CHRIS’ PICK
BOB DYLAN: ANOTHER SELF PORTRAIT (1969-1971) THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL. 10 (COLUMBIA/LEGACY RECORDINGS)
Released just in time to coincide with the changing of leaves from green to bright red and orange and rustic brown hues before winter winds whisk them from their branches and litter the ground, so too will this latest edition of Dylan’s acclaimed Bootleg Series brush emotional, intimate watercolor splashes and bursts across the secret canvas of your mind before vanishing like whispers, residual swirls of phantom loves and gypsies and heartache and triumph hanging around long after the songs have been sung. These 35 rarities, demos, alternate takes and previously unreleased recordings—available in both as a two-disc set or four-disc deluxe box set (which includes the complete Dylan and The Band’s 1969 Isle of Wight gig, a newly remastered version of 1970’s Self Portrait and two hardcover books of liner notes)—reveal different shades of the man who created such colorful magic, too.
#TOMOTHY’S PICK
MCCALL WINES’ 2010 CORCHAUG ESTATE PINOT NOIR
Since this seriously sultry red wine’s reserve won the New York Wine and Food Classic prize in August, helping this Cutchogue winery earn the title of best in the state, bottles have been playing hard-to-get. The surest way to taste this plumby, world-class vintage barrel aged in French oak is to make the trip to the heart of the North Fork wine trail, where McCall’s tasting room lies in a converted horse barn on their Peconic Bay farm. The dark cherry balanced with nuanced aromas of strawberry and spice sets up a structured, elegant finish that wine lovers say pairs perfectly with another LI delicacy:
Pekin duck.
RASHED’S PICK
I SHALL NOT HATE: A GAZA DOCTOR’S JOURNEY ON THE ROAD TO PEACE AND HUMAN DIGNITY BY DR. IZZELDIN ABUELAISH
More than 100,000 people have been killed in the ongoing Syrian civil war, thousands of whom are women and children, terror attacks are commonplace across the globe, and violent confrontations between Palestinians and Israelis shatter hope of a peaceful resolution between the two sides. Despite all this, a ray of sunlight cuts through the despair. Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian physician whose three daughters were killed by Israeli soldiers in 2009, is using his anguish as a force for good instead of revenge by imploring people of different religions, ethnicities and beliefs to choose words over guns and bombs. His hope, as he writes in his book, is that other children—Palestinian and Israeli—don’t fall victim to further clashes. Get ready to be inspired.
SPENCER’S PICK
NIKOLA TESLA—“THE BLUE PORTRAIT”
Everybody got a postcard-sized print of the visionary inventor at a special event in Shoreham hosted by the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe last month. To spark the occasion the Republic of Serbia presented a monument where their native son had once erected a tower almost 200 feet high that he hoped would provide wireless power to the world for free. With luck and more funding, Wardenclyffe will someday soon be open to the public. Tesla dubbed this 1916 painting the “Blue Portrait” because he had the studio bathed in blue light as he posed in Manhattan for his friend, Princess Vilma Lwoff-Parlaghy, an aristocratic Hungarian artist. On Tesla’s 75th birthday in 1931, Time magazine ran a cropped version on the cover.
