Five Bullets 3.7.25
Station Eleven, Manson, Pink Floyd & more.
Good morning and happy Friday friends.
It’s a cool and windy morning here in New York City. This week feels like winter is still hanging on, but it won’t last long as spring is nearly here.
As long as I’ve been writing this newsletter, I’ve aimed to publish twice-weekly with one longer blog/essay post earlier in the week and a five bullets newsletter each Friday. I’ve been unsuccessful at this goal so I’m aiming to publish a blog each week of this month to see if I can maintain this schedule. This week I wrote a post combining everything I’ve read recently on the Endurance. This is the first of at least a two or three part series of posts on this topic, with another post on Mensun Bound’s book coming next week.
This year I want to stop hoarding uncompleted work and publish more!
Here’s five bullets which captured my attention this week:
Books: Last night I finished reading Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. I first heard about this book back in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mandel’s genre-bending novel follows a travelling symphony and theatre group navigating the vestiges of North America twenty years after a global pandemic wiped out civilization. The book is suspenseful and thought provoking with carefully-crafted interwoven stories jumping from past to present. It was a fun, quick read with inventive and inspired writing. HBO adapted the book into a miniseries in 2021.
Documentary: Chaos: The Manson Murders from director Errol Morris explores evidence of new links between Charles Manson, the CIA, LSD, Jack Ruby and more frightening connections. The series is based on Tom O’Neil’s book which O’Neil spent over 20 years writing and researching. Joan Didion’s The White Album captures the fugue-like state of affairs in America during the late 1960s. Alissa Wilkinson writes how Joan Didion knew the stories we’d tell about the Manson murders.
History: What’s in a list? What can we learn from lists? This week I blogged about Shackleton’s List, an inventory of food and equipment Shackleton and his crew of five took with them aboard their 22.5-foot modified whaling ship on an impossible voyage through the Drake Passage from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island. The journey was just one part of the legendary story of Shackleton’s expedition which endured nearly 500 days in the Antarctic seas.
Music: Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii is getting a 4K re-release. In 1972 the band performed at the empty ruins of the Pompeii amphitheater, the perfect location to capture their psychedelic-rock dynamic by providing a surreal, monolithic backdrop to the music. Director Adrian Maben came up with the idea to document the band performing in the ruins. To celebrate the release, the film is coming to theaters this April.
NYC: Who Transcribes NYC's 400-Year-Old Records? The Department of Records & Information Services (DORIS) is looking for help transcribing records of formerly enslaved people. In this short video, commissioner Pauline Toole describes the department’s process of storing, scanning, and digitizing the archives with the hope that families can trace their lineages more easily as well as allowing researchers access to the information. Volunteers can help DORIS transcribe the records from home. [I’ve been a volunteer with DORIS’ oral history initiative Neighborhood Stories Project since 2021.]
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That’s all for this week! Thanks for reading. I really enjoy getting this newsletter out each Friday. It gives me reason to dive into my interests, learn more, and share it with you.
Have a great weekend,
Keith.
We weren't aware that O'Neill's book was getting the documentary treatment! One of the better books we've read in the last year+. Thanks for the heads up on this!