#mastbaum

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[ ...Monday, February 27, 2023...Every town in the U.S. should give this some thought and practice it for ONE MONTH out of each year ! ...There is knowledge in darkness that we have long forgotten in the protective cocoon of artificial light, which has only been around for one Cosmic minute of our evolution... ]

"This Scottish Dark Sky Town Decided To Go Even Darker"

Moffat’s annual experiment in switching off artificial lighting has had unexpected results.

~ by Blair Mastbaum February 17, 2023

[via :: Atlas Obscura]

* * * *

“The truth is that there’s no better time to be happy than now.” If not now then when?. Your life will always be filled with challenges. It's better to admit it and decide to be happy anyway. One of my phrases: "For a long time it seemed like life was about to begin." The real life. But there was always an obstacle in the way, something to solve first, some unfinished business, time to pass, a debt to pay. Only then would life begin. Until I realized those obstacles were my life." “This perspective has helped me see that there is no shortcut to happiness.”.

-Eduardo Galeano

[travsd]

The Stanley Theatres

Today marks the 150th birthday of Jules E. Mastbaum (1872-1926). Not be confused with Jules Munshin and Jules Mendel! Jules Mastbaum’s main claim to fame, here anyway, was as the creator of the Stanley Theatre Chain, named after his brother and business partner Stanley Mastbaum, who died in 1918. He owed even more to his sisters, however, for two of them were married to heirs of the Gimbels…

[biglisbonnews]

