard.

Such build­ings span the coun­try, from off­beat road­side attrac­tions to the most expen­sive and elab­o­rate recre­ations. “There is a faux-Venice in Las Vegas, and a Stone­henge II in Texas.” And in Nashville, Ten­nessee: a full-scale repli­ca of the Parthenon, built in 1897 for the Cen­ten­ni­al Expo­si­tion cel­e­brat­ing the state’s 100th anniver­sary. The detailed re-cre­ation went fur­ther than imi­tat­ing a ruin. It “restored the aspects of the orig­i­nal Parthenon that were lost or dam­aged” in an inter­pre­tive re-cre­ation of what it might have looked like.

The build­ing held the Exposition’s art gallery and “spoke to the city’s self-declared rep­u­ta­tion as the ‘Athens of the South.’” (Mem­phis coun­tered the grand archi­tec­tur­al ges­ture by build­ing a pyra­mid; Athens, Geor­gia, how­ev­er, did not respond in kind.) Con­struct­ed out of con­crete, and not built to out­last the cel­e­bra­tions, the repli­ca began to fall apart soon after­wards, prompt­ing a restora­tion effort in 1920 aimed at mak­ing the Nashville Parthenon as “endur­ing and as his­tor­i­cal­ly true to the orig­i­nal Parthenon as pos­si­ble.”

The Great Depres­sion halt­ed plans for an enor­mous stat­ue of Athena, meant to recre­ate one that once stood inside the orig­i­nal Parthenon, but after decades of dona­tions it was final­ly unveiled in 1990. Stand­ing 42 feet high, the mas­sive fig­ure holds a 6‑foot-4-inch stat­ue of the god­dess Nike in her hand. Unlike 19th cen­tu­ry neo­clas­si­cal recre­ations, Athena “boasts a major his­tor­i­cal detail: poly­chromy,” paint­ed in bright greens, reds, and blues, right­ing “the long-held and his­tor­i­cal­ly incor­rect view of the ancient past as one dom­i­nat­ed by white­ness.”

Image by Dean Dixon, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

See more pho­tographs from 1909 at the Library of Con­gress dig­i­tal col­lec­tions, of the repli­ca of a tem­ple orig­i­nal­ly ded­i­cat­ed to hon­or­ing the female per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of wis­dom. And at the top, see a much more recent pho­to of the restored build­ing. The Nashville Parthenon is still in busi­ness, charg­ing rea­son­able admis­sion for a view tourists could nev­er get in Athens, as well as a per­ma­nent col­lec­tion of 63 paint­ings by Amer­i­can artists and gal­leries hous­ing tem­po­rary shows and exhibits.

via @DaveEverts

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore Ancient Athens 3D, a Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tion of the Greek City-State at the Height of Its Influ­ence

Artist is Cre­at­ing a Parthenon Made of 100,000 Banned Books: A Mon­u­ment to Democ­ra­cy & Intel­lec­tu­al Free­dom

The His­to­ry of Ancient Greece in 18 Min­utes: A Brisk Primer Nar­rat­ed by Bri­an Cox

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

New Digital Archive Will Bring Medieval Chants Back to Life: Project Amra Will Feature 300 Digitized Manuscripts and Many Audio Recordings

Among his­to­ri­ans of Euro­pean Chris­tian­i­ty, it long seemed a set­tled ques­tion that Irish Catholi­cism, the so-called “Celtic Rite,” dif­fered sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the mid­dle ages from its Roman coun­ter­part. This despite the fact that the phrase Celtic Rite “must not be tak­en to imply any nec­es­sary homo­gene­ity,” notes the Catholic Ency­clo­pe­dia, “for the evi­dence such as it is, is in favour of con­sid­er­able diver­si­ty.” Far from an insu­lar reli­gion, Irish Catholi­cism spread to France, Ger­many, Switzer­land, Italy, and North­ern Spain through the mis­sions of St. Colum­banus and oth­ers, and both influ­enced and absorbed the Continent’s prac­tices through­out the medieval peri­od.

