How to Open a Door: A Finnish Instructional Video from 1979

Before you get start­ed, turn on the sub­ti­tles by click­ing the “CC” but­ton on the low­er right side of the video.

Did you know that one out of every three peo­ple opens a door incor­rect­ly. You–yes, you–might be doing it all wrong. But this Finnish instruc­tion­al video from 1979 has you cov­ered. Watch and learn. This clip will–as they say–open so many doors to you…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Why Fin­land & Den­mark Are Hap­pi­er Than the Unit­ed States

The Bialet­ti Moka Express: The His­to­ry of Italy’s Icon­ic Cof­fee Mak­er, and How to Use It the Right Way

How to Open a Wine Bot­tle with Your Shoe

The Great Chicago Book Sale: Get Up to 90% Off Books from UChicago Press

The Great Chicago Book Sale

FYI: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press is run­ning a big sale. They write:

Now through June 15th, 2022 you can get thought-pro­vok­ing, inde­pen­dent­ly pub­lished books for up to 90% off with code AD1958.

Our annu­al sale is one of the biggest uni­ver­si­ty press book sales in the coun­try. Every year we go through our over­stock inven­to­ry and offer deep dis­counts on hun­dreds of books in sub­jects like his­to­ry, fic­tion, art, sci­ence, trav­el, cook­ing, and more. Shop below or down­load a copy of our PDF cat­a­log to get these amaz­ing deals on schol­ar­ly and trade titles from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press and our dis­trib­uted pub­lish­ers. Hur­ry! Sup­plies are lim­it­ed on some books.

Enter the sale here and remem­ber to use code AD1958

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Craft of Writ­ing Effec­tive­ly: Essen­tial Lessons from the Long­time Direc­tor of UChicago’s Writ­ing Pro­gram

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

Hear Benedict Cumberbatch Reading Letters by Kurt Vonnegut, Alan Turing, Sol LeWitt, and Others

Many know Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch as neu­ro­sur­geon-turned-Mas­ter of the Mys­tic Arts Doc­tor Strange. Orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed in the 1960s by Mar­vel Comics artist and writer Steve Ditko, the char­ac­ter has gained a new fan fol­low­ing through the films of the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse. In 2016’s Doc­tor Strange, the upcom­ing Doc­tor Strange in the Mul­ti­verse of Mad­ness, and sev­er­al oth­er MCU pic­tures besides, he’s been played by Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch. Open Cul­ture read­ers may know Cum­ber­batch bet­ter as the 21st-cen­tu­ry detec­tive pro­tag­o­nist of the BBC series Sher­lock — or, even more like­ly, as a read­er-out-loud of his­tor­i­cal and lit­er­ary let­ters.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Cum­ber­batch’s onstage ren­di­tions of every­thing from Albert Camus’ thank-you note to his ele­men­tary school teacher to Kurt Von­negut’s advice to the peo­ple of the year 2088 to Franz Kafka’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis. Now we’ve round­ed up more let­ter-read­ings in the ten-video playlist above.

Begin­ning with Sol LeWit­t’s let­ter of advice to Eva Hesse, it con­tin­ues on to Cum­ber­batch’s read­ings of oth­er such works as “the best cov­er let­ter ever writ­ten,” more than one mis­sive by the pio­neer­ing and per­se­cut­ed com­put­er sci­en­tist Alan Tur­ing, a “let­ter about crabs (not the kind you eat)” by Patrick Leigh Fer­mor, and a Richard Nixon’s William Safire-com­posed speech to be read in the event that Apol­lo 11 did­n’t return to Earth.

The mate­r­i­al in this cor­re­spon­dence, all of which Cum­ber­batch reads aloud for Let­ters of Note’s Let­ters Live project, varies con­sid­er­able in both tone and con­tent. Lit­tle of it resem­bles the com­ic-book or detec­tive-nov­el mate­r­i­al with which he has won main­stream fame. But like any good actor, Cum­ber­batch knows how to tai­lor his per­for­ma­tive per­sona to each new con­text with­out los­ing the innate sen­si­bil­i­ty that sets him apart. At the same time, he clear­ly under­stands how to inter­pret not just dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters, real­is­tic as well as fan­tas­ti­cal, but also the per­son­al­i­ties of real human beings who actu­al­ly lived. What­ev­er oth­er plea­sures it offers, hear­ing Cum­ber­batch read let­ters under­scores the fact that we could all do much worse than to be played by him in the movie of our life.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads “the Best Cov­er Let­ter Ever Writ­ten”