This Scottish Dark Sky Town Decided To Go Even Darker On a chilly January night, a pale yellow moon shines down on the small Scottish town of Moffat and two teenagers standing outside a cozy, candlelit pub. The pair wait with handmade, triangular paper lanterns that glow from within. A boisterous group exits the establishment and one of the teens steps forward. “Do you need a link?” asks Sarah Rogers, 15, ginger curls poking out from under her woolen cap. The party pauses, a little confused. “A what?” asks one of them. In Victorian-era London, links—back then known as link boys—provided a kind of mobile lamppost service, escorting middle- and upper-class customers through the city's dark, foggy, and sometimes dangerous streets. Historically, links were usually destitute children trying to earn a living: A customer might pay a single farthing, a quarter of a penny, per trip. In Moffat, Rogers and her fellow modern links have other motivations. “We do it for tips and donate what we earn to the charity of our choice,” says Rogers. “I’m going to give mine to Friends of the Earth this year.” Moffat is a quaint market town of old stone buildings with a population of about 2,400. It sits in a valley in the hilly southern uplands 60 miles southeast of Glasgow, and first gained attention as a Victorian-era spa town known for its sulfur-rich springs. More recently, the town’s fame has taken a darker turn—literally. After upgrading its public lighting, in 2016 Moffat became the first European town to receive International Dark Sky Place certification. As link girl Rogers and her friend escort the group of pub goers to an afterparty, their lanterns are the only sources of light along the narrow lane. One of their charges stops to admire the stars; the Milky Way is easy to make out in the midnight sky. Rogers points out The Seven Sisters, or the Pleiades—her favorite—and a cluster that can be difficult to see. Here in Moffat’s dark sky, the stars seem almost near enough to touch. It’s so dark in Moffat, in fact, that it’s almost as if the power has been cut. And it has. Sort of. Inspired by the town’s Dark Sky recognition, two of Moffat’s lifelong residents, friends Carol Rogers (Sarah’s mother) and Evelyn Atkins, conceived of something much more radical. After spearheading the opening of a town astronomy center in 2021, “We caught the darkness bug,” says Atkins. “We wanted to try—if only for two weeks a year—to live almost entirely without artificial light.” The pair believed the experiment could show that natural darkness is good for health and wellbeing, and even helps bring a community together. It could also, they reasoned, become Moffat’s newest claim to fame. Rogers and Atkins began by urging friends and neighbors to turn off lights in yards, gardens, driveways, and even inside houses, eventually expanding their campaign to the entire town. “I think I met every single resident of Moffat,” says Atkins. “Some think I’m mad." “Darkness is good for us.” Moffat now turns off nearly all of its public lights for two weeks each winter. It’s an experiment to rediscover life before artificial lighting stole the darkness from us. Town officials encourage residents to turn off porch lights and even interior lamps. They call it the “dark weeks.” But not everyone was onboard at first. Some residents were hesitant, says Mayor Tracey Little. “They’d heard the stories about criminals coming out in the dark,” she says. “But that hasn’t happened here. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.” During the annual January dark weeks, community spirit comes alive. Residents host bonfires in backyards, organize community theater by candlelight, and join night walks to observe owls and the stars. “It’s the most fun time of the year,” says Carol Rogers. “It’s also the coziest. I feel my best during the dark weeks. I just know it’s healthier. I stop wearing my glasses. I go to bed earlier.” “Darkness is good for us,” says Agata Łopuszyńska of the Polytechnic University of Wroclaw. The urban planner specializes in helping cities embrace darkness. When she heard about Moffat’s plans to change its lighting several years ago, she visited to create a before-and-after series of photographs that shows just how striking the changes are. “The people there are nuts about darkness. If only other towns were as open to it as Moffat, the night time would be much more beautiful.” Astrophotographer and dark skies advocate Josh Dury thinks that Moffat’s approach should be an inspiration to other communities. “If you squeeze the whole of human evolution into a single day, artificial lighting has been around for a minute,” says Dury. “Exposure to light at night can have serious health implications.” He adds: “It can particularly affect our body’s hormones, including the production of melatonin, which is responsible for maintaining sleep patterns and nocturnal rhythms.” There’s also evidence, he says, of a link between artificial light use and the development of certain cancers. Light pollution is also bad for wildlife, especially nocturnal wildlife—including protected species in Britain such as barn owls, bats, and hedgehogs—and migratory birds. “They tend to breed less and less successfully in light polluted environments,” says Dury. Carol Rogers says maybe it’s time to rethink the overuse of artificial lighting in our lives, too. “Maybe we should be headed back to a darker, cozier time. Maybe that’s better for us. I know it’s better for me. It would certainly put the links back in business.” On that chilly January evening, her daughter Sarah, her face brightened by the lantern glow and her enthusiasm for her role as a link, brings her group to their destination. She's still bubbling over with tidbits of link history. “The word ‘link’ is the name of the cotton wick of the torches they carried,” Rogers says. “The service is even mentioned in Shakespeare’s Henry IV: ‘Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with thee in the night betwixt tavern and tavern.’ Brilliant, right? "Oh, one more," she exclaims as she heads into the darkness. "You know the saying ‘you can’t hold a candle to somebody’? It means you weren’t even good enough to be their link boy…or girl.” The lantern Rogers carries fades into the winter night as she looks for more customers to light their way, much as Moffat may be illuminating a new path for us to embrace the darkness of our ancestral past, and to see where that path leads us. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/dark-sky-moffat-scotland

[modelsof-color]

About Willi Smith

Willi Smith was considered one of the most successful African-American designers in the fashion industry at the time of his death in 1987, and the inventor of streetwear. His label that launched in 1976, WilliWear Limited, grossed over $25 million in sales by 1986 according to The Guardian. Inspired by the fashion he saw on the streets and also his desire to shape it, Smith’s accessibility and affordability of clothing helped democratize fashion.

Born in 1948, Willi Donnell Smith grew up in Philadelphia with an ironworker father and a mother skilled in the creative arts. “I was Mr. Bookworm. I was the artistic child no one understood. But my parents supported me. If I was doing a little drawing, my father didn’t say, ‘Why don’t you play baseball?’... The family sometimes used to say there were more clothes in the house than food.” After his parents divorced, Smith’s grandmother, Gladys “Nana” Bush, stepped in to nurture him, a role she played throughout his life.

