Sylvia Plath’s Ten Back to School Commandments (1953)

in Life, Literature | September 22nd, 2023

plath commandments

Before her lit­er­ary fame, her stormy rela­tion­ship with Ted Hugh­es and her crip­pling bat­tles with depres­sion, Sylvia Plath was an enthu­si­as­tic stu­dent at Smith Col­lege. “The world is split­ting open at my feet like a ripe, juicy water­mel­on,” she wrote to her moth­er. “If only I can work, work, work to jus­ti­fy all of my oppor­tu­ni­ties.”

Dur­ing her junior year, she broke her leg on a ski­ing trip in upstate New York. The acci­dent land­ed her briefly in the hos­pi­tal and she wound up with a cast on her leg. Her mood dark­ened.

Psych­ing her­self out for her return to col­lege, she wrote in her diary a pair of lists.

The first list is a short series of rules about how to behave around her new beau, Myron Lotz. All three points are good advice for any­one who is utter­ly smit­ten, par­tic­u­lar­ly num­ber two – “I will not throw myself at him phys­i­cal­ly.” In the end, Plath’s rela­tion­ship with Lotz didn’t amount to much. She report­ed­ly com­mem­o­rat­ed him with­in her poem “Mad Girl’s Love Song” with the refrain “I think I made you up inside my head.”

The sec­ond list is a col­lec­tion of “Back to School Com­mand­ments.” These com­mand­ments includ­ed ask­ing her Eng­lish prof Robert Gorham Davis for an exten­sion; con­sult­ing with her Ger­man teacher Marie Schnieders (“Be calm,” she writes mys­te­ri­ous­ly, “even it is a mat­ter of life & death.”); and com­plet­ing her appli­ca­tion to be a guest edi­tor for Made­moi­selle mag­a­zine. (She nailed that last task.)

The list’s final com­mand­ment comes off bleak­er than the mild­ly pan­icky moti­va­tion­al tone of the rest of the list. “Atti­tude is every­thing: so KEEP CHEERFUL, even if you fail your sci­ence, your unit, get a hate­ful silence from Myron, no dates, no praise, no love, noth­ing. There is a cer­tain clin­i­cal sat­is­fac­tion in see­ing just how bad things can get.”

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

via The Excel­lent Lists of Note book

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Should We Read Sylvia Plath? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Christo­pher Hitchens Cre­ates a Revised List of The 10 Com­mand­ments for the 21st Cen­tu­ry

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Jimmy Buffett (RIP) Performs His New Song “Margaritaville,” Live in 1978: The Birth of a Song That Later Became a Business Empire

in Business, Life, Music | September 2nd, 2023

Jim­my Buf­fett wrote “Mar­gar­i­taville” in 1977.  It end­ed up being his only song to reach the pop Top 10. But the song car­ried him for the next 45 years. When you think Mar­gar­i­taville, you think of an easy-breezy way of life. And that sim­ple idea infused the brand of Buf­fet­t’s Mar­gar­i­taville busi­ness empire. Between the song’s birth and the singer’s death this week­end, Buf­fett cre­at­ed a Mar­gar­i­taville busi­ness empire that includ­ed bars, restau­rants, casi­nos, beach resorts, retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties, cruis­es, pack­aged foods, appar­el, footwear, and beyond. This spring, Buf­fett improb­a­bly made Forbes’ list of bil­lion­aires. Above, you can watch a young Jim­my Buf­fet per­form “Mar­gar­i­taville” in 1978, right at the begin­ning of the song’s long jour­ney from hit, to brand, to com­mer­cial empire.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

 

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The Band’s Classic Song, “The Weight,” Sung by Robbie Robertson (RIP) and Musicians Around the World

in Life, Music | August 10th, 2023

Yes­ter­day Rob­bie Robert­son, the Cana­di­an song­writer and gui­tarist for The Band, passed away at age 80 after a long ill­ness. As a trib­ute, we’re bring­ing back a video that pays homage to “The Weight,” a song Robert­son wrote for The Band’s influ­en­tial 1968 album, “Music from Big Pink.” The video fea­tures cameos of Robert­son him­self, and also Ringo Starr and oth­er spe­cial guests. Enjoy…

Rob­bie Robertson’s “The Weight,” the Band’s most beloved song, has the qual­i­ty of Dylan’s impres­sion­is­tic nar­ra­tives. Ellip­ti­cal vignettes that seem to make very lit­tle sense at first lis­ten, with a cho­rus that cuts right to the heart of the human predica­ment. “Robert­son admits in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy,” notes Patrick Doyle at Rolling Stone, “that he strug­gled to artic­u­late to pro­duc­er John Simon what the song was even about.” An artist needn’t under­stand a cre­ation for it to res­onate with lis­ten­ers.

