Things I Saw This Week - Friday, Oct. 29
TISTW is a collection of reads, visuals, and music, curated by Elle Perry, a Memphis-based journalist, featuring art and culture, food, cities, and more. (Issue No. 124)
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Agreed.
Art
Philly will be home to the world’s first public orchestra.
“The bottom line is, this is a public orchestra, where people can come together and participate from their own comfort zone and within their own traditions,” Tidd explains from Rotterdam, where he’s on tour. “People who read music represent a very small percentage of the music happening in the world, including in America. Some people learn stuff by ear. Others use modified forms of written music — chord charts, graphical scores, all kinds of things. Removing the need to read music makes it more universal.”
Tidd went on to say that they’re not looking for players who can come in to fulfill the needs of the composers. It’s the other way around. Meyers and Tidd will assemble the 50-person orchestra, and then the composers will write the music for whatever instrumentation is available and will work with the musicians to bring it to life in whatever way the musicians require. Maybe there are five violins. Maybe there are no violins. There could be two electric guitarists, three djembe players, four tuba players and a host of other currently unpredictable combinations and variations. Who knows?
Angela Flournoy wrote about visual artist Mickalene Thomas’ works for The New York Times.
Cities
Meet West Rogers Park, a neighborhood that is home to Chicago’s most diverse Census tract.
West Rogers Park best displays its diversity not in its restaurants, which are mainly Indian and Pakistani, but in its religious institutions. The first Parliament of the World’s Religions took place in Chicago in 1893, during the World’s Columbian Exposition. It seems to be in session here still, on Devon Avenue, where most of the world’s major religions are represented on the mile-and-a-half stretch between Clark Street and Kedzie Avenue: Christianity (Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox), Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Judaism.
Culture
Sarah Dougher wrote about becoming a mother at the age of 45.
Design
Beyonce and Jay-Z are selling their 13,000-plus-square-foot New Orleans mansion, La Casa de Castille. You can see photos of the former church and ballet school here.
And in California, an architect working on the UCSB’s new Munger Hall dormitory has resigned in protest.
In his October 25 resignation letter to UCSB Campus Architect Julie Hendricks, Dennis McFadden ― a well-respected Southern California architect with 15 years on the committee ― goes scorched earth on the radical new building concept, which calls for an 11-story, 1.68-million-square-foot structure that would house up to 4,500 students, 94 percent of whom would not have windows in their small, single-occupancy bedrooms.
The idea was conceived by 97-year-old billionaire-investor turned amateur-architect Charles Munger, who donated $200 million toward the project with the condition that his blueprints be followed exactly. Munger maintains the small living quarters would coax residents out of their rooms and into larger common areas, where they could interact and collaborate.
PBR’s can art contest is back for the 10th year. Each of the 10 winners will receive $10,000.
Food
New, high-end Tennessee whiskeys are emerging, including Sweetens Cove, which costs $200 per bottle.
It’s a compelling arrangement: zesty and fruity with a peppery punch on the back palate. And yet the price tag is every bit as bold as the liquid, especially for a blend of 4-, 6- and 16-year-old bourbons sourced entirely from Tennessee, where whiskey has long been viewed as a value proposition.
Lynchburg-based Jack Daniel’s unloads more than 13 million cases of its “Old No. 7” each year. That’s enough to cement its status as the No. 1 selling whiskey in the world. But the Volunteer State's whiskey industry — as a whole — has been a victim of that runaway success: the familiar black-labeled liquor rarely fetches more than $20 per bottle and so the category it represents came to be associated more with frenzied frat parties than sophisticated speakeasies.
Media
To describe my grad school program at the simplest level, I’m learning to make cool charts. I aspire to do something like this with my newfound (read: in-progress) knowledge.
Nieman Lab profiles The Plug, an outlet dedicated to covering Black startups and tech.
Sports
Kansas City will build the first stadium specifically created for women’s league soccer.
The new stadium is expected to cost around $70 million — provided by the owners — and will be built on a seven-acre plot of land in the Berkley Riverfront area in Kansas City, Mo., according to the release.
Currently, there are a dozen soccer stadiums that NWSL teams use, but none of them were built specifically for the women's teams. The new KC stadium is expected to seat 11,000 and is slated to open sometime in 2024, according to The Kansas City Star.
Podcasts I Listened to This Week
How Boeing’s Flawed 737 Max Made It Into the Air | The FRONTLINE Dispatch
What did Boeing know about the potential for disaster with its 737 Max passenger jet, and when did the company know it? Tom Jennings, director of the FRONTLINE/New York Times documentary Boeing’s Fatal Flaw, and Times reporter David Gelles detail what their findings reveal about the lead-up to the two 737 Max plane crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people.
In conversation with FRONTLINE Executive Producer Raney Aronson-Rath, Jennings and Gelles discuss what they learned about the technical issues with Boeing’s fastest-selling commercial jet, as well as how market pressures, corporate culture and failed regulatory oversight ushered a plane with a fatal design flaw into commercial service. Jennings and Gelles also discuss what has changed since the crashes — and how they’d each feel about walking onto a Boeing plane now.
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