Smith studied commercial art at Mastbaum Technical High School and fashion illustration at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art. He found himself bored by the limits of illustration, always “changing the design of the dress [he] was supposed to be illustrating.” Through the connections of a family for whom she cleaned, Bush organized an internship for Smith with venerated couturier Arnold Scaasi. At Scaasi, Smith assisted in creating fashions for clientele like Brooke Astor and Elizabeth Taylor, learning form, fit, embroidery, and the power wielded by access to a certain type of dress—a crash course in elite levels of fashion and the clothes he didn’t want to make

His label, Williwear, was ahead of its time: mixing the relaxed fit of sportswear with high-end elements of tailoring. His clothes were not meant to be untouchable, catwalk-only designs. Although the term “streetwear” has been much chewed over recently, Smith’s more elastic definition of the term (bringing urban culture to the catwalk) has been incredibly influential.

His clothes were meant for everybody. He said: “Fashion is a people thing and designers should remember that. Models pose in clothes. People live in them.” Though he was inspired by New York City, he wanted people everywhere to appreciate the culture and inspiration of the city. “Being black has a lot to do with my being a good designer,” he said. “Most of these designers who have to run to Paris for colour and fabric combinations should go to church on Sunday in Harlem. It���s all right there.”

[dozydawn]

portrait of wgm anna akhsharumova by itella mastbaum

[themuseumwithoutwalls]

MWW Artwork of the Day (7/17/24) Auguste Rodin (French, 1840-1917) The Clenched Hand (c. 1885) Bronze sculpture, 47 x 29.8 x 20.3 cm. Rodin Museum, Philadelphia PA (Jules E. Mastbaum Bequest)

Rodin explored the expressive power of hands almost obsessively, using them to convey an infinite variety of emotions —- fury, anguish, fatigue —- and as metaphors for creation. It is thought that he conceived this one as a study for "The Burghers of Calais" but probably rejected the hand as being too fiercely animated.

[psalm22-6]

Source: The Universal Weekly, 10 July 1926, with details about the acquisition of Les Miserables (1925) by Universal Films and its American premiere, which was presented in the British 'de luxe' style (with live music) and attended by the French ambassador. Awards were bestowed by French representatives on the advertisers who arranged for the film's showing. The Philadelphia premiere was attended by such Pennsylvania notables as newspaper magnate Cyrus H. K. Curtis, anti-suffragist editor Edward Bok, publisher George Horace Lorimer, Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania Thomas J. Garland, Mayor of Philadelphia W. Freeland Kendrick, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad William Wallace Atterbury, notorious political boss and congressman William Scott Vare, investment banker Edward T. Stotesbury, and movie theater magnate Jules E. Mastbaum. The Moving Picture World reported that Meanwhile, the Washington premiere was attended by first lady Grace Coolidge, her son John, then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover (we'd like to thank you), Mississippi senator Pat Harrison, Ohio senator Frank Willis, and Washington senator Wesley Jones,

[jpbjazz]

LÉGENDES DU JAZZ

JOHNNY COLES, UN TROMPETTISTE MÉCONNU

"Johnny moves by the moment. He plays things with such sheer beauty that I wonder where it's coming from."

- Herbie Hancock

Né le 3 juillet 1926 à Trenton, au New Jersey, John ‘’Johnny’’ Coles avait grandi à Philadelphie où sa famille s’était installée durant son enfance. Coles avait commencé à apprendre la trompette en autodidacte à partir de l’âge de dix ans. Il avait ajouté le flugelhorn à son arsenal un peu plus tard. Durant son séjour à Philadelphie, Coles avait côtoyé de futurs grands noms du jazz comme Benny Golson, Jimmy Heath et John Coltrane.

À l’âge de dix-neuf ans, Coles avait fait partie d’un groupe appelé Slappy and his Swingsters.

