Some April

Given the popularity of the Gentleman Jack series, for April in my In Sum series I am including a few entries inspired by the diaries of Anne Lister (4/13/1820, 4/16/1818, 4/19/1819, 4/22/1817), in addition to Keith Haring, Brian Eno, William James, and Anne Frank.

As I've interlaced the journals and diaries of others with my own, interesting juxtapositions emerge. For example, an entry of 4/16/1818 and my 4/16/1998 entry about Jenni-Cam. In the gap between those two events happening on the same day 180 years apart, electricity, cameras, audio recording industry (and the beginning of its ultimate demise in 1999 with Napster), TV, and the internet were invented, which would have been utterly inconceivable in 1818. If technological developments occur at the same pace, an additional four wildly inconceivable technologies could be invented by 2170s. In the 18-teens one's daily activities would have been walks around Halifax watching cows calving and going to the book store (Whitley's) for flute sheet music. You would have been excited by the prospect of going to see a talented flutist play God Save the Queen, as you had bought the score and were eagerly learning to play it (however simple). [Interesting: In the diary it is written as God Save the King]. In April 1966 there was a group called the Beatles experimenting with playing things backwards. So the idea of someone almost two hundred years into the future being a blatant exhibitionist and playing things backwards would have seemed like an insane horror, vis-a-vis playing the flute, having tea, and witnessing a cow-calving, compared to a mass shooting/suicide mission at a school in Colorado in 1999.

Some April: War in the Balkans continues (1999), XM radio released (2003), Weather extremes (Chicago): both 30-degree temperatures (1997, 2013) and 80s (2001, 2010, 2011) in early April (evidence of climate change), Snow in April (2011, 2014, 2022), Tornado outbreak 2011, Deepwater Horizon Spill (2010), COVID lockdown (2020), Swine Flu outbreak (2009), Titanic sinking centennial (2012), Royal wedding of Price William and Kate Middleton (2011), Andy Warhol visits Pope John Paul II in Rome on 4/2/1980 and Pope John Paul dies on 4/2/2005, The Beatles in the studio in 1966 recording tracks for Revolver, Death of Prince (2016), Brian Eno in Sicily (1995), Ai Grace (Neone)  in a studio in Berlin with her band Nth recording tracks for the album Strategic Erasure (2046), Anthony Townes prepares for a group show with Nic Eben "Equality of Vision" at Ramona Stone's gallery (2048), Got a 56K modem (1997), Russian forces poised to attack Ukraine (2014), Films watched in April: Memento (2001), Mulholland Drive (2002), Goodbye Dragon Inn (2005), There Will Be Blood (2008), Spencer (2022), Allen Ginsberg dies on 4/8/1997, The notion of an "iPod Society" (2005), The San Francisco earthquake (1906), Iraq occupation seen as another Vietnam (2004), Elian Gonzales raid (2000), Oklahoma City bombing anniversaries, Earth Day celebrations, Columbine (1999).