Arlington Street Church - ASC Tiffany Education Center

The Arlington Street Church is a Unitarian Universalist church across from the Public Garden in Boston, Massachusetts. Because of its geographic prominence and the notable ministers who have served the congregation, the church is considered to be among the most historically important in American Unitarianism and Unitarian Universalism. Completed in 1861, it was designed by Arthur Gilman and Gridley James Fox Bryant to resemble James Gibbs' St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London.

In the 1960s, the congregation became active in the Civil Rights Movement. James Reeb, a minister active in the congregation, was murdered during a march in Selma, Alabama. Under the ministry of Jack Mendelsohn, the church became a center for protests against the Vietnam War. In the 1980s, the church led AIDS awareness programs and support for the homeless.

Arlington Street Church Tiffany Education Center

The main sanctuary space has 16 large-scale stained-glass windows installed by Tiffany Studios from 1899 to 1929. Originally, all of the sanctuary windows were glazed with clear glass. In 1898, the congregation voted to start installation of memorial stained glass windows created by the studios of Louis C. Tiffany, and commissioned a set of designs for all 20 windows. The last of 16 Tiffany windows was installed in 1929, just before the Great Depression dried up available funds. By the time the economic crisis had eased, Tiffany Studios had been liquidated (in 1937), and new Tiffany windows were unobtainable.

The Tiffany windows were designed by Frederick Wilson (1858–1932), Tiffany's chief designer for ecclesiastical windows. He made extensive use of Tiffany's special glassmaking technologies, including confetti glass, iridescent glass, 3D-textured "drapery glass", pastel colors for "painting in glass", and the trademark opalescent “Favrile” glass. There are as many as six or seven layers of glass in a Tiffany window, producing visual textures that would otherwise have to be painted in. Only some fine details impractical to produce in glass were hand-painted, in permanent enamel.

Soundbreaking

8 Episodes: Nov 14 - 23, 2016

Featuring more than 160 original interviews with some of the most celebrated recording artists, producers, and music industry pioneers of all time, Soundbreaking charts a century’s worth of innovation and experimentation, and offers a behind-the-scenes look at the birth of brand new sounds.

Eminem: Walk on Water, Stan, Love the Way You Lie (ft. Skylar Grey) (Live) - SNL

"I walk on water

But I ain't no Jesus

I walk on water

But only when it freezes"

The Farthest Voyager in Space

pbs.org

"THE FARTHEST tells the captivating tales of the people and events behind one of humanity’s greatest achievements in exploration: NASA’s Voyager mission, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this August. The twin spacecraft—each with less computing power than a cell phone—used slingshot trajectories to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. They sent back unprecedented images and data that revolutionized our understanding of the spectacular outer planets and their many peculiar moons."

What Happened Miss Simone?

Using never-before-heard recordings, rare archival footage and her best-known songs, this is the story of legendary singer and activist Nina Simone.

Release June 26, 2015 (Netflix)

Yūrei-Yōkai-ga Complete Works, Sogo Museum of Art Yokohama

SOGO MUSEUM OF ART exhibition if about 160 works et specter ghost images of ukiyo-e, such as ghost picture scroll.

Yūrei

Yūrei (幽霊) are figures in Japanese folklore, analogous to Western legends of ghosts. The name consists of two kanji, 幽 (yū), meaning “faint” or “dim” and 霊 (rei), meaning “soul” or “spirit.” Alternative names include 亡霊 (Bōrei) meaning ruined or departed spirit, 死霊 (Shiryō) meaning dead spirit, or the more encompassing 妖怪 (Yōkai) or お化け (Obake).

Yōkai

Yōkai (妖怪, ghost, phantom, strange apparition) are a class of supernatural monsters in Japanese folklore. The word yōkai is made up of the kanji for “mysterious” and “weird”.[citation needed] Yōkai range eclectically from the malevolent to the mischievous, or occasionally bring good fortune to those who encounter them. Often they possess animal features (such as the Kappa, which is similar to a turtle, or the Tengu which has wings), other times they can appear mostly human, some look like inanimate objects and others have no discernible shape.

The Sandman - Vertigo Comics

The Sandman is a comic book series written by Neil Gaiman and published by DC Comics. Beginning with issue #47, it was placed under the imprint Vertigo. It chronicles the adventures of Dream of The Endless, who rules over the world of dreams, in 75 issues. It was published from 1989 until 1996. Gaiman's contract stipulated that the series would end when he left it.

The Sandman was one of Vertigo's flagship titles, and is available as a series of ten trade paperbacks. It has also been reprinted in a recolored four-volume Absolute hardcover edition with slipcase. Critically acclaimed, The Sandman was the only comic to ever win the World Fantasy Award, and is one of the few comic books ever to be on the New York Times Best Seller list, along with Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns. It was one of five comics to make Entertainment Weekly's "100 best reads from 1983 to 2008", ranking at 46. Norman Mailer described the series as "a comic book for intellectuals."

The Sandman's main character is Dream, the Lord of Dreams, who is essentially the anthropomorphic personification of dreams. The storylines primarily take place in the Dreaming, Morpheus's realm, and the waking world, with occasional visits to other domains, such as Hell, Faerie, Asgard, and the domains of the other Endless. 

The Sandman was initially published as a monthly serial, in 32-page comic books (with some exceptions to this pattern). As the series quickly increased in popularity, DC Comics began to reprint them in hardcover and paperback editions, each representing either a complete novel or a collection of related short stories.

DC first published "The Doll's House" storyline in a collection called simply The Sandman. Shortly thereafter, the first three volumes were published and named independently and also collected in an eponymous boxed set.

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Seasons of Mists

The issues in the collection first appeared in 1990 and 1991. The collection first appeared in paperback and hardback in 1992. The title is the opening phrase of John Keats' "Ode to Autumn".

