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Wednesday, November 30, 2016

RETRO FILES / BRASSAI ET L’AMOUR


George Brassai (aka Gyula Halasz), Salvador and Gala Dali, at Villa Seurat, 1932
George Brassaï (pseudonym of Gyula Halász) (1899 – 1984) was a Hungarian photographer, sculptor, and filmmaker who rose to international fame in France in the 20th century. He was one of the numerous Hungarian artists who flourished in Paris beginning between the World Wars. In the early 21st century, the discovery of more than 200 letters and hundreds of drawings and other items from the period 1940-1984 has provided scholars with material for understanding his later life.

Brassai
He Studied painting and sculpture at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest. In 1920, he worked as a journalist for Hungarian paper in Berlin. He pursued his study at Berlin Charlottenburg Academy of Fine Arts. In 1924 he moved to Paris. He enjoyed the city and often took pictures at night. Brassaï published his first book entitled Paris by Night in 1933. Because of this book he became famous. He got a nickname “the eye of Paris.”

In his late career, he wrote 17 books and numerous articles. In 1961, He stopped taking photography and focus on sculpting in stone and bronze.








Tuesday, November 29, 2016

1 PIX = 1K WORDS / BROOKLYN BLIZZARD





When National Geographic put out a call for reader photographs they always get terrific results.  Here’s a recent example snapped by reader Navid Baraty of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park after a 2015 blizzard.

Monday, November 28, 2016

MEDIA MONDAY / HISTORY OF HB2U




GUEST BLOG / By Wikipedia--This article is about the song “Happy Birthday to You!”  It was first published in 1893 and has eventually gone into the public domain (but not before a fight that went just short of the U.S. Supreme Court.)  “HB2U” is considered a folk tune that was written by sisters Patty and Mildred Hill.

"Happy Birthday to You", also known more simply as "Happy Birthday", is a song that is traditionally sung to celebrate the anniversary of a person's birth. According to the 1998 Guinness World Records, "Happy Birthday to You" is the most recognized song in the English language, followed by "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow". The song's base lyrics have been translated into at least 18 languages.


The melody of "Happy Birthday to You" comes from the song "Good Morning to All", which has traditionally been attributed to American sisters Patty and Mildred J. Hill in 1893, although the claim that the sisters composed the tune is disputed.

Patty Hill was a kindergarten principal in Louisville, Kentucky, developing various teaching methods at what is now the Little Loomhouse; her sister Mildred was a pianist and composer. The sisters used "Good Morning to All" as a song that young children would find easy to sing. The combination of melody and lyrics in "Happy Birthday to You" first appeared in print in 1912, and probably existed even earlier.

None of the early appearances of the "Happy Birthday to You" lyrics included credits or copyright notices. The Summy Company registered a copyright in 1935, crediting authors Preston Ware Orem and Mrs. R. R. Forman.

In 1988, Warner/Chappell Music purchased the company owning the copyright for US$25 million, with the value of "Happy Birthday" estimated at US$5 million. Based on the 1935 copyright registration, Warner claimed that the United States copyright will not expire until 2030, and that unauthorized public performances of the song are illegal unless royalties are paid to Warner.

In one specific instance in February 2010, these royalties were said to amount to US$700. By one estimate, the song is the highest-earning single song in history, with estimated earnings since its creation of US$50 million. In the European Union, the copyright of the song was set to expire no later than December 31, 2016.

The American copyright status of "Happy Birthday to You" began to draw more attention with the passage of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998. When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Act in Eldred v. Ashcroft in 2003, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer specifically mentioned "Happy Birthday to You" in his dissenting opinion.

American law professor Robert Brauneis, who extensively researched the song, concluded in 2010 that "It is almost certainly no longer under copyright." In 2013, based in large part on Brauneis's research, Good Morning to You Productions, a company producing a documentary about "Good Morning to All", sued Warner/Chappell for falsely claiming copyright to the song. In September 2015, a federal judge declared that the Warner/Chappell copyright claim was invalid, ruling that the copyright registration applied only to a specific piano arrangement of the song, and not to its lyrics and melody. In February 2016 Warner/Chappell settled for US $14 million, paving the way for the song to become public domain.