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Let­ter of Advice to Peo­ple Liv­ing in the Year 2088

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads a Let­ter Alan Tur­ing Wrote in “Dis­tress” Before His Con­vic­tion For “Gross Inde­cen­cy”

“Stop It and Just DO”: Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Advice on Over­com­ing Cre­ative Blocks, Writ­ten by Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse (1965)

Hear Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Read John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightin­gale” and Oth­er Great Works by Shake­speare, Dante & Coleridge

Hear Moby-Dick Read in Its Entire­ty by Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, Til­da Swin­ton, John Waters, Stephen Fry & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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.

How a Fake Cartoon Band Made “Sugar Sugar” the Biggest Selling Hit Single of 1969

Rock crit­ic Lester Bangs described bub­blegum pop as “the basic sound of rock ’n’ roll – minus the rage, fear, vio­lence and anomie.” The short-lived genre had its roots in the Please Please Me era of the Bea­t­les’ minus the sex and the sar­casm. But from the Bea­t­les we can trace a pret­ty sol­id path to the Archies. Not that we deserved this band as an inevitabil­i­ty, but the car­toon con­coc­tion is one of a thou­sand vari­ants from that infec­tious strain of post-war pop.

The Archie’s last­ing lega­cy is one sin­gle: the bonafide ear­worm, “Sug­ar Sug­ar.” Writ­ten by Jeff Bar­ry and Andy Kim, it was a real num­ber one sin­gle (it knocked the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Woman” off the throne in 1969) sung by a com­plete­ly fake band, name­ly the cast of Archie Comics, the five or six per­pet­u­al teenagers that have been around since 1941.

How we got there, we must go back to the Bea­t­les. Once the Fab Four had start­ed to quick­ly out­grow their inno­cent image, King Fea­tures turned the four into a Sat­ur­day Morn­ing car­toon show in 1965 so their Richard Lester-inspired antics could con­tin­ue apace. This then led pro­duc­ers Bob Rafel­son and Bert Schnei­der to ask them­selves: why use the Bea­t­les when Amer­i­ca could man­u­fac­ture its own? The Mon­kees were born in 1966: three Amer­i­cans and one Brit sor­ta-mop­tops who starred in a sit­com based around their own hilar­i­ous, failed attempts to be as good as John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Music Super­vi­sor Don Kir­sh­n­er came from a career at the Brill Build­ing, launch­ing the careers of Neil Dia­mond, Car­ole King, and Tony Orlan­do, and on the Mon­kees, he was in charge of seek­ing out song­writ­ers for the group, along with stu­dio musi­cians, call­ing in the band to sing only when nec­es­sary. This led to “Last Train to Clarksville” (Boyce and Hart), “Day­dream Believ­er” (John Stew­art) and “I’m a Believ­er” (Dia­mond), all sol­id hits. But that dis­mis­sive­ness of the actors’ own tal­ents led to ten­sions in the band, espe­cial­ly Michael Nesmith, who had his own coun­try-lean­ing inter­ests. Upon hear­ing “Sug­ar, Sug­ar” as a pos­si­ble Mon­kees song, Nesmith absolute­ly refused. “It’s a piece of junk,” he told Kir­sh­n­er. “I’m not doing it.”

Kir­sh­n­er returned home know­ing that the song could be a hit. His son Ricky was read­ing Archie com­ic books, and the idea formed-—why not turn the com­ic into a band, and have them per­form the sin­gle. (The rights for the Archie char­ac­ters at that time were very afford­able.)

So take a reject­ed Mon­kees song, add a bit of Bea­t­les-style, cheapo ani­ma­tion, and a guar­an­teed pro­mo­tion machine (tele­vi­sion) and “Sug­ar, Sug­ar” turned into a hit. Ini­tial­ly reluc­tant to play a fake band, pop radio start­ed play­ing the sin­gle two months after its ini­tial release, from May to July, and it would go on to spend 22 weeks in the chart, four of them at Num­ber One. It was Billboard’s Num­ber One song of the year for 1969, a year bet­ter known for the crum­bling of the Sum­mer of Love. Rape, mur­der, it was just a shot away. But so was that “can­dy girl” and that “hon­ey, hon­ey” and why would­n’t peo­ple choose the lat­ter?