His­to­ri­ans have recent­ly set out to “restore [the Irish Church] to its right­ful place on the Euro­pean his­tor­i­cal map,” writes Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin’s Ann Buck­ley in her intro­duc­tion to a book of schol­ar­ly essays called Music, Litur­gy, and the Ven­er­a­tion of Saints of the Medieval Irish Church in a Euro­pean Con­text.

To vary­ing degrees, all of the schol­ars rep­re­sent­ed in this col­lec­tion write to counter the essen­tial­iz­ing “quest for what might be unique or ‘oth­er’ about Ire­land and Irish cul­ture” among all oth­er Euro­pean nation­al and reli­gious his­to­ries.

Buckley’s writ­ing on the ven­er­a­tion of Irish saints has made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to this effort, and her decade and a half of archival work has helped cre­ate the Amra project, which aims “to dig­i­tize and make freely avail­able online over 300 man­u­scripts con­tain­ing litur­gi­cal mate­r­i­al asso­ci­at­ed with some 40 Irish saints which are locat­ed in research libraries across Europe.” So write Medievalists.net, who also point out some of the most excit­ing aspects of this acces­si­ble resource:

The dig­i­tal archive, when com­plet­ed, will also incor­po­rate record­ings and per­form­ing edi­tions of all the chants and prayers from the orig­i­nal man­u­scripts, as well as trans­la­tions of the Latin texts into a num­ber of Euro­pean lan­guages. In this way, con­tem­po­rary audi­ences can enjoy first-hand the devo­tion­al songs asso­ci­at­ed with Irish saints, bring­ing them out of their slum­ber after more than half a mil­len­ni­um.

You can hear one antiphonal chant, “Mag­ni patris/Mente mun­di,” from the Office St. Patrick, just above. Per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, “no oth­er Irish saint is rep­re­sent­ed so exten­sive­ly or with such vari­ety in medieval litur­gi­cal sources,” writes Buck­ley. Man­u­script hymns, prayers, and offices for Patrick have been found in Dublin, Oxford, Cam­bridge, the British Library, and “in the Vien­na Schot­ten­kloster dat­ing from the time of its foun­da­tion by Irish Bene­dic­tine monks in the twelfth cen­tu­ry.” (See the open­ing of the Office of St. Patrick, “Veneren­da immi­nen­tis,” from a late-15th cen­tu­ry man­u­script, at the top.)

Oth­er saints rep­re­sent­ed in the archival mate­r­i­al include Brig­it, Colm­cille, Colum­banus, Canice, Declan, Cia­ran, Fin­ian, and Lau­rence O’Toole. The mis­sion­ary monks all received their own “offices,” litur­gi­cal cer­e­monies per­formed on their feast days. Many of the man­u­scripts, such as the open­ing of the Office of St. Brig­it, above, con­tain musi­cal nota­tion, allow­ing musi­col­o­gists like Buck­ley to recre­ate the sound of Irish Catholi­cism as it exist­ed in Ire­land, Britain, and Con­ti­nen­tal Europe sev­er­al hun­dred years ago.

The project is devel­op­ing a dig­i­tal archive of such record­ings, as well as “a ful­ly search­able data­base,” Medievalists.net notes, with “inter­ac­tive maps show­ing the geo­graph­i­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion of the cults of Irish saints across Europe, and of the libraries where the man­u­scripts are now housed. A series of doc­u­men­tary films is also envis­aged.” You don’t have to be a spe­cial­ist in the his­to­ry of the Irish Church, or an Irish Catholic, for that mat­ter, to get excit­ed about the many ways such a rich resource will bring this medieval his­to­ry to new life.

via Medievalists.net

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Where Did the Monk’s Hair­cut Come From? A New Vox Video Explains the Rich and Con­tentious His­to­ry of the Ton­sure

The Medieval Mas­ter­piece, the Book of Kells, Is Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

160,000 Pages of Glo­ri­ous Medieval Man­u­scripts Dig­i­tized: Vis­it the Bib­lio­the­ca Philadel­phien­sis

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Watch More Than 400 Classic Korean Films Free Online Thanks to the Korean Film Archive