Après avoir étudié la musique à la Mastbaum Vocational School de Philadelphie, Coles avait joué avec des groupes de l’armée durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. C’est durant son séjour dans l’armée que Coles avait développé son propre style. Coles avait été particulièrement influencé par Charlie Shavers, Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie et Miles Davis. Il appréciait aussi Freddie Hubbard, même si de son propre aveu, il était plutôt un trompettiste ‘’mélancolique.’’

DÉBUTS DE CARRIÈRE

Après sa démobilisation, Coles avait joué dans un groupe de rhythm & blues dirigé par le saxophoniste Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, qui comprenait également John Coltrane et Red Garland. Coles avait fait partie du groupe de Vinson de 1948 à 1951. Après avoir brièvement travaillé avec Bull Moose Jackson en 1952, Coles s’était joint au groupe d’Earl Bostic dont il avait été membre de 1955 à 1956.

À la même époque, Coles avait également collaboré avec des grands noms du jazz comme le batteur Philly Joe Jones (1951) et le saxophoniste ténor James Moody (1956-1958). Après avoir quitté le groupe de Moody, Coles avait commencé à travailler avec Gil Evans, qui s’était fait connaître du grand public dans le cadre de sa collaboration avec Miles Davis. Coles avait d’ailleurs collaboré avec Evans et Davis dans le cadre de l’enregistrement des albums ''Porgy and Bess'' (1959) et ''Sketches of Spain'' (1960).

Un peu comme Miles Davis, Evans admirait le sens de l’économie de Coles et sa capacité d’exploiter l’espace musical avec un nombre limité de notes. Ces qualités étaient évidentes sur certains des plus importants enregistrements d’Evans, plus particulièrement sur ses réécritures de classiques qui figuraient sur des albums comme New Bottle Old Wine (1958), Great Jazz Standards (1959) et surtout sur son album-phare Out of the Cool enregistré en 1960. Décrivant sa collaboration avec Evans, Coles avait déclaré au cours d’une entrevue qu’il avait accordée en 1973: ‘’Gil Evans's composition was easy to read, but it was the interpretation of it which made the music. I remember once asking Gil how he wanted me to play something and he said, "Don't worry about it. You're going to play it right anyhow." He left me a bit mystified, you know.’’ Commentant l’enregistrement de la pièce "Sunken Treasure" qui faisait partie de l’album Out of the Cool en 1960, Coles avait précisé: "We did it all in one take.’’ Un autre des faits marquants de l’album était une reprise  de "Davenport Blues" de Bix Beiderbecke.

Coles avait travaillé avec Evans jusqu’en 1964. À l’époque, Coles il avait été contacté par Charles Mingus pour participer à une tournée avec un sextet comprenant les saxophonistes Eric Dolphy et Clifford Jordan, le pianiste Jaki Byard et le batteur Dannie Richmond. En 1968, Coles s’était joint au nouveau sextet du pianiste Herbie Hancock. Quelques années plus tôt, Hancock avait abandonné la direction de son propre groupe pour devenir le pianiste de Miles Davis dont il avait fait partie durant cinq ans. Commentant sa collaboration avec Hancock, Coles avait précisé: "Herbie Hancock's was the only group I played in that I got to work ahead of time. I'd warm up for at least a half-hour, ready to play. I had a ball with that band. I really couldn't tell you in words how gratifying it was." De 1969 à 1971, Coles avait travaillé avec le groupe de Ray Charles. "A man must eat’’ avait expliqué Coles.