The Archies released five albums in total, only the first fea­tur­ing the com­ic char­ac­ters on the cov­er. But they all con­tin­ued in the bub­ble gum vein, writ­ten by a small sta­ble of song­writ­ers such as Ritchie Adams, Jeff Bar­ry, Robert Levine, Gene Allen, and oth­ers. Rob Dante sang the lead vocals; Toni Wine sang both Bet­ty and Veron­i­ca (the lat­ter had the high­er reg­is­ter).

Unlike the Mon­kees, who embraced the pop psy­che­delia in the cul­ture and put out a grand fol­ly of a movie called Head (with Frank Zap­pa! and Ringo Starr!), the Archies just kept bang­ing out bub­blegum until it turned into sun­shine (the name of their third album) and the fad had passed. Fifty years lat­er, “Sug­ar, Sug­ar,” remains a good pop song. Wil­son Pick­ett even cov­ered it, inject­ing some much need­ed soul into the pro­ceed­ings.

The idea of a fake, car­toon pop group has nev­er gone away. In fact, Damon Albarn’s Goril­laz project (which has been around for some 20 years now!) showed the ben­e­fits that can be had when car­toons take over the image and let the musi­cians work in the back­ground. Can we give the Archies some of the cred­it? Chew on that, why don’t ya.

via Rolling Stone

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Jimi Hen­drix Opens for The Mon­kees on a 1967 Tour; Then After 8 Shows, Flips Off the Crowd and Quits

The Bea­t­les Sat­ur­day Morn­ing Car­toon Show (1965–1969)

Sal­vador Dalí & Walt Disney’s Short Ani­mat­ed Film, Des­ti­no, Set to the Music of Pink Floyd

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

A New Album of Goth-Folk Songs Inspired by the Life of Marie Curie

After sev­er­al years of writ­ing and per­form­ing songs influ­enced by such sources as authors Edward Gorey and Ray­mond Chan­dler, film­mak­er Tim Bur­ton, and mur­der bal­lads in the Amer­i­can folk tra­di­tion, Ellia Bisker and Jef­frey Mor­ris, known col­lec­tive­ly as Charm­ing Dis­as­ter, began cast­ing around for a sin­gle, exist­ing nar­ra­tive that could sus­tain an album’s worth of orig­i­nal tunes.

An encounter with Lau­ren Red­nis­s’s graph­ic nov­el Radioac­tive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fall­out spurred them to look more deeply at the Nobel Prize-win­ning sci­en­tist and her pio­neer­ing dis­cov­er­ies.

The result is Our Lady of Radi­um, a nine song explo­ration of Curie’s life and work.

The crowd­fund­ed album, record­ed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, is so exhaus­tive­ly researched that the accom­pa­ny­ing illus­trat­ed book­let includes a bib­li­og­ra­phy with titles rang­ing from David I. Harvie’s tech­ni­cal­ly dense Dead­ly Sun­shine: The His­to­ry and Fatal Lega­cy of Radi­um to Deb­o­rah Blum’s The Poi­son­er’s Hand­book, described by The New York Observ­er as “a vicious, page-turn­ing sto­ry that reads more like Ray­mond Chan­dler than Madame Curie.”

A chap­ter in the The Poi­son­er’s Hand­book intro­duced Bisker and Mor­ris to the Radi­um Girls, young work­ers whose pro­longed expo­sure to radi­um-based paint in ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry clock fac­to­ries had hor­rif­ic con­se­quences.

In La Porte v. Unit­ed States Radi­um Cor­po­ra­tion (1935) pros­e­cu­tors detailed the con­di­tions under which the lumi­nous dials of inex­pen­sive watch faces were pro­duced:

