Once more: Christoph Niemann’s tribute to Maurice Sendak. Because it is a wonderful way to start the new year.

Happy 2013.

When this list of Woody Guthrie’s “New Year’s Rulin’s” popped up on the internet a year ago, it became an instant classic of the season. Which means that the time  has rolled around to remember it, reread it and take it again to heart. There’s a rulin’ on it to suit just about anybody because it never hurts to be reminded “Don’t get lonesome,” “Stay glad,” “Dream good” and “Love everybody.” Also, “Wash teeth if any.”

Happy New Year everybody!

Via Lists of Note

One last favorite thing of the year, this one from producer Annmarie Baldonado. Says Annmarie:

This little video is from last year, when my main associations with Zooey Deschanel were the great film All the Real Girls, and her band She & Him (and of course, the films 500 Days of Summer, Elf, and even Almost Famous).  Her Fox TV program, The New Girl was a few months old and just finding its footing back then.  These days, the ensemble sitcom is one of my favorite shows.  And now, Deschanel may always be Jess to me.  That is not a bad thing.

Enjoy and happy New Year.

150 years ago today, on December 31, 1862, President Lincoln decided to go forward with the Emancipation Proclamation. It’s an anniversary worth pausing to consider. Here, then, is an audio montage of the voices of former slaves speaking about their experiences to the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s. It was put together by producer Eric Mennel for the radio show BackStory with the American History Guys (my alma mater) for a show they did devoted to the Emancipation Proclamation.

Here, too, is an interesting piece — “On America’s Most Important New Year’s Eve, Lincoln Found Our Better Angels” — by David Shribman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The Fresh Air interview with Tony Kushner about his screenplay for Lincoln.

And the FA interview with Adam Goodheart on the Civil War.

-Nell

Family Photographs Made Fantastical by Alain Leboile

via Flavorwire

Terry Gross (above in the early 1990s) on Fresh Air’s 25th year as a daily NPR show:

We feel very fortunate — not many shows get to celebrate a 25th anniversary — because we’ve been given the greatest anniversary gift a show can ask for: you. Whether you’ve been listening for 25 years or just a few days, you have given us the privilege of marking this anniversary and continuing to produce Fresh Air. On behalf of all of us who have worked on the show over the past 25 years, our current crew and our alumni, thank you. A lot.

This past weekend, as part of the New York Times’ end-of-year tribute to those who died in 2012, artist and illustrator Christoph Niemann made an extraordinary animation in honor of Maurice Sendak using a musical bed of Schubert and audio from Fresh Air’s 2011 interview with the late author and illustrator. Prepare to be undone.

The full interview is here.

image via lookintomysuns 

Coming up today on the show, we’re going to listen back to our 25th anniversary show, “Fresh Air at 25.” It features some of the wonderful musical moments that have happened on Fresh Air since we first went daily and national with NPR on May 11, 1987. It features live performances from Susannah McCorkle, Shirley Horn, Loudon Wainwright III, Charlie Haden, Richard Thompson and Nick Lowe (featured in the video above along with Mavis Staples and Wilco) among others. Stay tuned.

For My Ideal Bookshelf, writer Thessaly La Force and illustrator Jane Mount have tapped people like Patti Smith, Lemony Snicket, Jonathan Lethem and Christoph Neimann, and had them narrow down the books that shaped them to a single shelf. It’s a neat peak inside some interesting minds. And of course leads you to wonder what shape your own shelf might take. Me, I’m thinking Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The Boys of My Youth, Without Feathers, Miss Rumphius, Pride and Prejudice, Blood Horses, The Collected Poems of Adam Zagajewski. What about you? What would your ideal bookshelf look like?

-Nell

Via Brain Pickings

The quiz will be on Wednesday.

laughingsquid:

The Simpsons’ Mr. Burns Explains the Fiscal Cliff

Poof! And just like that, we’re gone. Have a good weekend!

Image: Nimbus II by Berndnaut Smilde via The Washington Post

For your weekend reading: I was talking last week with a friend about this Oxford American piece — “I Will Remain Forever Faithful” — on ‘Lil Wayne and teaching in the New Orleans public schools. The talking led me to reread it which reminded me of how wonderful it is which made me want to share it with you.:

Right before you become a teacher, you are told by all manner of folks that it will be 1) the hardest thing you’ve ever done, and 2) the best thing you’ve ever done. That seems like a recipe for recruiting wannabe martyrs. In any case, high stakes can blind you to the best moments. One day, I was stressing over what I imagined was my one-man quest to keep Darius in school and out of jail, and missed that a heated dispute between two fifth-graders was escalating. Finally, I asked them what was wrong.

“Mr. Ramsey,” one of the boys pleaded, “will you please tell him that if you go into space for a year and come back to earth that all your family will be dead because time moves slower in space?”

The essay is from 2008, but it seems not entirely untimely since, in late September, Lil Wayne surpassed Elvis for number of appearances on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

-Nell

(Source: lilwayneaddict1)

Stephen Colbert on the parallels between Elvis Costello’s relationship with Bruce Springsteen and Colbert’s relationship with Jon Stewart:

[Elvis Costello] was trying when he was younger to try to write Bruce Springsteen songs — and that he really liked Bruce Springsteen’s sound. And he said, but then he eventually stopped doing that because he would try to write these songs like Bruce Springsteen and he would end up writing things that were a little bit wry, sardonic or even character-based. And they didn’t have that sort of sincere, anthemic quality that Bruce’s songs sometimes have. And that kind of blew me away, because he’s describing his relation to Bruce Springsteen kind of like my relationship to Jon Stewart. And Jon’s favorite artist is Bruce Springsteen, and my favorite rock artist is probably Elvis Costello. So there’s an odd parallel between Elvis’ evolution from what he was trying to do like Bruce and my evolution from what I was trying to do when I worked with Jon.

(Source: garblesmarkle)

Doris Day on singing ‘Que Sera Sera’ In The Man Who Knew Too Much:

The first time somebody told me it was going to be in that movie, I thought, “Why?” I didn’t think there was a place to put that song. … I thought, “I’m not crazy about that. Where are they going to put it? For what?” … I didn’t think it was a good song.

Image via furcoatsanddiamonds

The folks over at Open Culture have pointed out that an hour-long documentary about Johnny Cash’s 1968 concert at Folsom Prison is available in its entirety on YouTube. Not a bad way to spend some free time during the week between Christmas and New Years, no?