A read of “The Weight”’s lyrics make its poignant themes evident—each stan­za intro­duces char­ac­ters who illus­trate some sor­row or small kind­ness. The cho­rus offers what so many peo­ple seem to crave these days: a promise of rest from cease­less toil, free­dom from con­stant trans­ac­tions, a com­mu­ni­ty that shoul­ders everyone’s bur­dens…. “It’s almost like it’s good med­i­cine,” Robert­son told Doyle, “and it’s so suit­able right now.” He refers specif­i­cal­ly to the song’s revival in a dom­i­nant musi­cal form of our iso­la­tion days—the online sing-along.

Though its lyrics aren’t near­ly as easy to remem­ber as, say, “Lean on Me,” Robertson’s clas­sic, espe­cial­ly the big har­monies of its cho­rus (which every­one knows by heart), is ide­al for big ensem­bles like the globe-span­ning col­lec­tion assem­bled by Play­ing for Change, “a group ded­i­cat­ed to ‘open­ing up how peo­ple see the world through the lens of music and art.” The group’s pro­duc­ers, Doyle writes, “recent­ly spent two years film­ing artists around the world, from Japan to Bahrain to Los Ange­les, per­form­ing the song,” with Ringo Starr on drums and Robert­son on rhythm gui­tar. They began on the 50th anniver­sary of the song’s release.

The per­for­mances they cap­tured are flaw­less, and mixed togeth­er seam­less­ly. If you want to know how this was achieved, watch the short behind-the-scenes video above with pro­duc­er Sebas­t­ian Robert­son, who hap­pens to be Rob­bie’s son. He starts by prais­ing the stel­lar con­tri­bu­tions of Larkin Poe, two sis­ters whose root­sy coun­try rock updates the All­man Broth­ers for the 21st cen­tu­ry. But there are no slouch­es in the bunch (don’t be inti­mat­ed out of your own group sing-alongs by the tal­ent on dis­play here). The song res­onates in a way that con­nects, as “The Weight”’s cho­rus con­nects its non-sequitur stan­zas, many dis­parate sto­ries and voic­es.

Robert­son was thrilled with the final prod­uct. “There’s a guy on a sitar!” he enthus­es. “There’s a guy play­ing an oud, one of my favorite instru­ments.” The song sug­gests there’s “some­thing spir­i­tu­al, mag­i­cal, unsus­pect­ing” that can come from times of dark­ness, and that we’d all feel a whole lot bet­ter if we learned to take care of each oth­er. The Play­ing for Change ver­sion “screams of uni­ty,” he says, “and I hope it spreads.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jeff Bridges Nar­rates a Brief His­to­ry of Bob Dylan’s and The Band’s Base­ment Tapes

Stream Marc Maron’s Excel­lent, Long Inter­view with The Band’s Rob­bie Robert­son

Watch The Band Play “The Weight,” “Up On Crip­ple Creek” and More in Rare 1970 Con­cert Footage

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cap­tures Lev­on Helm and The Band Per­form­ing “The Weight” in The Last Waltz

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

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The First Masterpieces to Depict Regular People: An Introduction to the Reformation Painting of Pieter Bruegel the Elder

in Art, History, Life | August 8th, 2023

The skat­ing scene that opens A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas is such an evoca­tive, arche­typ­i­cal win­ter vision, it’s like­ly to stir nos­tal­gia even in those whose child­hoods did­n’t involve glid­ing across frozen ponds.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder cre­at­ed a sim­i­lar scene in the 16th-cen­tu­ry. His changed the course of West­ern art.

