⌾Curio #32 - Charles C. Ebbets, Billionaires & 1 Giant Leap
For months I’ve been getting bombarded by seductive MasterClass ads on Youtube. You’ve probably seen them too. Pulling on star power from all fields and industries — “step into Anna Wintour’s office, Timbaland’s recording studio, and Neil Gaiman’s writing retreat” — MasterClass promises subscribers the chance the learn the untold secrets from the best of the best. So when I discovered my aunt (with whom I’m staying in North Carolina to escape New York) had a subscription, I was intrigued to see it for myself. I’ve now watched countless hours of it. Each of the ‘classes’ is sleekly produced, engaging and conveniently packaged into digestible ten to fifteen minute chunks.
I’m under no allusions these ‘classes’ have made me any better at basketball (Steph Curry), writing screenplays (Aaron Sorkin), composing film scores (Hans Zimmer) or being a scientist (Neil deGrasse Tyson), but they have been fascinating insights into what makes these people so good. You learn about their processes, approach and life story, as well as being left with useful nuggets (Gordon Ramsay: Never over chop herbs, if the board is turning green then the flavor is getting lost in the board) and aphorisms (Margaret Atwood: If you have to ask yourself whether you should be a writer, the answer is probably no). As such, they aren’t really ‘classes’, but more like an intimate talk or an in-depth interview with a master of their craft.
While I was familiar with the vast majority of people running the MasterClasses, I hadn’t heard of Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate of the United States. Listening to Billy and discovering his poetry has been a joy. His poem, Today, captures the feeling I have about the exquisite spring days here in North Carolina over the past few weeks. I wanted to share it with you.
Today
If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze
that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house
and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,
a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies
seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking
a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,
releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage
so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting
into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.
—
Claude Monet - An Orchard in Spring (1886)
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In some other news, I’ve started writing a monthly column for The Cud, which is an online magazine of review and cultural criticism. The editor is a keen subscriber to Curio. My first piece for The Cud was published last week and is about an interview I conducted with musicians Life on Planets (profiled in Curio #5) and David Marston. You can read the piece here if you’re interested.
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If you’re finding Curio a refreshing weekly break from the gloomy and stressful news cycle, then the best way you can show your support is by sharing it with others who you think might also enjoy it. They can sign up below:
Stay safe,
- Oli
Charles C. Ebbets
Charles C. Ebbets is one of those photographers whose work you’re familiar with but don’t realize it. His jaw-dropping 1932 shot, Lunch Atop a Skyscraper, is one of the most iconic photos of the twentieth century.
Lunch Atop a Skyscraper - 1932
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The photo shows eleven laborers casually perched on a beam high above the New York streetscape. They are enjoying a lunch break following an exhausting morning of work helping to construct the Rockefeller Center. Their identities are unknown and until recently the photographer was unknown too. In 2003, the children of Charles C. Ebbets found copies of the New York Herald Tribune article with this photo in Ebbets’ personal scrapbook, original invoices for the work, as well as Ebbets’ glass negatives from that day. Since then he has been credited as the artist.
Charles C. Ebbets in action during the construction of the Rockefeller Center. Balls of steel
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On top of his famous shots of New York during the Depression, Ebbets also had stints as an actor and as the official photographer for boxer Jack Dempsey. In the 1930s he broke his back while on assignment for the Associated Press in the Everglades and this kept him out of military service during World War II, though he was able to work as a photographer. Ebbets moved to Florida at the end of the war and became the Chief Photographer of the City of Miami, with his shots featured in publications all over the world.
Other hair-raising photos from the early 1930s in New York attributed to Ebbets are below. His ability to create vertigo in those looking on their computer screens ninety years later is impressive.
Fore!
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Extreme snoozing
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I hope they left a good tip
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‘I spy with my little eye…’
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‘Can you lean over a bit?’
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Look Ma, no hands
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Billionaires Around The World
I recently came across the Wealth X Billionaire Census which is an interesting statistical breakdown of billionaires around the world: where they live, what they do, how old they are and even their favorite sports. Some surprising takeaways include:
Mumbai has more billionaires than Tokyo
New York has more billionaires than every country other than China and Germany
San Francisco contains one billionaire for every eleven thousand people, which is bonkers
Ninety-five percent of China’s billionaires are self-made, compared with the global average of fifty-six percent
Of the cities in the top fifteen, Tokyo has the largest share of its country’s billionaire population (eighty-one percent). Other cities with very high shares of their country’s billionaire population include Moscow and Dubai (both sixty-nine percent), as well as London and São Paulo (both sixty-seven percent)
You can read the full report here
1 Giant Leap
In 2000-2001, British musicians Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman spent six months traveling around Africa, India, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, America and Western Europe, pursuing a multimedia project that aimed to be a “music-based time-capsule of planet Earth.” At each destination, they recorded samples of local musicians and then arranged them into pieces that fused the various sounds and rhythms they had encountered from all over the world. The result was a brilliant album and accompanying documentary released in 2002.
This transcendent track, Dunya Salam, features an electric mandolin player from Bangalore, India and a vocalist, Baaba Maal, from Dakar, Senegal.
“There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.”
- Bertrand Russell
Curio is a newsletter for curious minds seeking an escape from the noise of the news cycle. It is put together by Oli Duchesne