Each girl pro­cured a tray con­tain­ing twen­ty-four watch dials and the mate­r­i­al to be used to paint the numer­als upon them so that they would appear lumi­nous. The mate­r­i­al was a pow­der, of about the con­sis­ten­cy of cos­met­ic pow­der, and con­sist­ed of phos­pho­res­cent zinc sul­phide mixed with radi­um sulphate…The pow­der was poured from the vial into a small porce­lain cru­cible, about the size of a thim­ble. A quan­ti­ty of gum ara­bic, as an adhe­sive, and a thin­ner of water were then added, and this was stirred with a small glass rod until a paint­like sub­stance result­ed. In the course of a work­ing week each girl paint­ed the dials con­tained on twen­ty-two to forty-four such trays, depend­ing upon the speed with which she worked, and used a vial of pow­der for each tray. When the paint-like sub­stance was pro­duced a girl would employ it in paint­ing the fig­ures on a watch dial. There were four­teen numer­als, the fig­ure six being omit­ted. In the paint­ing each girl used a very fine brush of camel’s hair con­tain­ing about thir­ty hairs. In order to obtain the fine lines which the work required, a girl would place the bris­tles in her mouth, and by the action of her tongue and lips bring the bris­tles to a fine point. The brush was then dipped into the paint, the fig­ures paint­ed upon the dial until more paint was required or until the paint on the brush dried and hard­ened, when the brush was dipped into a small cru­cible of water. This water remained in the cru­cible with­out change for a day or per­haps two days. The brush would then be repoint­ed in the mouth and dipped into the paint or even repoint­ed in such man­ner after being dipped into the paint itself, in a con­tin­u­ous process.

The band found them­selves haunt­ed by the Radi­um Girls’ sto­ry:

Part­ly it’s that it seemed like a real­ly good job — it was clean work, it was less phys­i­cal­ly tax­ing and paid bet­ter than fac­to­ry or mill jobs, the work­ing envi­ron­ment was nice — and the work­ers were all young women. They were excit­ed about this sweet gig, and then it betrayed them, poi­son­ing them and cut­ting their lives short in a hor­ri­ble way. 

There were all these details we learned that we could­n’t stop think­ing about. Like the fact that radi­um gets tak­en up by bone, which then starts to dis­in­te­grate because radi­um isn’t as hard as cal­ci­um. The Radi­um Girls’ jaw bones were crum­bling away, because they (were instruct­ed) to use their lips to point the brush­es when paint­ing watch faces with radi­um-based paint. 

The radi­um they absorbed was irra­di­at­ing them from inside, from with­in their own bones. 

Radi­um decays into radon, and it was even­tu­al­ly dis­cov­ered that the radi­um girls were exhal­ing radon gas. They could expose a pho­to­graph­ic plate by breath­ing on it. Those images—the bones and the breath—stuck with us in par­tic­u­lar.

Fel­low musi­cian, Omer Gal, of the “the­atri­cal freak folk musi­cal menagerie” Cook­ie Tongue, height­ens the sense of dread in his chill­ing stop-motion ani­ma­tion for Our Lady of Radi­um’s first music video, above. There’s no ques­tion that a trag­ic fate awaits the crum­bling, uncom­pre­hend­ing lit­tle work­er.

Before their phys­i­cal symp­toms start­ed to man­i­fest, the Radi­um Girls believed what they had been told — that the radi­um-based paint they used on the time­pieces’ faces and hands posed no threat to their well being.

Com­pound­ing the prob­lem, the paint’s glow-in-the-dark prop­er­ties proved irre­sistible to high-spir­it­ed teens, as the niece of Mar­garet “Peg” Looney — 17 when she start­ed work at the Illi­nois Radi­um Dial Com­pa­ny (now a Super­fund Site) — recount­ed to NPR:

I can remem­ber my fam­i­ly talk­ing about my aunt bring­ing home the lit­tle vials (of radi­um paint.) They would go into their bed­room with the lights off and paint their fin­ger­nails, their eye­lids, their lips and then they’d laugh at each oth­er because they glowed in the dark.

Looney died at 24, hav­ing suf­fered from ane­mia, debil­i­tat­ing hip pain, and the loss of teeth and bits of her jaw. Although her fam­i­ly har­bored sus­pi­cions as to the cause of her bewil­der­ing decline, no attor­ney would take their case. They lat­er learned that the Illi­nois Radi­um Dial Com­pa­ny had arranged for med­ical tests to be per­formed on work­ers, with­out truth­ful­ly advis­ing them of the results.

Even­tu­al­ly, the mount­ing death toll made the con­nec­tion between work­ers’ health and the work­place impos­si­ble to ignore. Law­suits such as La Porte v. Unit­ed States Radi­um Cor­po­ra­tion led to improved indus­tri­al safe­ty reg­u­la­tions and oth­er labor reforms.

Too late, Charm­ing Dis­as­ter notes, for the Radi­um Girls them­selves:

(Our song) Radi­um Girls is ded­i­cat­ed to the young women who were unwit­ting­ly poi­soned by their work and who were ignored and maligned in seek­ing jus­tice. Their plight led to laws and safe­guards that even­tu­al­ly became the occu­pa­tion­al safe­ty pro­tec­tions we have today. Of course that is still a bat­tle that’s being fought, but it start­ed with them. We want­ed to pay trib­ute to these young women, hon­or their mem­o­ry, and give them a voice.  