Pri­or to his 1558 Ice Skat­ing before the Gate of Saint George, Antwerp, West­ern artists most­ly stuck to VIP por­traits, and reli­gious and mytho­log­i­cal sub­jects.

As the Nerd­writer, Evan Puschak, explains above, the rare excep­tions to these themes were intend­ed to rein­force some moral instruc­tion, often via buf­foon­ish depic­tions of reg­u­lar peo­ple behav­ing bad­ly.

The cou­ple in Quentin Mat­sys’ The Mon­ey Chang­er and His Wife are far less grotesque than the cen­tral fig­ure of his satir­i­cal por­trait, The Ugly Duchess, but the sym­bol­ism and the wife’s keen focus on the coins her hus­band is count­ing point to a sort of spir­i­tu­al ugli­ness, name­ly a pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with mate­r­i­al wealth.

Jan Sanders van Hemessen’s Loose Com­pa­ny and Pieter Aertsen’s The Egg Dance are both set in broth­els, where debauch­ery is in ample evi­dence.

Bruegel paint­ed some works in this vein too. The Fight Between Car­ni­val and Lent pits pious church­go­ers against a plump butch­er rid­ing a bar­rel, a guy with a pot on his head, and many more rev­el­ers act­ing the fool.

His skat­ing scene, by con­trast, pass­es no judge­ments. It’s just an obser­va­tion of ordi­nary cit­i­zens amus­ing them­selves out­doors dur­ing the ‘Lit­tle Ice Age’ that gripped West­ern Europe in the mid 16th cen­tu­ry.

Adults bind run­ner-like blades to their feet with laces…

A small child uses poles to pro­pel him­self on a sled made from the mandible of a cow or horse…

A back­ground fig­ure plays with a hock­ey stick…

Less gift­ed skaters cut ungain­ly fig­ures as they attempt to remain upright. (Pity the poor woman sprawled in the mid­dle, whose skirts have flipped up to expose her bare heinie…)

Bruegel’s human­ist por­tray­al of a crowd engaged in a rec­og­niz­able, pop­ulist activ­i­ty proved wild­ly pop­u­lar with the grow­ing mer­chant class. They might not have been able to afford an orig­i­nal paint­ing, but prints of the engrav­ing, pub­lished by the won­der­ful­ly named Hierony­mus Cock, were well with­in their reach.

The every­day sub­ject mat­ter that so cap­ti­vat­ed them was made pos­si­ble in part by the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion, which came to a head with the Icon­o­clas­tic Fury, eight years after “Peas­ant” Bruegel’s dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed image appeared.

The image wins the approval of mod­ern skat­ing buffs too.

Amer­i­can field hock­ey pio­neer Con­stance M.K. Apple­bee includ­ed it in her 20s era mag­a­zine, The Sports­woman. So did sports­writer Arthur R. Good­fel­low in 1972’s Won­der­ful world of skates: Sev­en­teen cen­turies of skat­ing which prompt­ed fig­ure skat­ing his­to­ri­an Ryan Stevens to quote a trans­lat­ed Old Flem­ish inscrip­tion on his blog:

Skat­ing on ice out­side the walls of Antwerp,

Some slide hith­er, oth­ers hence, all have onlook­ers every­where;

One trips, anoth­er falls, some stand upright and chat.

This pic­ture also tells one how we skate through our lives,

And glide along our paths; one like a fool, anoth­er like a wise;

On this per­ish­able earth, brit­tler than ice.

Explore anoth­er of Pieter Bruegel’s teem­ing depic­tions of ordi­nary life with the Khan Academy/Smart History’s  break­down of 1567’s Peas­ant Wed­ding, below.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Stay At Home Muse­um: Your Pri­vate, Guid­ed Tours of Rubens, Bruegel & Oth­er Flem­ish Mas­ters

What Makes Vermeer’s The Milk­maid a Mas­ter­piece?: A Video Intro­duc­tion

A Short Intro­duc­tion to Car­avag­gio, the Mas­ter Of Light

A Brief Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Mar­tin Luther’s 95 The­ses & the Reformation–Which Changed Europe and Lat­er the World

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

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When Mississippi Tried to Ban Sesame Street for Showing a “Highly Integrated Cast” (1970)

in K-12, Life, Television | August 7th, 2023

On Novem­ber 10, 1969, Sesame Street made its broad­cast debut.