Even if you don’t know much about Korea, or indeed about film, it’s safe to say that you know at least one Kore­an film: Bong Joon-ho’s Par­a­site, which has cir­cled the world gath­er­ing acclaim and awards since its release last spring. First it won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, becom­ing the first Kore­an pro­duc­tion to do so; more recent­ly, it made film his­to­ry even more dra­mat­i­cal­ly at the Acad­e­my Awards. There it won Oscars not just for Best Inter­na­tion­al Fea­ture Film, Best Orig­i­nal Screen­play, and Best Direc­tor, but also Best Pic­ture, becom­ing the first non-Eng­lish-lan­guage film to do so. For many view­ers, Par­a­site and its direc­tor seem to have come out of nowhere, but lovers of Kore­an cin­e­ma know full well that they come out of a rich tra­di­tion — and a robust indus­try.

Maybe you thrilled to Bong’s sus­pense­ful, fun­ny, and vio­lent tale of class war­fare as much as the Acad­e­my did. Maybe you’ve even seen the work of Bong’s con­tem­po­raries: Park Chan-wook, he of the con­tro­ver­sial hit Old­boy; the even more trans­gres­sive Kim Ki-duk; the pro­lif­ic Hong Sang­soo, with his Woody Allen-meets-Éric Rohmer sen­si­bil­i­ty.

But do you know their son­saeng­n­imthe gen­er­a­tions of Kore­an film­mak­ers who went before them? Now you can, no mat­ter where in the world you are, on the Kore­an Film Archive’s Youtube chan­nel. There, at no charge, you can expe­ri­ence decades of Kore­an cin­e­ma and hun­dreds of works of Kore­an cin­e­mat­ic art, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to those of mid-20th-cen­tu­ry mas­ters like Kim Ki-young, Im Kwon-taek, and my per­son­al favorite Kim Soo-yong, direc­tor of haunt­ing, even brazen pic­tures of the 1960s and 70s like Mist and Night Jour­ney.

I actu­al­ly met the then-octo­ge­nar­i­an Kim Soo-yong a few years ago, when he called me over to his table out of curios­i­ty about what a for­eign­er was doing at a screen­ing of Mist. It hap­pened at the Kore­an Film Archive’s cin­e­math­eque (known as Cin­e­math­eque KOFA) here in Seoul, where I’ve lived for the past few years. Dur­ing that time I’ve also been writ­ing a Korea Blog for the Los Ange­les Review of Books, which occa­sion­al­ly fea­tures essays on the clas­sic Kore­an films made avail­able online by the Kore­an Film Archive. I began the series with Night Jour­ney, and more recent­ly have writ­ten up pic­tures like the 1960s neo­re­al­ist cry of agony Aim­less Bul­let, the 1970s col­lege-under-dic­ta­tor­ship com­e­dy The March of Fools, the 1980s West­ern­iza­tion com­e­dy Chil-su and Man-su, the 1990s food-sex-hor­ror satir­i­cal mix­ture 301, 302, and oth­ers.

If you need more sug­ges­tions as to where to start with the KOFA’s more than 400 free films online, pay a vis­it to the Kore­an Movie Data­base (KMDb), where KOFA reg­u­lar­ly post selec­tions from their cat­a­log. This mon­th’s picks are “spy thriller films from the 1950s to 1970s infused with the anti-com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy dur­ing the time.” Pre­vi­ous months have round­ed up “melo­dra­mas that are filled with women’s desire and crav­ing for love,” films about “indi­vid­ual or fam­i­ly tragedies lead­ing to his­tor­i­cal tragedies,” and “heart-warm­ing clas­si­cal movies all the fam­i­ly mem­bers can enjoy togeth­er.” You can watch all these films either on the KMDb (which requires free reg­is­tra­tion) or on KOFA’s ever-grow­ing Youtube chan­nel. Either way, as we say here in Korea, 재미있게 보세요.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Secret of the “Per­fect Mon­tage” at the Heart of Par­a­site, the Kore­an Film Now Sweep­ing World Cin­e­ma

Mar­tin Scors­ese Intro­duces Film­mak­er Hong Sang­soo, “The Woody Allen of Korea”

The Five Best North Kore­an Movies: Watch Them Free Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Bob Marley’s Redemption Song Finally Gets an Official Video: Watch the Animated Video Made Up of 2747 Drawings

Who­ev­er Bob Mar­ley was singing for, it could sound like he’s singing for all of us. Of course, this is received opin­ion, on the oth­er side of almost 50 years of Mar­ley wor­ship since the Wail­ers crossed over to a rock audi­ence with Catch a Fire and Clapton’s cov­er of “I Shot the Sher­iff.” Call­ing Mar­ley an icon is per­haps iron­i­cal­ly accu­rate in ways he would nev­er con­done. In death he has become a brand.

