Ben Gidley
@bengidley
Sociologist, dad, attenuated Jew, nervous anti-fascist, rootless cosmopolitan, drum and bass fan, out of practice salsa dancer, asphalt botaniser, glutton, insomniac, hearing impaired, union member, living in London
49th anniversary of the battle of Lewisham today, when Southeast London turned back the fascist National Front. Tune into Sister Midnight FM at 2 pm today to hear me and @transpontine.bsky.social talk about it and play some of the music of the time radio.sistermidnight.org
Lovely post by my @liminalwater.bsky.social colleague @raquelcarvalheira.bsky.social
Had yet another working Saturday so it was lovely to switch off for a lovely lake swim at Beckenham. Beautiful light and baby moorhens.
Absolutely fantastic talk by @ankahajkova.bsky.social at @bisa-bkk.bsky.social tonight, chaired by @brendanmcgeever.bsky.social. Deeply moving AND entertaining AND challenging.
On the hidden anarchist history of the Stonewall moment, featuring the late, great Ben Morea
Very interesting exhibition about Muslim/Jewish solidarity, at the Islamic cultural centre in Krakow
I have to say I really like Polish food. It’s like what my Ashkenazi grandparents made - but plus pork, so even better. Barszcz czysty czerwony, with uszka (“ears”*) / באָרשט (*Not actually ears, but tiny dumpling rings.)
Privileged to have heard from Association Harangos’ Izabela Jaskowiak and Sinto Valentin on Roma and Sinti activism in Krakow
Ethnographer Paweł Lechowski and his extraordinary collection of Roma material culture he’s built since the 1970s
The “Turkish house”, styled in 1910 by Jewish architect Henryk Lamensdorf for Ottoman officer Artur Rayski, whose son, the pilot Ludomił Rayski, another anti-fascist and anti-Stalinist, served in the Habsburg, Turkish, Polish, French and British armed forces, living his last years in exile in Ealing
Plaque to Juliusz Mieroszewski, anti-fascist/anti-Stalinist socialist journalist, served the London Polish government in WWII, remained in Ealing until his death. Translator of 1984 into Polish, apostle of Polish-Ukrainian fraternity, critic of both Soviet tyranny and Cold War anti-communism.
Jagiellonian University, one of Europe’s oldest universities. On sixth of November, in the Sonderaktion Krakau, 184 of its academics were seized and taken to their deaths in Sachsenhausen and Dachau, part of the Intelligenzaktion in which 100,000 Polish intellectuals were killed by the Nazis.
Looking at the sociology section in a krakow bookstore. Not too many names I recognise: the great Zygmunt Bauman of course. Edward Said. But depressingly also Frank Furedi.
This morning at EUMUS summer school Postcolonial Emotions: Shame, Resentment, and Grief among Muslim and Jewish Communities in Berlin and Marseille, with Eliaou Balouka and Alisa Jachnowitsch
This morning’s first session at EUMUS summer school Anna Surma, lawyer from Halina Nieć Legal Aid Center on refugee issues in Krakow
Yesterday — welcoming students to the #EUMUS* summer school at the Middle East Institute in Krakow. *apologies for misnaming my own project in earlier post…
Greetings from Krakow where I’m part of the team for the #EUMES summer school. Here’s the hotel I’m staying in — quite intense right?
Just arriving at Seven Sisters and very happy to be participating in this lovely event today at Muslim Welfare House, at a time when I feel we need it more than ever
I struggled to get to the end of this. It is so inoffensively pleasant it’s actually offensive. Whoever thought this is one of the thousand best albums ever is literally insane.
In the midst of a totally amazing spell of records to which he added a huge amount of depth. This was also exactly when listeners were buying CDs so able to hear that better. Also, in the UK, Radio 1 started broadcasting in stereo on Saturday afternoons in 1987; this was the stuff they played then.
A paradigm-bending classic I first heard via Jon Peel, then a friend taped it for me on a C30 cassette, which meant I never heard the last couple of tracks on this 33 minute/28 song album. Good to be able to read the lyrics while listening as otherwise most are incomprehensible.
Interesting and then innovative pop album featuring Daniel Lanois’ distinctive brilliance production and interesting contributions from Manu Katché and Youssou N’Dour.
Today’s album, I’d never heard of the artist let alone the album, a first so far. It’s kind of inoffensive, whimsical Americana/emocore, somewhere between Beck and late Beach Boys. It wasn’t the worst 69 minutes of my life, but there’s no way this is one of the best thousand albums ever.
Although I know and love bunch of the songs on this I thought I’d find it tedious to sit through the whole album as they’re a bit samey. But actually it’s awesome. The energy and righteous anger and the production are just awesome.
Yesterday’s album, another tour de force. Every song is a well crafted gem and it is also totally coherent as a concept album.
I had a run of mediocre albums after Bruce and ran out of steam. I re-activated today and got one of the genuinely best albums ever. Every single song is brilliant, and half of them are classics.