Pre­order Charm­ing Disaster’s Our Lady of Radi­um here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Marie Curie’s Research Papers Are Still Radioac­tive 100+ Years Lat­er

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Life & Work of Marie Curie, the First Female Nobel Lau­re­ate

Marie Curie Became the First Woman to Win a Nobel Prize, the First Per­son to Win Twice, and the Only Per­son in His­to­ry to Win in Two Dif­fer­ent Sci­ences

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

How Karl Marx Influenced Abraham Lincoln and His Position on Slavery & Labor

If resis­tance to the Slave Pow­er was the reserved watch­word of your first elec­tion, the tri­umphant war cry of your re-elec­tion is Death to Slav­ery.

In 1864, Karl Marx and his Inter­na­tion­al Work­ing Men’s Asso­ci­a­tion (the “First Inter­na­tion­al”) sent an address to Abra­ham Lin­coln, con­grat­u­lat­ing “the Amer­i­can peo­ple upon your re-elec­tion by a large major­i­ty.” As his­to­ri­an Robin Black­burn writes, “The US ambas­sador in Lon­don con­veyed a friend­ly but brief response from the pres­i­dent. How­ev­er, the antecedents and impli­ca­tions of this lit­tle exchange are rarely con­sid­ered.” It was not the first time Marx and Lin­coln had encoun­tered each oth­er. They nev­er met per­son­al­ly, but their affini­ties led to what Black­burn calls an “unfin­ished rev­o­lu­tion” — not a com­mu­nist rev­o­lu­tion in the U.S.; but a poten­tial rev­o­lu­tion for democ­ra­cy.

Lin­coln and Marx became mutu­al admir­ers in the ear­ly 1860s due to the lat­ter’s work as a for­eign cor­re­spon­dent for The New York Dai­ly Tri­bune. From 1852 until the start of the Civ­il War, Marx, some­times with Engels, wrote “over five hun­dred arti­cles for the Tri­bune,” Black­burn notes. Fierce­ly anti-slav­ery, Marx com­pared South­ern planters to the Euro­pean aris­toc­ra­cy, “an oli­garchy of 300,000 slave­hold­ers.” Ear­ly in the war, he cham­pi­oned the Union cause, even before Lin­coln decid­ed on eman­ci­pa­tion as a course of action. Marx believed, writes Black­burn, that end­ing slav­ery “would not destroy cap­i­tal­ism, but it would cre­ate con­di­tions far more favor­able to orga­niz­ing and ele­vat­ing labor, whether white or black.”

“Marx was intense­ly inter­est­ed in the plight of Amer­i­can slaves,” Gillian Brock­ell writes at The Wash­ing­ton Post. “In Jan­u­ary 1860, he told Engels that the two biggest things hap­pen­ing in the world were ‘on the one hand the move­ment of the slaves in Amer­i­ca start­ed by the death of John Brown, and on the oth­er the move­ment of serfs in Rus­sia.’ ” Lin­coln was an “avid read­er” of the Tri­bune and Marx’s arti­cles. The paper’s man­ag­ing edi­tor, Charles A. Dana, an Amer­i­can social­ist flu­ent in Ger­man who met Marx in 1848, would go on to become “Lin­col­n’s ‘eyes and ears’ as a spe­cial com­mis­sion­er in the War Depart­ment” and lat­er the Depart­men­t’s Assis­tant Sec­re­tary.

Lin­coln was not, of course, a Com­mu­nist. And yet some of the ideas he absorbed from Marx’s Tri­bune writ­ings — many of which would lat­er be adapt­ed for the first vol­ume of Cap­i­tal – made their way into the Repub­li­can Par­ty of the 1850s and 60s. That par­ty, writes Brock­ell, was “anti-slav­ery, pro-work­er and some­times overt­ly social­ist,” cham­pi­oning, for exam­ple, the redis­tri­b­u­tion of land in the West. (Marx even con­sid­ered emi­grat­ing to Texas him­self at one time.) And at times, Lin­coln could sound like a Marx­ist, as in the clos­ing words of his first annu­al mes­sage (lat­er the State of the Union ) in 1861.