Sunday, November 27, 2016

SUNDAY REVIEW / NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS WINNERS


Racism was the overriding theme of the 2016 winning books at the 67th annual National Book Awards held in New York City on November 16 (this blog posted semi-finalists on November 6). www.nationalbook.org
Each winning author per category will be awarded $10,000.

Quickly to the winners:

Fiction:
Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad











Nonfiction Nominees
--Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America











Poetry Nominees
Daniel Borzutzky, The Performance of Becoming Human










Young People's Literature Nominees
John Lewis, Andrew Aydin & Nate Powell, March: Book Three









ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
COLIN WHITEHEAD
Colson Whitehead is the New York Times bestselling author of The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and one collection of essays, The Colossus of New York. A Pulitzer Prize finalist and a recipient of MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, he lives in New York City.









IBRAM X. KENDI
Ibram X. Kendi is currently an assistant professor of African American History at the University of Florida. An intellectual and social movement Africana studies historian, Kendi studies racist and antiracist ideas and movements. He has published essays in books and academic journals, including The Journal of African American History, Journal of Social History, and The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture. Kendi is the author of the award-winning book, The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965-1972, which was published in March 2012 as part of Palgrave Macmillan’s Contemporary Black History Series. He is currently finishing Black Apple: A Narrative History of Malcolm X and Black Power in New York, 1954-1974. He is also working on another history of racism—the sequel to Stamped from the Beginning.


DANIEL BORZUTSKY
Daniel Borzutzky’s books and chapbooks include, among others, In the Murmurs of the Rotten Carcass Economy, Bedtime Stories for the End of the World!, Data Bodies, The Book of Interfering Bodies, and The Ecstasy of Capitulation. He has translated Raúl Zurita’s The Country of Planks and Song for His Disappeared Love, and Jaime Luis Huenún’s Port Trakl (2008). His work has been supported by the Illinois Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pen/Heim Translation Fund. He lives in Chicago.







John Lewis (CENTER) co-authored the third volume of the graphic memoir March Trilogy with Andrew Aydin, drawn by Nate Powell. Lewis is Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District Representative and an American icon widely known for his role in the Civil Rights Movement. He is the author of Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, published in 1999, which won numerous awards; and Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change, published in 2012.

Andrew Aydin, an Atlanta native, grew up reading and collecting comic books. After college, upon taking a job with Congressman Lewis, Andrew (LEFT) learned that the civil rights legend had been inspired as a young man by a classic 1950s comic book, Martin Luther King & The Montgomery Story. They discussed the impact that comic books can have on young readers and decided to write a graphic novel together about the civil rights era. A few years later, the March series was born. Today, Andrew serves as Digital Director & Policy Advisor to Congressman Lewis in Washington, D.C.

Nate Powell (LEFT), called by Booklist magazine “the most prodigiously talented graphic novelist of his generation,” was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. In addition to the March series, his work includes Rick Riordan’s The Lost Hero, You Don’t Say, Any Empire, Swallow Me Whole, The Silence of Our Friends, and The Year of the Beasts. Nate’s work has received copious honors, including the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Novel, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize nomination, and four “Great Graphic Novels for Teens” from the American Library Association. His animated illustrations in Southern Poverty Law Center’s documentary Selma: The Bridge to the Ballot have reached one million students in over 50,000 schools across the nation, and he is currently preparing a new graphic novel, Cover.


MORE ON THE NATIONAL BOOK CLUB AWARDS
The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors.

The National Book Awards were established in 1936 by the American Booksellers Association, abandoned during World War II, and re-established by three book industry organizations in 1950. Non-U.S. authors and publishers were eligible for the pre-war awards. Now they are presented to U.S. authors for books published in the United States roughly during the award year.

LISA LUCAS, DIRECTOR
National Book Awards
The nonprofit National Book Foundation was established in 1988 to administer and enhance the National Book Awards and "move beyond [them] into the fields of education and literacy", primarily by sponsoring public appearances by writers. Its mission is "to celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of good writing in America."

In 2010, there were 1,115 books nominated for the four award categories, led by the Nonfiction category with 435 nominations. The 2011 ceremony was held on November 16 in New York City.—Wikipedia.

MORE ON PILLAR TO POST BLOG
Pillar to Post coverage in its weekly “Sunday Review” postings will detail each of the four 2016 National Book Award works in separate postings in 2017.  Bookmark: www.pillartopost.org


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