The very first lines were spo­ken by Gor­don (Matt Robin­son), a Black school­teacher who’s show­ing a new kid around the neigh­bor­hood, intro­duc­ing her to a cou­ple of oth­er kids, along with Sesame Street adult main­stays Bob, Susan, and Mr. Hoop­er, and Big Bird, whose appear­ance had yet to find its final form:

Sal­ly, you’ve nev­er seen a street like Sesame Street. Every­thing hap­pens here. You’re gonna love it.

The milieu would have felt famil­iar to chil­dren grow­ing up on New York City’s Upper West Side, or Harlem or the Bronx. While not every block was as well inte­grat­ed as Sesame Street’s cheer­ful, delib­er­ate­ly mul­ti­cul­tur­al, brown­stone set­ting, any sub­way ride was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to rub shoul­ders with New York­ers of all races, class­es and creeds.

Not six months lat­er, the all-White Mis­sis­sip­pi State Com­mis­sion for Edu­ca­tion­al Tele­vi­sion vot­ed 3 to 2 to remove Sesame Street from their state’s air­waves.

A dis­grun­tled pro-Sesame com­mis­sion mem­ber leaked the rea­son to The New York Times:

Some of the mem­bers of the com­mis­sion were very much opposed to show­ing the series because it uses a high­ly inte­grat­ed cast of chil­dren.

The whistle­blow­er also inti­mat­ed that those same mem­bers object­ed to the fact that Robin­son and Loret­ta Long, the actor por­tray­ing Susan, were Black.

They claimed Mis­sis­sip­pi was “not yet ready” for such a show, even though Sesame Street was an imme­di­ate hit. Pro­fes­sion­als in the fields of psy­chol­o­gy, edu­ca­tion, and med­i­cine had con­sult­ed on its con­tent, help­ing it secure a sig­nif­i­cant amount of fed­er­al and pri­vate grants pri­or to film­ing. The show had been laud­ed for its main mis­sion — prepar­ing Amer­i­can chil­dren from low-income back­grounds for kinder­garten through live­ly edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming with ample rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

Kids grow­ing up in shel­tered, all-white enclaves stood to gain, too, by being wel­comed into a tele­vi­sion neigh­bor­hood where Black and white fam­i­lies were shown hap­pi­ly coex­ist­ing, treat­ing each oth­er with kind­ness, patience and respect. (Sonia Man­zano and Emilio Del­ga­do, who played Maria and Luis, joined the cast soon after.)

Even though Alaba­ma, Arkansas, Flori­da, Louisiana and Ten­nessee also moved to pre-empt the inno­v­a­tive hit show, the gov­ern­ment appointees on the Mis­sis­sip­pi State Com­mis­sion for Edu­ca­tion­al Tele­vi­sion who’d oust­ed Sesame Street found them­selves out­num­bered when Jack­son res­i­dents of all ages staged a protest in front of Mis­sis­sip­pi Pub­lic Broadcasting’s HQ.]

The Delta Demo­c­rat-Times pub­lished an edi­to­r­i­al piece argu­ing that “there is no state which more des­per­ate­ly needs every edu­ca­tion­al tool it can find than Mis­sis­sip­pi:”

There is no edu­ca­tion­al show on the mar­ket today bet­ter pre­pared than Sesame Street to teach preschool chil­dren what many can­not or do not learn in their homes….The needs are immense.

After 22 days, the ban was rolled back and Sesame Street was rein­stat­ed.

That fall, the cast made a pit­stop in Jack­son dur­ing a 14-city nation­al tour. Susan, Gor­don, Bob, Mr. Hoop­er and Big Bird sang and joked with audi­ence mem­bers as part of an event co-spon­sored by the very same com­mis­sion that had tried to black­ball them, and left with­out hav­ing received a for­mal apol­o­gy.

Sesame Street has stayed true to its pro­gres­sive agen­da through­out its fifty+ year his­to­ry, a com­mit­ment that seems more essen­tial than ever in 2023.