“Labor is pri­or to and inde­pen­dent of cap­i­tal,” the country’s 16th pres­i­dent con­clud­ed in the first speech since his inau­gu­ra­tion. “Cap­i­tal is only the fruit of labor, and could nev­er have exist­ed if labor had not first exist­ed. Labor is the supe­ri­or of cap­i­tal, and deserves much the high­er con­sid­er­a­tion.” That full, 7,000 word address appeared in news­pa­pers around the coun­try, includ­ing the Con­fed­er­ate South. The Chica­go Tri­bune sub­ti­tled its clos­ing argu­ments “Cap­i­tal vs. Labor.”

Lin­col­n’s own posi­tion on abo­li­tion evolved through­out his pres­i­den­cy, as did his views on the posi­tion of the for­mer­ly enslaved with­in the coun­try. For Marx, how­ev­er, the ques­tions of total abo­li­tion and full enfran­chise­ment were set­tled long before the coun­try entered the Civ­il War. The demo­c­ra­t­ic rev­o­lu­tion that might have begun under Lin­coln end­ed with his assas­si­na­tion. In the sum­mer after the pres­i­den­t’s death, Marx received a let­ter from his friend Engels about the new pres­i­dent, Andrew John­son: “His hatred of Negroes comes out more and more vio­lent­ly… If things go on like this, in six months all the old vil­lains of seces­sion will be sit­ting in Con­gress at Wash­ing­ton. With­out col­ored suf­frage, noth­ing what­ev­er can be done there.” Hear the address Marx draft­ed to Lin­coln for his 1865 re-elec­tion read aloud at the top of the post, and read it your­self here.

For more on this sub­ject, you can read Black­burn’s book, An Unfin­ished Rev­o­lu­tion: Karl Marx and Abra­ham Lin­coln.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Karl Marx

5 Free Online Cours­es on Marx’s Cap­i­tal from Prof. David Har­vey

The Poet­ry of Abra­ham Lin­coln

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

1,100 Delicate Drawings of Root Systems Reveals the Hidden World of Plants

We know that plants can inspire art. If you, per­son­al­ly, still require con­vinc­ing on that point, just have a look at Eliz­a­beth Twining’s Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants, the draw­ings of Ernst Hein­rich Haeck­el, Eliz­a­beth Black­well’s A Curi­ous Herbal, and Nan­cy Anne Kings­bury Woll­stonecraft’s Spec­i­mens of the Plants and Fruits of the Island of Cuba — not to men­tion the paint­ings of Geor­gia O’ Keeffe — all pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. But those works con­cern them­selves only with plant life as it exists above ground.

What goes on down below, under­neath the soil? That you can see for your­self — and with­out hav­ing to pull up one of our fine flow­er­ing (or non-flow­er­ing) friends to do so — at Wagenin­gen Uni­ver­si­ty’s online archive of root sys­tem draw­ings. “The out­come of 40 years of  root sys­tem exca­va­tions in Europe,” says that site, the col­lec­tion con­tains 1,180 dia­grams of species from Abies alba (best known today as a kind of Christ­mas tree) to Zygo­phyl­lum xan­thoxy­lon (a faint­ly scrub­by-look­ing native of the arid and semi-arid regions of con­ti­nents like Africa and Aus­tralia).

The site explains that “the draw­ings, their analy­sis and descrip­tion were done by Univ. Prof. Dr. Erwin Licht­eneg­ger (1928–2004) and Univ. Prof. Dr. Lore Kutschera (1917–2008), leader of Pflanzen­sozi­ol­o­gis­ches Insti­tut, Kla­gen­furt, (now in Bad Gois­ern, Aus­tria).”

Over the course of 40 years, writes The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Erin Blake­more, Licht­eneg­ger and Kustchera “col­lab­o­rat­ed on an enor­mous ‘root atlas’ that maps the under­ground tra­jec­to­ries of com­mon Euro­pean plants.” Cre­at­ed through “a labo­ri­ous sys­tem of dig­ging up and doc­u­ment­ing the intri­cate sys­tems,” these draw­ings are “also art in their own right, hon­or­ing the beau­ty of a part of plants most nev­er give that much thought.”

