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This is weird. In my notes for Friday, I have headings for “Judengasse” and “Hoher Market” but no actual notes; then under the heading “Albertina” I have copious notes for that museum’s retrospective of the 20th century South African artist William Kentridge. But the only thing I remember was one fragment of an 8-part film installation called “I Am Not Me, The House Is Mine”. It sounded like a Talking Heads song, but in fact it was the transcript from Nikolai Bukharin’s Feb. 26, 1937 Communist Party Central Committee Plenary Trial. In it the purged Communist begs to be given 25 years in Siberia instead of a death sentence, before a jeering crowd presided over by Stalin. “But you mustRead more.

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On Monday, the world saw an exceptional phenomenon of the conjunction of two planets – Saturn and Jupiter. The planets were the closest to each other than in the last 400 years and also the brightest. Furthermore, the light they produced might have been the famous Bethlehem Star. The so-called “Great Conjunction” of the “Christmas Star” happens extremely rarely – Saturn and Jupiter meet much less often than other planets. They were visible in the sky on Monday, between 16:30 – 17:00, when they almost merged together. A similar astronomical occurrence is not expected until 2080. “Although we are talking about December 21 as a record approach of these two planets, it will also be seen in the days toRead more.

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It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I’d planned to cover fall classical music festivals garlanding the Czech Republic like autumn leaves, from Lipa Musica up north to Janaček Brno in the east to Struny Podzimu (“Strings of Autumn”) here in Prague. But on the first morning we hit 3000 new COVID-19 cases, my bag already packed for a musical weekend in Česka Lipa, I chickened out.                Instead I moped around my flat for a couple days, getting fatter. Finally I noticed my Prague 8 map of my own neighborhood. Gritty old Libeň is normally where I escape from, headed somewhere more exotic. Sure, I have regular hangouts here and dear local friends.  Sometimes, though, familiarity breeds maybe notRead more.