PicoBlog

In the John Fairchild interview I shared a few days ago, he shows the interviewer a spread of images taken at a party by Frederick Eberstadt. This reminded me of all of the wonderful party photos by Eberstadt that appeared in the society pages of publications like Women’s Wear Daily and Town & Country in the 1960s—even when printed tiny and many together in a jumble (as is the aesthetic of a society page even today, just look at Tatler), his black and white images stand out.

Hello everyone, I’m traveling to the Red Woods today to do a bit of camping. So instead of a full post, here’s a painting that I find quite sad and beautiful. It’s called “The Passing of Robin Hood” (1917), by the American illustrator and painter N.C. Wyeth. It originally appeared in an illustrated edition of the Legend of Robin Hood. In the painting we see Robin Hood’s final moments before his death.

Hola. This is Barbara, your curator of cultural news from the Spanish-speaking world. This week I`d like to share my review of the TV series Los pacientes del doctor García (The patients of Dr García) with you. The story After Franco's victory, Dr Guillermo García Medina (Javier Rey) continues to live in Madrid under a false identity. His friend, Manuel Arroyo Benítez (Tamar Novas), a Republican diplomat whose life he saved in 1937, provided him with the necessary documents to avoid persecution or exile.

I teach an entire class on the suffrage movement. Yes, I am a medieval—not modern—historian (PhD UNC-Chapel Hill, 2004) with a second field in religious studies (I took most of my course work for this emphasis at Duke Divinity). But the overarching theme of my research (which you can see most ofhere on my google scholar profile) and graduate coursework has always been women’s history—from courses in modern feminism and medieval women with Judith Bennett to readings in British women’s history and gender history with Barbara Harris and Cynthia Herrup to a course on female monasticism and mysticism with Susan Keefe and a course on the “Christianization” of Europe (late ancient/early medieval with an emphasis on women & monasticism) with Catherine Peyroux.

Arguably the most successful Imperial splinter group of all, the Alignment was founded by Grand Moff Ardus Kaine in the New Territories. It is a conglomeration of Kaine’s Imperial fleet assets – based around his Executor-class flagship Reaper – and the corporate interests of the region. It is wealthy and easily defended. Content to rule itself, the Alignment did not attack its neighbours and was in turn ignored by a New Republic beset with more aggressive adversaries.

My newest tattoo is one that I’ve been waiting a while to get, and it was definitely worth the wait.  When it comes to tattoos, I don’t believe a heartfelt meaning is a requirement by any means, but for my own pieces, I do like to have some connection to or reason for the design I’m choosing.  Even if the meaning is subtle, I enjoy feeling connected to the art on my body.

5Things is a monthly breakfast event where people discuss non-fiction books they’ve found stimulating. The idea is to gently expand the mind before taking the world on. It has been going on since 2019 and they’ve built up an extensive archive of talks. On Wednesday, I spoke about The Photographer’s Eye by John Szarkowski. At the beginning of the first lockdown, there was a lot of talk about what people had achieved during previous plagues.

When the NBA recently unveiled this season’s set of City Edition uniforms, I was really struck by one design in particular: the one for the Detroit Pistons. On the one hand, it’s clearly a very good-looking basketball uni. On the other hand, its color scheme and graphics have no discernible connection to the Pistons. So it’s a good uniform, but is it a good Pistons uniform? For me, that question captures a lot of the inherent contradictions and tensions built into the City Edition program, which often produces interesting designs with little apparent tie-in — and sometimes no apparent tie-in — to a team’s existing visual program.

In recent years, major labels (Universal, Sony, Warner) have experienced a consistent decline in market share on streaming platforms like Spotify. This is because the rise of independent artists and labels has led to an increase in the amount of music being uploaded. Per Spotify's yearly report, the market share of major labels on the platform went down to 75% in 2022 from 77% in 2021. This decline has been consistent since 2017 when their market share stood at 87%.