Below, Elmo, a Mup­pet who rose through the ranks to become a Sesame Street star engages in an entry-lev­el con­ver­sa­tion about race with some new­er char­ac­ters in an episode from two years ago.

The Sesame Work­shop rec­om­mends it for view­ers aged 1 to 4, though it seems our coun­try doesn’t lack for adult cit­i­zens who could do with a refresh­er on the sub­ject…

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch Twin Beaks, Sesame Street’s Par­o­dy of David Lynch’s Icon­ic TV Show (1990)

Philip Glass Com­pos­es Music for a Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion (1979)

Watch Jazzy Spies: 1969 Psy­che­del­ic Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion, Fea­tur­ing Grace Slick, Teach­es Kids to Count

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

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Tina Turner (RIP) Delivers a Blistering Live Performance of “Proud Mary” on Italian TV (1971)

in Life, Music | May 24th, 2023

Note: The great Tina Turn­er passed away today at her home in Switzer­land. She was 83. From our archive, we’re bring­ing back an elec­tric 1971 per­for­mance, a reminder of what made her … sim­ply the best. The post below first appeared on our site in April 2021.

John Foger­ty once said that he con­ceived the open­ing bars of “Proud Mary” in imi­ta­tion of Beethoven’s Fifth sym­pho­ny. It’s an unusu­al asso­ci­a­tion for a song about a steam­boat, but it works as a clas­sic blues rock hook. Most peo­ple would say, how­ev­er, that the song didn’t tru­ly come into its own until Tina Turn­er began cov­er­ing it in 1969.

“Proud Mary” helped Turn­er come back after a sui­cide attempt the pre­vi­ous year. Her ver­sion, released as a sin­gle in Jan­u­ary 1971, “plant­ed the seeds of her lib­er­a­tion as both an artist and a woman,” Jason Heller writes at The Atlantic, bring­ing Ike and Tina major crossover suc­cess. Their ver­sion of the CCR song “rose to No.4 on Bill­board’s pop chart, sold more than 1 mil­lion copies, and earned Turn­er the first of her 12 Gram­my Awards.” See her, Ike, and the Ikettes per­form it live on Ital­ian TV, above.

It’s a sad­ly iron­ic part of her sto­ry that the suc­cess of “Proud Mary” also helped keep Turn­er in an abu­sive rela­tion­ship with her musi­cal part­ner and hus­band Ike for anoth­er five years until she final­ly left him in 1976. She spent the next sev­er­al decades telling her sto­ry as she rose to inter­na­tion­al fame as a solo artist, in mem­oirs, inter­views, and in the biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It.

The new HBO doc­u­men­tary, Tina, tells the sto­ry again but also includes Turner’s weary response to it. Asked in 1993 why she did not go see What’s Love Got to Do With It, Turn­er replied, “the sto­ry was actu­al­ly writ­ten so that I would no longer have to dis­cuss the issue. I don’t love that it’s always talked about… this con­stant reminder, it’s not so good. I’m not so hap­py about it.”

Like all musi­cians, Turn­er liked to talk about the music. “Proud Mary,” the sec­ond sin­gle from Ike and Tina’s Workin’ Togeth­er, came about when they heard an audi­tion tape of the song, which they’d been cov­er­ing on stage. “Ike said, ‘You know, I for­got all about that tune.’ And I said let’s do it, but let’s change it. So in the car Ike plays the gui­tar, we just sort of jam. And we just sort of broke into the black ver­sion of it.”

She may have giv­en Ike cred­it for the idea, but the exe­cu­tion was all Tina (and the extra­or­di­nary Ikettes), and the song became a sta­ple of her solo act for decades. Now, with Tina, it seems she may be leav­ing pub­lic life for good. “When do you stop being proud? How do you bow out slow­ly — just go away?” she says.