Coles s’était joint à l’orchestre de Duke Ellington en 1971. Décrivant ses débuts avec le groupe, Coles avait commenté: "I asked Duke's son Mercer, and he said that Duke was considering writing something to feature me." Coles était demeuré avec l’orchestre d’Ellington jusqu’à la mort d’Ellington en 1974. Il expliquait: "I'll stay with Duke for a while, because it'll give me a measure of prestige that I haven't yet had.’’ Mais malgré tout le prestige que lui avait apportaé sa collaboration avec Ellington, Coles avait commencé à regretter la liberté de création dont il avait bénéficié lors de son séjour dans le groupe d’Evans. Il poursuivait: "As far as Gil was concerned, Ellington was the biggest influence on his writing. I enjoy playing in both bands, but I had more freedom playing in Gil's band.’’ Coles avait ajouté: "Some of Duke's writing is sparse. Sometimes he might just write 12 bars and leave it to the guys in the band to fill it up. He has musicians in the band who have been with him for many years and they just about know what he wants without him having to tell them." Coles se sentait aussi isolé dans le groupe d’Ellington, car l’orchestre était composé de ‘’cliques’’ et il ne sentait accepté dans aucune d’entre elles. Dans ce contexte, on peut comprendre que la mort d’Ellington ait été perçue par Coles comme une sorte de libération.

Par la suite, Coles avait travaillé avec Art Blakey (1976), Dameronia (un groupe en hommage au pianiste et compositeur Tadd Dameron), Mingus Dynasty et le Count Basie Orchestra, qui était dirigé par le trompettiste Thad Jones depuis la mort de Basie en 1984.

En 1961, Coles avait enregistré un premier album comme leader intitulé The Warm Sound. L’album avait été suivi de Little Johnny C deux ans plus tard, qui était considéré comme un classique.

DERNIÈRES ANNÉES

Après s’être installé dans la région de San Francisco en 1985, Coles avait enregistré avec les saxophonistes Frank Morgan et Chico Freeman l’année suivante. Après être retourné à Philadelphie en 1989, Coles avait de nouveau travaillé avec Morgan et avait été membre du Philip Morris Superband. En 1990, Coles avait enregistré avec Charles Earland and Buck Hill. 

Souffrant de problèmes de santé, Coles s’était installé à Philadelphie dans les années 1990.

Johnny Coles est mort d’un cancer à l’estomac le 21 décembre 1997 à l’hôpital de l’Université de Pennsylvanie à Philadelphie. Il était âgé de soixante et onze ans. Il ne laissait aucun survivant.

Le pianiste Herbie Hancock avait déclaré au sujet de Coles: "Johnny moves by the moment. He plays things with such sheer beauty that I wonder where it's coming from."

Un peu comme Miles Davis, Coles était reconnu pour son habileté à s’exprimer en utilisant une quantité minimale de notes. Coles serait probablement devenu une légende du jazz s’il n’avait pas eu un son et un style aussi similaire à celui de Davis. Mais malgré ces similitudes, Coles était un trompettiste très original et très inventif qui avait développé un son et un style bien à lui.

©-2024, tous droits réservés, Les Productions de l’Imaginaire historique

SOURCES:

‘’Johnny Coles.’’ Wikipedia, 2024.

‘’Johnny Coles.’’ All About Jazz, 2024.

‘’Johnny Coles, 71, Warm Jazz Trumpeter.’’ New York Times, 31 décembre 1997.

[walrusmagazine]

Around the World in Eighty Lies

How a writer fabricated a series of stories for Atlas Obscura

Atlas Obscura’s editorial mission is to tell true stories that seem, at first glance, to be stranger than fiction, which is perhaps why Mastbaum’s strange fictions seemed so plausible. His stories weren’t outlandish; they were well researched and populated with factual details, with believable quotes attributed to real people. Writing them was at least as much work as reporting truthfully would have been, suggesting they weren’t born of intellectual or professional laziness but some other, more inscrutable, motivation.

Read more at thewalrus.ca.

[yourdailyqueer]

Blair Mastbaum

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Gay

DOB: 24 January 1979

Ethnicity: White

Occupation: Writer, model

[philamuseum]

Did you know that the Rodin Museum was the dream of movie-theater magnate Jules Mastbaum? Following his unexpected death, his wife Etta became responsible for seeing the project through. This marble bust of Mastbaum was carved by French sculptor Henri-Léon Gréber, who was also commissioned to create the Rodin Museum’s copy of “The Kiss.” Gréber’s son, Jacques, was one of the architects responsible for the building and gardens that house not only his father’s work but the Mastbaum’s extensive collection of Auguste Rodin masterpieces—the second largest after the artist’s personal collection. “Bust of Jules Mastbaum,” carved in marble around 1927–28, by Henri Gréber

[rockincountryblues]

Gene Vincent, George Hamilton IV and Eddie Cochran, backstage at Mastbaum Theatre In Philadelphia, PA, 1957

[route22ny]

The Stanley Theatre in Utica, New York, as seen on June 21, 2021. 

