diginsider
Digital Insider
Howard Blumenthal's blog about technology, change, media, education, travel, food, and other interesting ideas.
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Dogmen & Dynasty
The castle and the surrounding landscape are magnificent, so I thought I would begin with a big picture.
Martyn Rady is a historian and a very good storyteller. He is a Professor Emeritus of Central European History at University College London. He is also a leading expert on the history of Central Europe, which happens to be one of the regions of the world that is, for many people, myself…
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Acoustical Magic
I was doubtful. My listening room, which is also my office, has all sorts of odd angles, so any sort of acoustic panel treatment would be based upon best guesses. You see, sound from loudspeakers has a tendency to bounce off all sorts of surfaces, and not just once. It bounces off the carpeted floor, but it’s also absorbed by the carpet. So we have — and every room has — a combination of…
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Galax, Floyd and Other Crooked Places
Galax, Floyd and Other Crooked Places
A little more than ten years ago, I read an article about music in Southwestern Virginia. About two months ago, I found it again, but this time, I decided do more than read and file the article in my “someday” folder. I decided to go, and see what The Crooked Road was all about.
Had I known, I would have first picked up Joe Wilson’s excellent and truly helpful book, A Guide to the Crooked Road:…
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Creating a Prime Time Television Series
Creating a Prime Time Television Series
Kelly Edwards is an executive, producer and a writer who knows how to do that. In fact, you know here work: Girlfriends, Clueless, Malcolm in the Middle, and more. Her new book is called The Executive Chair: A Writer’s Guide to TV Series Development. It is published by Michael Wiese Productions, which is, hands down, the very best publisher of books about the making of movies. The book is only…
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Sunday in the Park with James (and Stephen, but Mostly James)
Sunday in the Park with James (and Stephen, but Mostly James)
When Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters sang “Move On” for the very last time, I was in the audience. There were tears on stage, tears in the aisles. It was their last performance in the lead roles of a most unusual Broadway musical, Sunday in the Park with George. The first act of the musical tells the story of impressionist painter George Seurat and the women who figures so prominently in the…
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More Than One History
More Than One History
Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam during their 1955 trial
So here’s the problem. When we talk about history, we usually refer to one particular story, and one particular point of view. In 2021, that’s woefully inadequate, but the additional material makes history nearly impossible to teach within the confines of a well-organized school curriculum. In 2015, TIME Magazine wrote about “25 Moments That…
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LAND, from the prolific Simon Winchester
LAND, from the prolific Simon Winchester
Simon Winchester has taught me a great deal. Including: in any given used bookshop, there will always be at least one nonfiction book by Simon Winchester that I have not read before. Past encounters, each one a pleasure, include: Outposts: Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire; Hong Kong: Here Be Dragons; Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles; Pacific Rising; The Map that…
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A Surprising Solution to a Deeply Disturbing Problem of Our Own Making
A Surprising Solution to a Deeply Disturbing Problem of Our Own Making
Let’s begin with Heather McGhee. She’s the right kind of troublemaker. I heard her interviewed on NPR, got her book, read it carefully, and determined, as she did, that we’ve been wrong-headed about a whole lot of important stuff. She’s the former president of a think tank that focuses on inequality called Demos, and now, she’s both an important spokesperson for clear thinking, and the chair of…
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Indonesian Food!
Now is not the very best time to try new restaurants, but it is a very good time to try new cookbooks, and perhaps, new cuisines as well.
Let’s begin with Eleanor Ford’s Fire Islands: Recipes from Indonesia. Like many of today’s cookbooks, this one is visually beautiful, with photographs for each of the dishes and locales. Indonesia is one of the world’s largest nations–it’s just behind the U.S.…
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#Babi Guling#bumbu#gulai#IFC#Indonesia#Indonesian Food#Indonesian Fried Chicken#Java#Nasi goreng#Padang Red Chili#Scallops gulai#Sumatra#Terang bulan#urap#Vegetable urap
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Magical World: Nom Wah!
Magical World: Nom Wah!
If you happen to wander through Chinatown, in New York City or in Philadelphia, the name Nom Wah may mean something to you. Sure, it’s a Chinese restaurant, but not many Chinese restaurants date back to 1920–a hundred years ago! Nom Wah Tea Parlor has roots in the Chinese Exclusion Act, which restricted immigration to the U.S. from China. Mostly, the now-restaurant began as a bakery serving tea,…
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The Self-Important Year of 1974
The Self-Important Year of 1974
A good friend told me about a new book called Rock Me on the Water: 1974, The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television and Politics. He was excited because we experienced some of the adventures that author Ronald Brownstein described, at least tangentially. It’s interesting to write about this particular book and this particular era because I happened to rewatch Almost Famous,…
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CDs, LPs and the Future of a Record Label
CDs, LPs and the Future of a Record Label
The problem is, we’re easily convinced to do foolish things. We started with a few very good ideas, but then, we followed the crowd.The first of the good ideas goes back to Edison in the late 1880s: record about two minutes of sound on a rotating tube coated with wax. Technology improved: two minutes became three and four minutes; microphones were invented and allowed far greater fidelity by the…
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A Clever New Easel
A Clever New Easel
As the warmer weather approaches in my part of the world, I like to spend the occasional afternoon painting–not with wet paints, but with a portable collection of pastels. I carry them in a backpack, along with charcoal, a small Leatherman multi-tool, a sheet of sanded paper taped to a lightweight piece of masonite, and a few other supplies.
A portable easel completes the portable setup–that,…
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We Were Not Alone
We Were Not Alone
Seems like science fiction, but for a long time, Homo sapiens were not the only human beings on earth. And there were a lot of them. And they lived in a very large area that included most of Europe, much of Asia, and probably, in many other places, too (but we haven’t yet found the evidence). They were far more sophisticated than you might imagine, very similar to our own kind as we evolved, in…
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Happy 60th Anniversary, Arhoolie!
Happy 60th Anniversary, Arhoolie!
In this season of abundant music, I wanted to draw your attention toward something quite special and quite unique. Sixty years ago, Chris Strachwitz founded a record label to celebrate authentic folk music and blues. The label’s first release remains a personal favorite: Mance Lipscomb: Texas Sharecropper and Songster, recorded in rural Texas and released in 1961.
It’s wonderful that the story…
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Akin to the Internet, circa 1920
Akin to the Internet, circa 1920
One version of our story begins in 1874, midway between Cleveland and Buffalo, about 20 miles inland from Lake Erie, on the shore of Lake Chautauqua. Another version begins a half-century earlier, in 1826, in a town called Millbury, just south of Worcester, Massachusetts. The third takes shape in 1904 in Iowa and Nebraska, in part because small towns could now be reached by the railroads out of…
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Seeing 10 Years into the Future
Seeing 10 Years into the Future
Somehow, even in the shadow of the virus, we can see 2030 with surprising clarity. We know a lot, and we can make good guesses about much of what we don’t know. In fact, I’ve been doing this for several years, traveling the world, speaking to university audiences, explaining how and why Southern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are the places that today’s students must study because of their enormous…
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