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EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. — Lonnie Holley’s life began at an impossible place: 1950, seventh among his mother’s 27 children, in Jim Crow-era Birmingham, Ala., the air thick with violent racism toward him and everyone he loved. Things got even worse as he grew up. At four years old, he said, he was traded for a bottle of whiskey by a nurse who had stolen him away from his mother. Later, as the story goes, he was in a coma for several months and pronounced brain-dead after being hit by a car that dragged him along several blocks. Then he spent time in the infamous Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children until his paternal grandmother — he refers to her simply as “Momo” — was able to take him away at the age of 14. He forged his way out of the miry roads of his origins, becoming a musician and filmmaker, and teaching himself to make visual art. Since then, he has come far, far enough to have just completed a residency as an artist at the Elaine de Kooning House in this celebrity-filled … [Read more...] about Lonnie Holley’s Life of Perseverance, and Art of Transformation

One night in October, just a couple blocks from Harvard Square, a young crowd gathered at a music space called the Sinclair to catch a performance by Bill Callahan, the meticulous indie-rock lyricist who has been playing to bookish collegiate types since the early ‘90s. Callahan’s opening act, Lonnie Holley, had been playing to similar audiences for two years. A number of details about Holley made this fact surprising: He was decades older than just about everyone in the club and one of the few African-Americans. He says he grew up the seventh of 27 children in Jim Crow-era Alabama, where his schooling stopped around seventh grade. In his own, possibly unreliable telling, he says the woman who informally adopted him as an infant eventually traded him to another family for a pint of whiskey when he was 4. Holley also says he dug graves, picked trash at a drive-in, drank too much gin, was run over by a car and pronounced brain-dead, picked cotton, became a father at 15 (Holley now has 15 … [Read more...] about Lonnie Holley, the Insider’s Outsider

Photo-Illustration: The Strategist; Photos: Retailers In today’s travel -size sales mishmash, you’ll find a hefty selection of discounted products to add to your carry-on . Scroll on to find our favorite portable water flosser for 40 percent off, waterproof hiking boots for hitting the trails, and a stylish backpack that’s polished enough for the office but sturdy enough to bring on a hike. And at REI , members can take 20 percent off one full-price item — but only until midnight tonight. Waterpik Aquarius Water Flosser $60 $100 now 40% off $60 Our favorite water flosser is 40 percent off today in four colors (gray, black, white, and navy blue). Dentists such as Irina Sinensky of Dental House appreciate the myriad of ways it can be adjusted to fit your preferences: “It offers water-control buttons on the handle, 90-second run time, ten pressure settings, seven different tips, 360-degree rotation of the tip, and a … [Read more...] about 10 Things on Sale You’ll Actually Want to Buy: From Brightland to Waterpik

HOSTOMEL, Ukraine — The gigantic twin tail fins, once stretching as high as a six-story building, are gone. So are the tailplane, flaps, hydraulic systems, fuel pumps and three of six engines of the plane, which was destroyed in fighting in the first days of the war. Piece by piece, workers are now dismantling the wreckage of t he gigantic Mriya cargo plane , the heaviest airplane ever flown, with plans to rebuild a new one with salvaged parts. The restoration of the plane, whose name in Ukrainian means The Dream, has begun. With the war still raging, the immense job of rebuilding Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of homes, hospitals, schools and bridges are blown up, still seems a distant prospect. Measured against those daunting challenges, the work on the plane is hardly a top priority from a humanitarian point of view. But it is meant in part as an inspiration, according to executives at the aircraft company that owns it, Antonov. If something as … [Read more...] about Restoring a Giant Plane: Ukrainian Resilience or Folly?

King Edward VIII, who abdicated the throne to marry Wallis Simpson in 1936, has long been rumored to have passed critical information to the Nazis to enable them to target the royal family’s living quarters when they bombed Buckingham Palace in 1940. Now, historian Alexander Larman has reopened the debate, saying Edward’s American partner Simpson claimed the duke had tipped off the Nazis. He says incontrovertible proof of Edward’s collusion may soon be uncovered in the royal archives, according to a report in the London Times . Speaking at the Oxford Literary Festival, Larman said that a surprising amount of information had been made available to him in the archives at Windsor Castle. He added that a royal archivist had told him: “We are not in the business of protecting the Duke of Windsor’s reputation.” Edward was an admirer of Hitler and met him in Munich in 1937. The contemporary diarist Chips Channon wrote that Edward and Simpson supported the Nazis, and reported … [Read more...] about Did Edward VIII Help the Nazis Bomb Buckingham Palace?

GENEVA SIMON STUDER started his career in a basement vault in a warehouse complex near the heart of this city, known for international banks and outrageous prices. It was a strange job. Every day, someone would open the vault and lock him inside until it was time for lunch. Then he’d be let out of the vault and, after eating, he’d be locked in again until it was time to go home. He was taking inventory for one of Switzerland’s best-known gallery owners, who rented the space. “I was checking sizes, condition, looking for a signature,” Mr. Studer recalls, “and making sure the art was properly measured.” This might have been a tedious way to spend four months, but what was being tallied and assessed was the handiwork of Pablo Picasso. Not hundreds of pieces, but thousands — shelf upon shelf of drawings, paintings and sculptures. It was Mr. Studer’s first peek at the astounding wealth stuffed inside the Geneva Freeport, as this warehouse complex is known. The second peek came when … [Read more...] about Swiss Freeports Are Home for a Growing Treasury of Art