Look Closer is a new photo series by OZY that encourages readers to see beyond a seemingly normal photo. Hover over the circles to explore the photo more deeply.
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Noteworthy then that most of the players and spectators from the Isle of Wight and Southampton are carried to the sea-surrounded sandbank by boats, not yachts.
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While cricket matches have some of the longest run times of any sporting event, going on anywhere from three to five days, low tide typically lasts only six hours and 12 1/2 minutes. So sandbank matches, like the nonstandard 100-ball matches that last just a few hours, are relatively brief affairs.
Look Closer: Rugs, Giant Board Game, or Something Far More Poignant?
And for fans of professional wrestling, a useful proviso: The game’s winner is predetermined. The teams themselves swap who wins from year to year. So, it’s not a real match, but more a social event for “fun.” Who started this little bit of Brit wildness? Pioneering British boatmaker Uffa Fox.
The longstanding match between the Royal Southern Yacht Club and Cowes Island Sailing Club we suspect has something to do with the differences between yachts and sailboats.
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The Handmaid’s Tale has become such a cultural phenomenon that it’s hard not to see the trademark red-robed women when glancing at this photo.
But this isn’t a fictional, post-apocalyptic scene about repression.
It is still tragic though, because these red robes reflect a similarly tyrannical society, albeit one that existed nearly a half-century ago.
The musicians and dancers are known as “The Red Devils of Victor Jara,” named in honor of the Chilean folk singer who pioneered a song form called nueva cancion — a form of lyrical activism. Poor and born to a farming father and a singing mother, Jara considered the priesthood before joining the army, attending college, becoming a playwright and creating music with a leftist bent.
His recordings grew popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s amid a brewing political storm. His song “Venceremos” became the theme song of the socialist president Salvador Allende’s political party … which became a problem for Jara when a military coup overthrew Allende and placed Gen. Augusto Pinochet in office on September 11, 1973. Beaten mercilessly along with other socialist party members, Jara was forced to play guitar with broken fingers before being shot by soldiers of the new government.
Today, these “red devils” dance to commemorate the 46th anniversary of Pinochet’s military coup, and in remembrance of those who were murdered during his gruesome reign, which lasted until 1990.
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Look Closer: The Most [Dis-]Organized Game of Beach Baseball Ever?
The idea for the quilt was hatched by activist Cleve Jones during the candlelight march in remembrance of the 1978 assassinations of San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone.
Humans have a distinctly human instinct for the perverse.
Witness the biathlon, a concatenation of cross-country skiing and shooting. Or even the Underwater Torpedo League, something that looks everything like rugby underwater.
But the game of cricket? It’s a long, staid and well-established game originating back to the very specific date of Jan. 17, 1597, or Jan. 30, 1598, depending on which calendar you’re using. It has old rules (some even credit it for having birthed baseball) and a traditional governing body in the International Cricket Council with 105 member nations. It even has both a men’s and a women’s World Cup for Chrissakes.
What it had yet to have though was a curious, head-scratching … quirk to end all quirks.
The cricket quirk to end all quirks was finally found in the 1940s on the Bramble Bank in the middle of the Solent. Specifically, the strait that separates the Isle of Wight from the mainland of England. As in, in the English Channel.
“Cricket’s a great game,” said tech developer and avid player Deepak Ramanchandran. “But playing underwater would not make it more great.”
Maybe very precisely why members of the Island Sailing Club, Cowes, and the Royal Southern Yacht Club, Hamble-le-Rice, have been meeting up once a year — the last and most recent game hitting this past Sept. 1 at 6:30 am — to play in the middle of the sea at low tide. On a sand dune.
So with a bat, ball, uniforms, teammates and some willingness to brave the chill and the early hour, you too could do something so near-nonsensical that it definitely begs to be seen. Even more so when you realize that the annual games will only go on as long as the sandbank keeps being a sandbank. Since the preferred sandbank is moving westward, ho, it will eventually disappear forever.
