Reviews and News:
Turkish fairy tales: “The most famous collectors of folk stories remain, at least in the West, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, but many others followed in their influential wake. Among them was Ignác Kúnos (1860-1945), who compiled this volume of Turkish fairy tales in the same tradition.”
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The decline of original music in advertising: “You used to hear jingles over and over on radio and television. For better or worse, they were as unforgettable as Mr. Clean’s bald head. The last few decades have seen the decline of the jingle in favor of popular music that is repurposed and licensed by the advertiser. That shift left some people in the ad business behind, people like Steve Karmen, who lives outside New York City. He is a past master of jingle composition.”
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Replica of ancient Lascaux cave art opens in France: “The cave was discovered in 1940 and opened to the public after World War II. The 1,200 visitors per day threatened the 20,000-year-old paintings. They were therefore closed to visitors in 1963.”
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William F. Buckley, Jr., master obituarist.
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Bird identification app: “Bird identification can be a challenge, especially for beginning birders. While solving these challenges can be a compelling part of the fun of birding, at times it can also be frustrating… Last week, the Merlin team released Photo ID—a new feature in the free Merlin app that provides real-time, offline, bird identification. Of course, you should still double-check the results from the app, but we’ve found the computer to be unnervingly accurate.”
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The hard-edged vision of Carmen Herrera: “Grandma Moses she is not.”
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Essay of the Day:
In The Atlantic, Jeffrey E. Stern revisits the death of Alexander Perepilichny in London:
“On November 10, 2012, Alexander Perepilichny was feeling a little under the weather. He decided to try to shake it off by taking a few laps around the gated community southwest of London where Russian émigrés like him lived in multimillion-dollar mansions alongside members of the English elite. Perepilichny jogged through a neighborhood of homes once owned by Elton John, Kate Winslet, John Lennon, and Ringo Starr.
“He collapsed on Granville Road, within 100 meters of the house he was renting for $20,000 a month. Police and medics were called to the scene, but within 30 minutes, Perepilichny was pronounced dead.
“Police told the press the death was ‘unexplained.’ A 44-year-old man of average build and above-average wealth had simply fallen down and died in the leafy suburb he’d recently begun calling home.
“Among the material facts not known at the time was that Perepilichny was in good health, as proved by a physical he’d had for a life-insurance policy soon before his death. That he’d traveled that morning from Paris, where he had, inexplicably, reserved two hotel rooms in different parts of the city for the same nights. That he’d been meeting with a man he said was from the Russian government, but who was actually an affiliate of a Russian criminal syndicate. And that he’d gotten an ominous phone call informing him that police had found his name on a hit list in the home of an alleged Chechen contract killer.
“Three years passed before a theory emerged that might explain what had happened to him. But highly interested parties—including a wealthy American-born investor and quite possibly officials in the highest reaches of the British and Russian governments—were watching the story the whole time.”
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Image of the Day: Kuray Steppe
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Poem: Benjamin Myers, “Field”
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