"Cities never arose 'out of nothing'. At first, there was a small settlement, a village. Then the settlement expanded, gradually becoming a city. Whoever needs to build a house or a barn, builds it there. That's why the central parts of old cities have a chaotic layout. Crooked streets going in different directions, uneven lines of houses... Tallinn, Riga, the old parts of Russian cities - these are typical examples.

St. Petersburg may be the first city in history that arose as a city, in an empty place. And it was built as a symbol of the greatness of the new Russia. It was designed for centuries. At first, it was small. But Peter was a visionary. He understood that the development would continue. No matter how beautifully the city was built at first, it would be surrounded by other parts in a haphazard manner.
What can be done to ensure that the city of St. Peter remains clear, orderly, and modern forever?"

When jazz appeared in the United States at the end of the 19th century, it was heavily criticized. Musicians and musicologists claimed that it was "superficial, illiterate 'music'," and a sign of a lack of culture, etc. In the second half of the 1940s, dozens of records by Shulzhenko, Utesov, Bernes, jazz orchestras led by Tsfasman, Varlamov, and others were confiscated from production in the USSR. There was even a saying: "Today you play jazz, tomorrow you sell your homeland." The reasons were the same - lowbrow music, lack of culture.

In 1990, one could read the following statement in one of the youth magazines: "More accessible and simple genres have appeared - disco, rock, and young people have followed them without bothering themselves with deeper searches. Jazz requires ... a certain culture of the listener."
So, is jazz art or primitive? A sign of culture or lack of culture?

Boris Pavlovich Nikitin created a fundamentally new pedagogy that not only allows for the raising of healthy and creatively developed children, but does so from early childhood without violence or coercion, by utilizing the children's own interests.

The brief biography of this outstanding pedagogical innovator, Boris Pavlovich Nikitin, is not simply a description of his life, but rather an account of the development and growth of a Creative Personality. It illustrates how the qualities of a Creative Personality manifest in real life and activity, its victories and mistakes, the struggle for the development and recognition of new ideas and methods.
The biography is based on personal meetings with Boris Pavlovich and correspondence with him.

In childhood, towards the end of the 1950s, I was given a book on rules of behavior. This was not the first book on the trendy topic at the time. But for the first time, I read not just moralistic recommendations, but the history behind certain norms. So I learned that the custom of removing gloves before shaking hands originated from knights. They thereby showed that they were not carrying weapons in their hands. And, for example, a man was supposed to walk on the left side of a lady because he had a sword hanging on his left side. Walking on the right side, he would inevitably hit his lady with his sword on her feet. However, later in the book, it was written that modern military personnel are recommended to walk on the right side, so as not to accidentally hit the lady's elbow while saluting an approaching officer.

This is what surprised me. After all, I was taught that norms of behavior are eternal values. They should not change. But here it turned out that norms change with changes in external conditions.
Gradually, a completely different picture began to emerge.

In the 1980s, I read an article in the "Literary Newspaper," I think, titled "Longing for Artometry." The author complained that there was no reliable criterion for determining what in art was truly good and eternal, and what was weak and fleeting. Indeed, how much enthusiasm is often poured out about certain works, and then a decade passes, and no one can remember what was there. But unexpectedly, works deserving, at best, of criticism, or at worst, simply unnoticed by critics, emerge and remain in history. If there were a ruler that you could apply to a work of art, and it would show whether it was good or bad...

It would be nice to answer, as in a well-known joke, "Don't hold your breath!" Because there are two traps on the way from this dream to the real "measurement" of art.

We are accustomed to the idea that a worthy goal brings benefits to many people, if not to everyone. And to achieve this goal, one often has to fight against a relatively small group of people who pursue a certain "policy" in that field. The life and work of Vasily Yakovlevich Eroshenko expand our understanding of a worthy goal and creative tasks.

In his case, it was the opposite: Eroshenko fought to improve the quality of life for a relatively small group of people. And he fought against everyone.

Imagine meeting a blind person who has graduated from some "difficult" institute. What feeling arises in you? Of course, admiration. Remember the story "The Blind Musician" by V.G. Korolenko. The hero is not a musical genius, he is simply a very good musician. But we are admiring and amazed. And yet, we do not admire an ordinary university graduate or musician. Whether we like it or not, we implicitly lower our expectations for the blind and make concessions for their blindness. In other words, we implicitly deny them fullness. Unfortunately, even the blind themselves often agree with their own inferiority.