It’s a ques­tion she’s been ask­ing with “Proud Mary” for half a cen­tu­ry — onstage work­ing day and night — a song, she said last year, that could be summed up in a sin­gle word, “Free­dom.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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: 

How Aretha Franklin Turned Otis Redding’s “Respect” Into a Civ­il Rights and Fem­i­nist Anthem

Watch the Ear­li­est Known Footage of the Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence (Feb­ru­ary, 1967)

How Gior­gio Moroder & Don­na Summer’s “I Feel Love” Cre­at­ed the “Blue­print for All Elec­tron­ic Dance Music Today” (1977)

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

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What Happens When a Chess Player Mistakes a Grandmaster for a Beginner: It’s Pretty Delightful

in Games, Life | May 19th, 2023

Vaca­tion­ing in New York City last sum­mer, Anna Cram­ling, an Inter­na­tion­al Chess Fed­er­a­tion mas­ter swung by Wash­ing­ton Square Park, to see about scor­ing a pick­up game with one of the reg­u­lars.

Her oppo­nent, Jon­ny O’Leary, a native New York­er who learned the rules of the game from oth­er Wash­ing­ton Square habitués while work­ing main­te­nance jobs in the sur­round­ing build­ings in the mid-80s, is a gar­ru­lous sort, shar­ing his phi­los­o­phy of life as the game pro­ceeds.

Luck­i­ly he believes that the human inter­ac­tion and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn make even los­ing games a win­ning propo­si­tion because Cram­ling whoops him pret­ty hand­i­ly.

Flash for­ward a cou­ple of sea­sons.

Cram­ling, bun­dled up in a par­ka and warm stock­ing cap, heads back to Wash­ing­ton Square with her mom in tow.

O’Leary is more than will­ing to intro­duce the elder Ms. Cram­ling, now 60, to the Game of Kings. He loves teach­ing begin­ners, even if they have no mon­ey to put down. He is so eager to show her the ropes that he dic­tates four of her first five moves.

His extro­ver­sion may be his down­fall here.

In our expe­ri­ence, folks who call mid­dle-aged women they’ve just met “Mom” tend to under­es­ti­mate and talk over them.

Sur­prise! Pia Cram­ling is a Grand­mas­ter of Chess, who once held the title of best female play­er in the world.

“Mom” humbly fol­lows direc­tions, mov­ing her knights and bish­op as instruct­ed and pre­sum­ably clamp­ing down on her tongue as O’Leary schools her begin­ning strat­e­gy and the names of the pieces.

To his cred­it, he seems absolute­ly thrilled when the Cram­lings’ ruse is revealed, eager­ly call­ing for anoth­er game even as he vol­un­teers that he’s nowhere near as good of a play­er.

(“Get the old man,” his bud­dy Doc glee­ful­ly inter­jects.)

Their shared love of chess burns bright.

The Cram­lings com­pli­ment O’Leary on his gen­eros­i­ty as a teacher, no doubt mind­ful that his immer­sion in the game looks dif­fer­ent from theirs. (Anna’s father is Grand­mas­ter Juan Manuel Bel­lón Lopez and she has been accom­pa­ny­ing her moth­er to tour­na­ments since she was a baby.)

O’Leary may appear to draw a bit of a blank when Pia Cram­ling men­tions World Chess Cham­pi­on Ana­toly Kar­pov, but he’s rubbed shoul­ders with grand­mas­ters Max­im Dlu­gy and John Fedorow­icz at the Wash­ing­ton Square Park chess simul, and he was very inter­est­ed in her Elo rat­ing, the U.S. Chess Federation’s sys­tem for assess­ing play­ers’ skills.

“She has a brain that’s not from here!” he cries admir­ing­ly to any­one with­in earshot.

After wit­ness­ing some oth­er play­ers’ over­ly cocky, unsport­ing, and rude behav­ior in Anna’s oth­er filmed street match­es, we def­i­nite­ly agree that Jon­ny O’Leary is the “Grand­mas­ter at the social aspect.”

Watch more of Anna Cramling’s chess relat­ed videos, includ­ing her mom’s encoun­ters with oth­er Wash­ing­ton Square Park reg­u­lars here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

A Free 700-Page Chess Man­u­al Explains 1,000 Chess Tac­tics in Straight­for­ward Eng­lish

Man Ray Cre­ates a “Sur­re­al­ist Chess­board,” Fea­tur­ing Por­traits of Sur­re­al­ist Icons: Dalí, Bre­ton, Picas­so, Magritte, Miró & Oth­ers (1934)

Mar­cel Duchamp, Chess Enthu­si­ast, Cre­at­ed an Art Deco Chess Set That’s Now Avail­able via 3D Print­er

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

 

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Cats Migrated to Europe 7,000 Years Earlier Than Once Thought

in Biology, History, Life, Science, Travel | May 9th, 2023

The ani­mals were imper­fect,

long-tailed,

unfor­tu­nate in their heads.