Though he wrote some beau­ti­ful love songs, Mar­ley also didn’t water down his mes­sage to Rasta­far­i­an true believ­ers, nor tem­per his pan-African­ism for scores of new white fans when fame struck. Like the waves of reg­gae bands that broke into the inter­na­tion­al scene in the 70s, the cul­tur­al par­tic­u­lar­i­ties of Marley’s reli­gion and pol­i­tics didn’t seem much hin­drance to his wide appeal.

Proof is in the lis­ten­ing, and no song in the Mar­ley oeu­vre seems more point­ed­ly direct­ed to the his­toric black experience—even quot­ing Mar­cus Garvey—while also appeal­ing to uni­ver­sal sen­ti­ments, than “Redemp­tion Song.” (To very dif­fer­ent emo­tion­al effect, U2’s “Sun­day Bloody Sun­day” comes to mind as accom­plish­ing a sim­i­lar feat.)

The song telegraphs a kind of wise but ten­der strength, announces its inten­tions with con­fi­dent can­dor, and invites its lis­ten­ers, all of them, to join in. The ref­er­ences may not be part of your expe­ri­ence, but if this can be redeemed, Mar­ley sug­gests, maybe every­thing can.

In its essen­tials, “Redemp­tion Song” is clas­sic Marley—tough-minded but gen­tle, hope­ful but real, and pure melod­ic genius. But musi­cal­ly, it’s a sig­nif­i­cant depar­ture, and per­haps a know­ing farewell to the world, as the last song to appear on the Wail­ers’ twelfth and final album, 1980’s Upris­ing,

“While there’s no indi­ca­tion that Mar­ley knew for sure that the song would be his last record­ed doc­u­ment,” writes Jim Beviglia at Amer­i­can Song­writer, “the con­tem­pla­tive mood of Upris­ing and the fact that he had been bat­tling the can­cer for years seems to sug­gest that he knew the end was near.”

The song’s “empa­thet­ic strains and social con­cerns, along with its camp­fire sing-along qual­i­ty,” has made it a favorite to cov­er almost since its release. Now, in its 40th year anniver­sary, it’s final­ly got a prop­er video, thanks to French artists Octave Marsal and Theo De Guelt­zl. The “breath­tak­ing ani­ma­tion,” notes Twist­ed Sifter, fea­tures “2,747 orig­i­nal draw­ings” and “uses pow­er­ful sym­bols to ampli­fy the mag­ni­tude of the song’s time­less lyrics and impor­tance in today’s world.”

Its black and white imagery direct­ly ref­er­ences the Rasta­far­i­an themes and Mid­dle Pas­sage expe­ri­ence in Marley’s lyrics, but pulls back now and then to show his sta­di­um-sized crowds, and the whole Earth, as if to say, “this is a glob­al sto­ry.” The video is the first in a year-long cel­e­bra­tion of Marley’s 75th birth­day, which would have been Feb­ru­ary 6th, 2020. Learn more about upcom­ing events here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John­ny Cash & Joe Strum­mer Sing Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song” (2002)

Bob Mar­ley, The Leg­end, Live in San­ta Bar­bara: Watch the Com­plete 1979 Con­cert

Watch a Young Bob Mar­ley and The Wail­ers Per­form Live in Eng­land (1973): For His 70th Birth­day Today

Video: Bob Mar­ley Plays a Big Soc­cer Match in Brazil, 1980

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Bertrand Russell’s Prison Letters Are Now Digitized & Put Online (1918 — 1961)

Boethius, Hen­ry David Thore­au, Anto­nio Gram­sci, Mar­tin Luther King, Jr…. It’s pos­si­ble, if one tried, to draw oth­er com­par­isons between these dis­parate fig­ures, but read­ers famil­iar with the work of all four will imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize their most obvi­ous lit­er­ary com­mon­al­i­ty: all wrote some of their most impas­sioned and per­sua­sive work while unjust­ly con­fined to a cell.