Even the least botan­i­cal­ly aware among us knows that plants have roots, but how many of us are aware of the scale and com­plex­i­ty those roots can attain? “Root sys­tems allow plants to gath­er the water and min­er­als they use to grow,” writes Blake­more. “As the root sys­tem grows, it cre­ates more and more path­ways that allow water to get into the deep sub­soil, and fos­ter­ing the growth of microbes that ben­e­fit oth­er life. Strong root sys­tems can pre­vent ero­sion, pro­tect­ing the land on which they grow. And the struc­tures allow the soil to cap­ture car­bon.” Thus root sys­tems, nev­er a par­tic­u­lar locus of cool­ness, have the dis­tinc­tion of doing their part to fight cli­mate change. And thanks to Licht­eneg­ger and Kustcher­a’s draw­ings, they under­score the capac­i­ty of art to reveal worlds hid­den to most of us. View all of the images here.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold an Inter­ac­tive Online Edi­tion of Eliz­a­beth Twining’s Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants (1868)

His­toric Man­u­script Filled with Beau­ti­ful Illus­tra­tions of Cuban Flow­ers & Plants Is Now Online (1826)

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra and Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

A Curi­ous Herbal: 500 Beau­ti­ful Illus­tra­tions of Med­i­c­i­nal Plants Drawn by Eliz­a­beth Black­well in 1737 (to Save Her Fam­i­ly from Finan­cial Ruin)

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

The Social Lives of Trees: Sci­ence Reveals How Trees Mys­te­ri­ous­ly Talk to Each Oth­er, Work Togeth­er & Form Nur­tur­ing Fam­i­lies

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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.

Watch the Destruction of Pompeii by Mount Vesuvius, Re-Created with Computer Animation (79 AD)

A good dis­as­ter sto­ry nev­er fails to fas­ci­nate — and, giv­en that it actu­al­ly hap­pened, the sto­ry of Pom­peii espe­cial­ly so. Buried and thus frozen in time by the erup­tion of Mount Vesu­vius in 79 AD, the ancient Roman town of 11,000 has pro­vid­ed an object of great his­tor­i­cal inter­est ever since its redis­cov­ery in 1599. Baths, hous­es, tools and oth­er pos­ses­sions (includ­ing plen­ty of wine bot­tles), fres­coes, graf­fi­ti, an amp­ithe­ater, an aque­duct, the “Vil­la of the Mys­ter­ies”: Pom­peii has it all, as far as the stuff of first-cen­tu­ry Roman life goes.

The ash-pre­served ruins of Pom­peii, more than any oth­er source, have pro­vid­ed his­to­ri­ans with a win­dow into just what life in that time and place was like. A Day in Pom­peii, an exhi­bi­tion held at the Mel­bourne Muse­um in 2009, gave its more than 330,000 vis­i­tors a chance to expe­ri­ence Pom­pei­i’s life even more vivid­ly. The exhi­bi­tion includ­ed a 3D the­ater instal­la­tion that fea­tured the ani­ma­tion above. Watch it, and you can see Pom­peii brought back to life with com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed imagery — and then, in snap­shots over the course of 48 hours, entombed by Vesu­vius again.

As inher­ent­ly com­pelling as we find the sto­ry of Pom­peii, mod­ern dra­ma has strug­gled to cap­ture the pow­er of the dis­as­ter that defines it. The late-1960s BBC show Up Pom­peii! offered a comedic ren­der­ing of life in the city before the explo­sion, but more seri­ous inter­pre­ta­tions, like the 2014 Hol­ly­wood movie Pom­peii, met with only luke­warm crit­i­cal recep­tion. Best, it seems, to stick to the words of Pliny the Younger, wit­ness to the destruc­tion and still its most evoca­tive describer:

You could hear the shrieks of women, the wail­ing of infants, and the shout­ing of men; some were call­ing their par­ents, oth­ers their chil­dren or their wives, try­ing to rec­og­nize them by their voic­es. Peo­ple bewailed their own fate or that of their rel­a­tives, and there were some who prayed for death in their ter­ror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imag­ined there were no gods left, and that the uni­verse was plunged into eter­nal dark­ness for ever­more.

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via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vis­it Pom­peii (also Stone­henge & Ver­sailles) with Google Street View

Pom­peii Rebuilt: A Tour of the Ancient City Before It Was Entombed by Mount Vesu­vius

How the Sur­vivors of Pom­peii Escaped Mount Vesu­vius’ Dead­ly Erup­tion: A TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion Tells the Sto­ry

See the Expan­sive Ruins of Pom­peii Like You’ve Nev­er Seen Them Before: Through the Eyes of a Drone

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.