Lit­tle by lit­tle they

put them­selves togeth­er,

mak­ing them­selves a land­scape,

acquir­ing spots, grace, flight.

The cat,

only the cat

appeared com­plete and proud:

he was born com­plete­ly fin­ished,

walk­ing alone and know­ing what he want­ed.

- Pablo Neru­da, excerpt from Ode to the Cat

We find our­selves in agree­ment with Nobel Prize-win­ning poet, and cat lover, Pablo Neru­da:

Those of us who pro­vide for felines choose to believe we are “the own­er, pro­pri­etor, uncle of a cat, com­pan­ion, col­league, dis­ci­ple or friend of (our) cat”, when in fact they are mys­te­ri­ous beasts, far more self-con­tained than the com­pan­ion­able, inquis­i­tive canine Neru­da immor­tal­ized in Ode to the Dog.

We can bestow names and social media accounts on cats of our acquain­tance, chan­nel them on the steps of the Met Gala, attach GPS track­ers to their col­lars, give them pride of place­ment in books for chil­dren and adults, and try our best to get inside their heads, but what do we know about them, real­ly?

We even got their his­to­ry wrong.

Com­mon knowl­edge once held that cats made their way to north­ern Europe from the Mediter­ranean aboard Roman — and even­tu­al­ly Viking — ships some­time between the 3rd to 7th cen­tu­ry CE, but it turns out we were off by mil­len­nia.

In 2016, a team of researchers col­lab­o­rat­ing on the Five Thou­sand Years of His­to­ry of Domes­tic Cats in Cen­tral Europe project con­firmed the pres­ence of domes­tic cats dur­ing the Roman peri­od in the area that is now north­ern Poland, using a com­bi­na­tion of zooar­chae­ol­o­gy, genet­ics and absolute dat­ing.

More recent­ly, the team turned their atten­tion to Felis bones found in south­ern Poland and Ser­bia, deter­min­ing the ones found in the Jas­na Strze­gows­ka Cave to be Pre-Neolith­ic (5990–5760 BC), while the Ser­bian kit­ties hail from the Mesolith­ic-Neolitic era (6220–5730 BC).

In addi­tion to clar­i­fy­ing our under­stand­ing of how our pet cats’ ances­tors arrived in Cen­tral Europe from Egypt and the Fer­tile Cres­cent, the project seeks to “iden­ti­fy phe­no­typ­ic fea­tures relat­ed to domes­ti­ca­tion, such as phys­i­cal appear­ance, includ­ing body size and coat col­or; behav­ior, for exam­ple, reduced aggres­sion; and pos­si­ble phys­i­o­log­i­cal adap­ta­tions to digest anthro­pogenic food.”

Regard­ing non-anthro­pogenic food, a spike in the Late Neolith­ic East­ern Euro­pean house mouse pop­u­la­tion exhibits some nifty over­lap with these ancient cat bones’ new­ly attached dates, though Dr. Dani­jela Popović, who super­vised the pro­jec­t’s pale­o­ge­neti­cians, reports that the cats’ arrival in Europe pre­ced­ed that of the first farm­ers:

These cats prob­a­bly were still wild ani­mals that nat­u­ral­ly col­o­nized Cen­tral Europe.

We’re will­ing to believe they estab­lished a bulk­head, then hung around, wait­ing until the humans showed up before imple­ment­ing the next phase of their plan — self-domes­ti­ca­tion.

Read the research team’s “his­to­ry of the domes­tic cat in Cen­tral Europe” here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

A 110-Year-Old Book Illus­trat­ed with Pho­tos of Kit­tens & Cats Taught Kids How to Read

Cats in Medieval Man­u­scripts & Paint­ings

via Big Think

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day, human ser­vant of two feline Mail­room Böyz, is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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