In the case of Bertrand Rus­sell, how­ev­er, per­haps one of the most famous fig­ures in 20th cen­tu­ry phi­los­o­phy and intel­lec­tu­al life more gen­er­al­ly, peri­ods of incar­cer­a­tion in Brix­ton prison in 1918 and, forty-three years lat­er, in 1961, play a min­i­mal role in the larg­er dra­ma of his writ­ing life, despite the fact that he did a good deal of writ­ing, includ­ing some sig­nif­i­cant philo­soph­i­cal work, behind bars.

Even schol­ars well-read in Russell’s work may have lit­tle knowl­edge of his prison writ­ing, and for good rea­son: most of it has been inac­ces­si­ble. “Now, for the first time,” writes Eri­ca Balch at McMas­ter University’s Brighter World blog, “Russell’s prison letters—part of McMaster’s Bertrand Rus­sell Archives—are being made avail­able online through a new dig­i­ti­za­tion project devel­oped by the Bertrand Rus­sell Research Cen­tre. Com­plete with detailed anno­ta­tions and ful­ly search­able text, the project is pro­vid­ing schol­ars from around the world with access to these rarely seen mate­ri­als.”

The con­tents of the let­ters reveal oth­er rea­sons that Russell’s prison writ­ing isn’t bet­ter known. He did plen­ty of impas­sioned and per­sua­sive writ­ing for the pub­lic out­side of a prison cell—publishing fiery books, essays, and lec­tures against war and pro­pa­gan­da and in defense of free thought through­out his life. Behind bars, how­ev­er, Russell’s writ­ing turned almost sole­ly pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al, in let­ters addressed pri­mar­i­ly to “his then lover Lady Con­stance Malle­son (known as ‘Colette’) and his for­mer lover, aris­to­crat and socialite Lady Otto­line Mor­rell.”

The 105 let­ters “reveal the pri­vate thoughts of one of the 20th century’s most pub­lic fig­ures and pro­vide an inter­est­ing win­dow on Russell’s inner life,” says Andrew Bone, Senior Research Asso­ciate at McMaster’s Bertrand Rus­sell Research Cen­tre.  Most of the let­ters “were writ­ten in secret,” Balch notes, “and smug­gled out of Brix­ton by Russell’s friends, con­cealed between the uncut pages of books.” Rus­sell was only allowed one let­ter per week; offi­cial­ly sanc­tioned cor­re­spon­dence is writ­ten on prison sta­tion­ary and bears the Brix­ton governor’s ini­tials.

A life­long paci­fist, Rus­sell was first jailed for six months in 1918 for a speech oppos­ing U.S. entry into World War I. “I found prison in many ways quite agree­able,” he lat­er wrote in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy. “I had no engage­ments, no dif­fi­cult deci­sions to make, no fear of callers, no inter­rup­tions to my work. I read enor­mous­ly; I wrote a book, ‘Intro­duc­tion to Math­e­mat­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy’… and began the work for ‘Analy­sis of Mind,’” a project that nev­er reached fruition. In 1961, at age 89, he was jailed for sev­en days for par­tic­i­pat­ing in a Lon­don anti-nuclear demon­stra­tion.

Dur­ing his first stay as a pris­on­er of Brixton’s “first divi­sion,” Rus­sell was “allowed to fur­nish his cell, wear civil­ian clothes, pur­chase catered food, and most impor­tant­ly, be exempt­ed from prison work while he pur­sued his pro­fes­sion as an author,” as the Bertrand Rus­sell Research Cen­tre points out. It’s lit­tle won­der he looked for­ward to the expe­ri­ence as a “hol­i­day from respon­si­bil­i­ty,” he wrote in a let­ter to his broth­er, Frank, four days after he began his sen­tence.