From its cinematreasures page: “Built for the Mastbaum chain and opened on September 10, 1928, the Stanley Theatre is named for one of the Mastbaum brothers. It was designed by the famed theater architect Thomas Lamb and was called by a contemporary Mexican Baroque style. However, it is in reality a mish-mash of various theater styles popular in the 1920’s, including Spanish Baroque, Indian, Middle Eastern and even a touch of Art Deco style. The opening program featured the silent movie “Ramona” starring Dolores del Rio.”

The theater is now a live performance venue, known as the Stanley Center for the Arts.

[biglisbonnews]

How the Discovery of a Unique Sign Language Reconnected a Linguist With Her Past Speaking through an interpreter on a three-way video call from a chilly Tel Aviv, Sara Lanesman, a linguist at Haifa University’s Sign Language Research Laboratory, signs with energetic motions that convey the intensity of what she felt during two formative moments of her life. The first: having to flee Algeria as a child with her family. The second: finding the country again through a sign language she didn’t know existed. Several years ago, Lanesman and her mentor, the late linguist Irit Meir, were documenting the history of Israeli Sign Language (ISL). “We were interviewing subjects, asking them to do a simple picture-naming task,” Lanesman says. They asked a participant to sign “boy.” The 65-year-old volunteer, known to the research team by his initials, Y.Z., had immigrated to Israel from Algeria. His response caught their attention, Lanesman recalls. “He asked us: ‘Do you want me to use the sign I use with my friends, or the sign I use with my mother?’” This unexpected question from the study participant would lead to the discovery of a unique, nearly-lost language that was hanging on right under their noses. For Lanesman, finding the unknown language was particularly poignant: It was born in an isolated and now lost Jewish community in the same country she had fled as a child. From the start, Lanesman noticed the mysterious language had a few similarities with ISL. For example, the sign for “couscous,” one of the main staples of both Algerian and Israeli cuisine, emulates rubbing durum between the hands—just as it does in ISL. However, of the 300 signs Lanesman initially documented, there was very little overlap with any of the six sign languages she knows. “There was nothing in the literature. It was completely undocumented,” she says. “It was definitely a new language”—one now known as Algerian Jewish Sign Language (AJSL). Despite being new to Lanesman and other linguists, AJSL has centuries-deep roots: It evolved perhaps as early as the 15th century in the walled Jewish quarter of the Algerian town of Ghardaia. “AJSL is unique among known sign languages, and mutually intelligible with none of them, except for a few words that are common in all of that region’s sign languages, such as the pan-Arabic sign for water, which emulates drinking from a well,” says Kearsy Cormier, a linguist at University College London. “The isolation of its development shows in its unique signs, most of which are in no other language.” “The iconic origins of the signs are more preserved in AJSL than in ISL,” Lanesman says. “They’re less abstract.” For example, the sign for “deaf” is depicted as the action of cutting off one’s tongue with scissors. The signs for “boy” and “girl” reference sex organs, and are considered impolite or even obscene to ISL signers, yet they are completely acceptable in AJSL, reflecting different cultural norms. “In addition to embedded culture,” Lanesman says, “there are also elements of AJSL that hold community traditions like fossils.” The AJSL sign for the Jewish harvest holiday of Shavuot, for instance, depicts the act of spilling water. “The sign came from the ritual act of worshippers throwing water on one another, a custom that was prevalent in North African Jewish communities that has since died out. It’s now preserved only in the sign,” says Lanesman. Lanesman adds that AJSL also lacks certain concepts that ISL has. For one, there are very few signs for colors. Some reference common objects, such as using the sign for “carrot” to describe something as orange-colored. But for pink, green, and many other colors, signers simply point to something nearby with a similar color. Although AJSL is