Until then? Enjoy it from your boat if you happen to be near the Isle of Wight. Or right here.
Photograph by Ben Birchall/PA Images via Getty
Look Closer: The Most [Dis-]Organized Game of Beach Baseball Ever?
The first display of the quilt was in 1987, in Washington, D.C., and it was displayed again in 1996 to be visited by President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton. It was shown again at the time of the XIX International AIDS Conference in 2012.
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The quilt was often the only opportunity survivors had to remember and honor the lives of their loved ones. Many who died of AIDS-related illnesses didn’t have funerals because of the social stigma early on. In fact, some funeral homes and cemeteries even refused to accept the bodies of the deceased.
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Look Closer is a new photo series by OZY that encourages readers to see beyond a seemingly normal photo. Hover over the circles to explore the photo more deeply.
Look Closer: The Most [Dis-]Organized Game of Beach Baseball Ever?
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The Handmaid’s Tale has become such a cultural phenomenon that it’s hard not to see the trademark red-robed women when glancing at this photo.
But this isn’t a fictional, post-apocalyptic scene about repression.
It is still tragic though, because these red robes reflect a similarly tyrannical society, albeit one that existed nearly a half-century ago.
The musicians and dancers are known as “The Red Devils of Victor Jara,” named in honor of the Chilean folk singer who pioneered a song form called nueva cancion — a form of lyrical activism. Poor and born to a farming father and a singing mother, Jara considered the priesthood before joining the army, attending college, becoming a playwright and creating music with a leftist bent.
His recordings grew popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s amid a brewing political storm. His song “Venceremos” became the theme song of the socialist president Salvador Allende’s political party … which became a problem for Jara when a military coup overthrew Allende and placed Gen. Augusto Pinochet in office on September 11, 1973. Beaten mercilessly along with other socialist party members, Jara was forced to play guitar with broken fingers before being shot by soldiers of the new government.
Today, these “red devils” dance to commemorate the 46th anniversary of Pinochet’s military coup, and in remembrance of those who were murdered during his gruesome reign, which lasted until 1990.
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This could be Washingtonians standing beside a giant board game on the National Mall. But look beyond a glance and you’ll see that the spectators are gathered around the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt on a crisp October day in 1996. The expansive, colorful AIDS Memorial Quilt — with more than 44,000 panels weighing over 10,000 pounds — was designed to be an eye-catching tool for a national prevention campaign that portrayed the humanity behind the statistics. The idea for the project was hatched in 1985 by activist Cleve Jones and other volunteers during a candlelight march in remembrance of the 1978 assassinations of San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone.
In more ways than one, 1996 was an inflection point. It was the first year since the epidemic started that saw the AIDS incidence rate and deaths decline. In the same year, Time magazine Man of the Year was granted to AIDS researcher Dr. David Ho. The doctor was a pioneer in the use of drug “cocktails,” or combinations, to fight the virus. At the time, 23 million people worldwide were estimated to be living with HIV/AIDS, and more than 6 million people had already died.
“When the history of this era is written, it is likely that the men and women who turned the tide on AIDS will be seen as true heroes of the age,” Time wrote about Dr. Ho. By 2017, more than two decades later, nearly 37 million people had HIV/AIDS worldwide, according to UNAIDS.
Today, remembrance and commitment to LGBTQ rights are no less pressing. Pride Month, which commemorates the Stonewall riots of 1969 in Manhattan, is simultaneously a time for resistance and celebration. Among those both within and outside the LGBTQ community, this month evokes an intentional remembrance of decades of hard-fought progress that LGBTQ activists have made in demanding equal rights in American society. At the same time, it’s a reminder that democracy requires the active participation of all — and that the battle for equality is neither over nor won.
Photograph by Shayna Brennan/AP
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There were more than 44,000 individual panels in the quilt, weighing more than 10,000 pounds.
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