Rus­sell may not have suffered—or acquired a height­ened sense of polit­i­cal urgency—while behind bars (at one point he was heard laugh­ing out loud and had to be remind­ed by the war­den that “prison is a place of pun­ish­ment”). But his prison let­ters offer sig­nif­i­cant insight into not only the deeply emo­tion­al rela­tion­ships he had with Malle­son and Mor­rell, but also his rela­tion­ship with oth­er mem­bers of the famous Blooms­bury group and “lit­er­ary celebri­ties such as D.H. Lawrence, and T.S. Eliot,” writes Balch, “many of whom are ref­er­enced in the let­ters.”

The 104 let­ters from 1918, includ­ing Russell’s cor­re­spon­dence with his broth­er, his pub­lish­er, The Nation mag­a­zine and oth­ers, are all avail­able in orig­i­nal scans with tran­scrip­tions and anno­ta­tions at the McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty Bertrand Rus­sell Research Cen­tre site. The final let­ter, num­ber 105, the sole piece of cor­re­spon­dence from Russell’s week­long stay in Brix­ton in 1961, is addressed to his wife Edith.

My Dar­ling,

The lawyer’s nice young man brought me cheer­ing news of you and told me I could write to you, which I had not known. Every one here treats me kind­ly and the only thing I mind is being away from you. At all odd min­utes I have the illu­sion that you are there, and for­get that if I sneeze it won’t dis­turb you. I am enjoy­ing Madame de Staël immense­ly, hav­ing at last got round to read­ing her. At odd moments I argue the­ol­o­gy with the chap­lain and med­i­cine with the Doc­tor, and so the time pass­es eas­i­ly. But sep­a­ra­tion from you is quite hor­rid, Dear­est Love, it will be heav­en­ly when we are togeth­er again. Take care of your­self, Beloved.

B.

As in most of the ear­li­er let­ters, Rus­sell avoids pol­i­tics and keeps things per­son­al. But as in near­ly all of his writ­ing, the prose is live­ly, evoca­tive, and poignant, reveal­ing much about the per­son­al­i­ty behind it. While these let­ters may nev­er achieve the sta­tus of great lit­er­a­ture, by virtue of their pri­vate nature and their minor role in Russell’s major canon, that does not mean they aren’t a joy to read, for stu­dents of Bertrand Rus­sell and any­one else who appre­ci­ates the work­ings of a bril­liant philo­soph­i­cal and eth­i­cal mind. Enter the Brix­ton Let­ter archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Bertrand Russell’s Advice For How (Not) to Grow Old: “Make Your Inter­ests Grad­u­al­ly Wider and More Imper­son­al”

Bertrand Rus­sell Author­i­ty and the Indi­vid­ual (1948) 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Scientist Creates a Working Rotary Cellphone

In pop­u­lar his­to­ries of the mobile phone, and of the smart­phone in par­tic­u­lar, you will rarely see men­tion of IBM’s 1992 Simon, a smart­phone invent­ed before the word “smart­phone.” “You could… use the Simon to send and receive emails, fax­es, and pages,” writes Busi­ness Insid­er. “There were also a suite of built-in fea­tures includ­ing a notes col­lec­tion you could write in [with a sty­lus], an address book that looked like a file fold­er, cal­en­dar, world clock, and a way to sched­ule appoint­ments.”

Nifty, eh? But the Simon was born too soon, it seems, and its unsexy design—like a cord­less hand­set with a long, rec­tan­gu­lar screen where the num­ber pad would be—proved less than entic­ing. “IBM did man­age to sell approx­i­mate­ly 50,000 units,” a piti­ful num­ber next to the iPhone’s first year sales of 6.1 mil­lion. The Simon was an evo­lu­tion­ary dead end, while the iPhone and its imi­ta­tors changed the def­i­n­i­tion of the word “phone.”

No longer is it nec­es­sary even to spec­i­fy that one’s tele­phone is of the “smart” vari­ety. We can spend all day on our devices with­out ever mak­ing or answer­ing a call. Is this devel­op­ment a good thing? No mat­ter how we ask or answer the ques­tion, it may do lit­tle to change the course of tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment or our depen­dence on the touch­screen com­put­ers in our pock­ets.