extraordinarily self-contained, there are some similarities between it and Algerian Sign Language (ASL), the dominant sign language of the region where AJSL originated. In both AJSL and ASL, the sign for “blue” depicts the crushing of blue powder used for eyeshadow. “I loved this sign when I was a girl in Algeria, when I used ASL to communicate,” Lanesman recalls. Now, it’s one of the signs found in both languages that have special meaning for her. “I still like those shared signs, historical connections to a place I only vaguely remember,” she says. In 1962, when Algeria won its independence from France, the parliament passed a law that denied citizenship to all non-Muslims, forcing out the country’s Jewish communities, many of which went back centuries. “I was six when my parents and my three deaf sisters had to flee from our home in Algiers,” Lanesman says. After a brief stay in Marseilles, the family immigrated to Israel, where she and her sisters quickly learned ISL. Lanesman says she forgot ASL, and never encountered another sign language from her homeland until that fateful day with Y.Z. in the language lab. Intrigued by the mysterious new language, she set out to document as much of it as she could, locating additional signers in Haifa and Tel Aviv to interview. During her research, Lanesman discovered something else that makes AJSL different from all other sign languages. “Probably the most unique aspect of AJSL now is that, ironically, it’s passed down from one generation to the next almost exclusively by hearing people,” says Lanesman. While deaf members of the displaced Ghardaia community quickly learned the dominant sign language of their new home, such as ISL, their hearing relatives never learned another sign language. As a result, many hearing members use AJSL to communicate with deaf people within the community, including their children and grandchildren, helping to preserve the language. Passing down AJSL in this way echoes how the language survived over centuries in Ghardaia’s walled Jewish quarter, where the isolated population was culturally cut off from the Muslim majority surrounding them. The men sometimes left the mellah to do business, but most women lived their lives entirely inside the walls, according to historical reports by archaeologists Lloyd Briggs and Norma Guède, who visited in the 1950s. “Traditionally, these small village sign languages are spoken by a majority of the hearing population because they occur in very specific places: in insular communities where there’s a genetic predisposition for deafness, and in places where there’s little opportunity for the community’s deaf people to come in contact with signers of the dominant sign language of their area,” says Cormier. While Ghardaia’s community was forced to disperse, the language lives on, which is unusual for any language that evolved in an isolated community. “Perhaps the most remarkable thing about AJSL is that it has survived centuries, resisting outside influences and a mass migration of its speakers,” Cormier says. The language of the lost Ghardaia mellah is hanging on, but it’s also fading. “Each year, fewer and fewer AJSL signers that I interviewed are around,” says Lanesman. “It’s dying, but slowly.” To preserve the language, Lanesman plans to conduct interviews in France—because of the country’s colonial history with Algeria, she suspects there may be many more AJSL signers there. “This community’s linguistic legacy lives on, proof that we existed and thrived in Algeria for hundreds of years,” Lanesman says. “It’s worth documenting, even if it won’t be saved.” https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/algerian-jewish-sign-language

[ramascreen]

Official Trailer For IT TAKES THREE

Official Trailer For IT TAKES THREE

Gunpowder & Sky has released this official trailer for their new romantic comedy IT TAKES THREE On Demand and Digital on September 3, 2021. Starring:  Jared Gilman, David Gridley, Aurora Perrineau, Mikey Madison Directed By:  Scott Coffey Written By: Logan Burdick, Blair Mastbaum When the coolest guy in school discovers that the new girl sees through his popularity and good looks, he enlists the…

[goon52]

I was like 14 at #Mastbaum high.... Jammin shit.... 😂😂😂 wit these niggaz.... #facts.....@rickreed79 and @melodic_synth....just gettin back from #AtlanticCityComedyFestival.... 💪💪💪