It introduces Endless siblings Destiny and Delirium, and features Thor, Odin and Loki from Norse mythology; Anubis and Bast from Egyptian mythology; Susanoo-no-mikoto from Japanese mythology; Lucifer and the Angels Duma and Remiel from Christianity; Shivering Jemmy, a Lord of Chaos with the body of a child and the mind of a monster; Kilderkin, a Lord of Order who takes the form of a cardboard box, and the fairies Cluracan and Nuala, who will play important roles in later stories. Season of Mists marks the introduction of the Norse gods for the first time in the series.

Season of Mists is the first appearance of one of the central themes of the series, that of rules and responsibilities and whether we can lay them down. The gathering of the Endless family which opens the book makes the second reference to the "prodigal", an Endless sibling who abandoned his realm and responsibilities. The family gathering leads to Dream deciding that he must return to the underworld to right a wrong he committed, an event which triggers a major plot arc throughout the series.

Morpheus leaves his realm to travel to the underworld, where he imprisoned his former lover Nada, to release her. Having previously departed the realm with it very angry with him (in the first collection, Preludes and Nocturnes), Morpheus is apprehensive about the task. He sets about it, wanting to do what is right, but prepared for a confrontation which he knows he may lose.

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Vertigo - DC Comics

Vertigo is an imprint of the American comic-book publisher DC Comics. Its books are marketed to a late-teen and adult audience, and may contain graphic violence, substance abuse, frank (but not explicit) depictions of sexuality, profanity, and controversial subjects. Although many of its releases are in the horror and fantasy genres, it also publishes works dealing with crime, social satire, speculative fiction, and biography. Each issue's cover carries the advisory label "Suggested for mature readers" (regardless of a specific issue's content). As of 2010, Karen Berger is the executive editor of the imprint, and has overseen it since its inception in 1993.

Vertigo comics series have won the comics industry's Eisner Award, including the Best Continuing Series of various years (Sandman, Preacher, 100 Bullets and Fables). Several of its publications have been adapted to film, including Hellblazer, A History of Violence, Stardust, and V for Vendetta.

 

Long-running titles

Hellblazer (274 issues to date)

Swamp Thing Vol.2 (171 issues)

100 Bullets (100 issues)

Fables (100 issues to date)

Animal Man (89 issues)

Doom Patrol Vol.2 (87 issues)

The Sandman (75 issues)

The Books of Magic (75 issues plus sequel series)

Lucifer (75 issues)

Sandman Mystery Theatre (70 issues)

Shade, the Changing Man (70 issues)

Preacher (66 issues plus tie-ins)

Transmetropolitan (60 issues)

The Dreaming (60 issues)

Y: The Last Man (60 issues)

DMZ (comics) (60 issues)

The Invisibles (59 issues over three volumes)

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"I'm not blessed, or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do, and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes; in hospitals and forests and abbatoirs. For some folks death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them."
Death, talking about herself, in Dream Country.

Kanye West: Runaway [My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy]

Kanye West
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Rolling Stone - 5 Stars

"My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is his most maniacally inspired music yet, coasting on heroic levels of dementia, pimping on top of Mount Olympus."

Runaway
Runaway is a 35-minute long, short film directed by Kanye West. It serves as the music video for the song of the same name. The film depicts a romantic relationship between a man and a half-woman, half-phoenix, and is set to music by Kanye West, most of which is from his album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

It was filmed in Prague over the period of four days in the summer of 2010. West describes the video as an "overall representation of what he dreams and a parallel to his music career". According to model Selita Ebanks, who co-stars in the video, the moral is, "the world doesn't accept, or they try to change, what is different, instead of trying to understand it." On a personal note, I totally agree with that sentiment. Bill

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of the largest museums in the United States, and contains the second largest permanent museum collection in the Western Hemisphere, after the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The museum was founded in 1870 and its current location dates to 1909. In addition to its curatorial undertakings, the museum is affiliated with an art academy, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and a sister museum, the Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts, in Nagoya, Japan.

The Museum was founded in 1870 and opened in 1876, with a large portion of its collection taken from the Boston Athenaeum Art Gallery. Originally located in a red Gothic Revival building on Copley Square in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, it moved to its current location on Huntington Avenue, Boston's "Avenue of the Arts," in 1909. The museum's present building was commenced in 1907, when museum trustees hired architect Guy Lowell to create a master plan for a museum that could be built in stages as funding was obtained for each phase. The first section of Lowell’s neoclassical design was completed in 1909, and featured a 500-foot facade of cut granite along Huntington Avenue, the grand rotunda, and the associated exhibition galleries.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

U.S. National Register of Historic Places

Isabella Stewart Gardner first welcomed visitors to her museum on New Year's Day, 1903. On that evening guests listened to the music of Bach, Mozart, and Schumann, gazed in wonder at the courtyard full of flowers, and viewed one of the nation's finest collections of art. Today, visitors experience much the same thing.

In 1898, Mrs. Gardner began work on her museum. Completed in 1903, the museum was named "Fenway Court" and constructed in the reclaimed swamplands of Boston's Fenway area. Modeled on the Renaissance palaces of Venice, Italy, it was designed by Willard T. Sears, with much direct involvement from Mrs. Gardner, to accommodate the art and architectural artifacts Mrs. Gardner had collected with her husband over many years. The building completely surrounds a glass-covered garden courtyard. The first through third floors were designed to be galleries. The fourth floor of the building was used as living quarters by Isabella Gardner until 1924, and is now used for offices. Mrs. Gardner insisted that the galleries be designed as a palatial home, not a museum, and in the early years after the building was completed she used those floors as such, opening them to the public just 20 days a year.