That is, unless we have the abil­i­ty to redesign our mobile phone our­selves, as Jus­tine Haupt—a sci­en­tist in the Instru­men­ta­tion Divi­sion at the Brookhaven Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry—has done. You’ll find no men­tion of any­thing like her rotary cell­phone in any his­to­ry of mobile telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions. No one would have seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered build­ing such a thing, except as an anachro­nis­tic nov­el­ty.

But Haupt’s rotary cell­phone is not a visu­al gag or piece of con­cep­tu­al art. It’s a work­ing device she built, osten­si­bly, for seri­ous rea­sons. “In a finicky, annoy­ing, touch­screen world of hyper­con­nect­ed peo­ple using phones they have no con­trol over or under­stand­ing of,” she writes, “I want­ed some­thing that would be entire­ly mine, per­son­al, and absolute­ly tac­tile, while also giv­ing me an excuse for not tex­ting.”

Haup­t’s rea­son­ing calls to mind J.G. Bal­lard’s com­ments on the car as “the last machine whose basic tech­nol­o­gy and func­tion we can all under­stand.” She lays out the rotary cellphone’s impres­sive fea­tures in the bul­let­ed list below:

  • Real, remov­able anten­na with an SMA con­nec­tor. Recep­tions is excel­lent, and if I real­ly want to I could always attach a direc­tion­al anten­na.
  • When I want a phone I don’t have to nav­i­gate through menus to get to the phone “appli­ca­tion.” That’s bull­shit.
  • If I want to call my hus­band, I can do so by press­ing a sin­gle ded­i­cat­ed phys­i­cal key which is ded­i­cat­ed to him. No menus. The point isn’t to use the rotary dial every sin­gle time I want to make a call, which would get tire­some for dai­ly use. The peo­ple I call most often are stored, and if I have to dial a new num­ber or do some­thing like set the vol­ume, then I can use the fun and sat­is­fy­ing-to-use rotary dial.
  • Near­ly instan­ta­neous, high res­o­lu­tion dis­play of sig­nal strength and bat­tery lev­el. No sig­nal meter­ing lag, and my LED bar­graph gives 10 incre­ments of res­o­lu­tion instead of just 4.
  • The ePa­per dis­play is bista­t­ic, mean­ing it does­n’t take any ener­gy to dis­play a fixed mes­sage.
  • When I want to change some­thing about the phone’s behav­ior, I just do it.
  • The pow­er switch is an actu­al slide switch. No hold­ing down a stu­pid but­ton to make it turn off and not being sure it real­ly is turn­ing off or what.

I wouldn’t hold my breath for a pro­duc­tion run, but “it’s not just a show-and-tell piece,” Haupt insists. “It fits in a pock­et; it’s rea­son­ably com­pact; call­ing the peo­ple I most often call if faster than with my old phone, and the bat­tery lasts almost 24 hours.” For the rest of us, it’s a con­ver­sa­tion starter: in less obvi­ous­ly quirky, retro ways, how could we reimag­ine mobile phones to make them less “smart” (i.e. less dis­tract­ing and inva­sive) and more per­son­al and cus­tomiz­able, while also enhanc­ing their core func­tion­al­i­ty as devices that keep us con­nect­ed to impor­tant peo­ple in our lives?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom

Film­mak­er Wim Wen­ders Explains How Mobile Phones Have Killed Pho­tog­ra­phy

The World’s First Mobile Phone Shown in 1922 Vin­tage Film

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Watch the Grateful Dead Slip Past Security & Play a Gig at Columbia University’s Anti-Vietnam Protest (1968)

In 1968, the Viet­nam War was not a cat­a­lyst for protests but a sort of nexus for all oth­er injustices–the part con­tained ele­ments of the whole: racism, class war, cap­i­tal­ist prof­i­teer­ing, impe­ri­al­ism. It was symp­tom and cause, much like cli­mate change feels today. In April of that year, one inflec­tion point hap­pened on New York’s Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus.

The Uni­ver­si­ty want­ed to build a mil­i­tary gym, not on cam­pus, but in Morn­ing­side Park, a pub­lic space that bor­dered on Harlem. The stu­dent body imme­di­ate­ly protest­ed the con­struc­tion. For one thing, it was planned to fea­ture one entrance for stu­dents and fac­ul­ty, and anoth­er entrance in the base­ment for Harlem’s most­ly African-Amer­i­can res­i­dents. Pro­tes­tors saw this, and the dis­place­ment of black res­i­dents from their neigh­bor­hood park, as racist. The Stu­dent Afro-Amer­i­can Soci­ety (SAS) of the Uni­ver­si­ty nick­named it “Gym Crow.” At the same time, anoth­er activist group, the Stu­dents for a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Soci­ety, dis­cov­ered links between the Uni­ver­si­ty and the Depart­ment of Defense. The two events were sep­a­rate, but stood for a big­ger prob­lem.

Stu­dents staged protests, sit-ins, and gen­er­al­ly dis­rupt­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty, vow­ing to con­tin­ue until their demands were met–specifically divest­ment in the war machine and halt­ing con­struc­tion of the gym. Things got so bad, with some 148 injuries and 372 reports of police bru­tal­i­ty from New York’s Finest, that the Uni­ver­si­ty went into lock­down.

That was April. On May 3, enter the Grate­ful Dead. Still a young band, the Dead were com­par­a­tive­ly unknown on the East Coast, but set out to sup­port the stu­dents with a free con­cert. What you see above is one of the few reels of footage of the ille­gal gig, with music from ear­li­er gigs used over the silent footage. No sound record­ing exists of this event, but the uploader seems to think “The Eleven” was part of the set.

Mick­ey Hart, who had only recent­ly joined the band as a sec­ond drum­mer, recalled how they made their way onto the cam­pus:

[Grate­ful Dead man­ag­er] Rock [Scul­ly] reached out to the strike orga­niz­ers and offered to do a free show for the stu­dents. Always up for an adven­ture, we of course, went right along. Since the police and guards were clos­ing off access to the major­i­ty of the cam­pus – we were “smug­gled” on cam­pus to Low Library Plaza in the back of a bread deliv­ery truck. Equip­ment and all. We were already jam­ming away before the secu­ri­ty and police could to stop us.

This oth­er footage shows more context–shots of Morn­ing­side Park, the protests, the police response, the sit-ins, a chalk notice­board fea­tur­ing mes­sages from the out­side to the students–all tru­ly a time cap­sule. One YouTube com­menter says he was there:

They set up on the porch of Fer­ris Booth Hall, which was the stu­dent union, in effect. A small crowd gath­ered; the Dead were not wide­ly known yet in New York. I had a nice chat with Gar­cia [while] they were set­ting up. They start­ed to play, but some­one from the admin­is­tra­tion cut the pow­er, which was not received favor­ably by the stu­dents. After some brief nego­ti­at­ing — some­one point­ed out that legal­ly Fer­ris Booth Hall was owned by the stu­dents and does the uni­ver­si­ty real­ly need anoth­er riot — the pow­er was turned back on and the show con­tin­ued.

In the end, the stu­dent protests con­tin­ued right through graduation–students held their own cer­e­mo­ny off campus–but they worked. The gym was not built and the Uni­ver­si­ty broke off its work with the DoD.

Flash for­ward to 2019 and it’s all com­ing around again: stu­dents and fac­ul­ty demand­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty divest from all fos­sil fuels, in sup­port of the Extinc­tion Rebel­lion hunger strik­ers. As of this writ­ing (Feb­ru­ary 2020), the Uni­ver­si­ty is still mulling it over. (No free con­certs have been announced either…yet.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Long, Strange Trip and Stream a 346-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Live Grate­ful Dead Per­for­mances (1966–1995)

The Longest of the Grate­ful Dead’s Epic Long Jams: “Dark Star” (1972), “The Oth­er One” (1972) and “Play­ing in The Band” (1974)

How the Grate­ful Dead’s “Wall of Sound”–a Mon­ster, 600-Speak­er Sound System–Changed Rock Con­certs & Live Music For­ev­er

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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