#Explore Crawford County

[uniqueartisanconnoisseur]

Big Brutus & More in Southeast Kansas!

I grew up in a mining community, Pawnee, Illinois. Peabody # 10 located between Pawnee and Kincaid when it was open, was one of the largest coal mines in the world. So, it makes sense that I am interested in mining history both locally and far away. On a hosted trip by Explore Crawford County, I found some amazing mining stories, equipment and sites! Page 618 Walking Dragline In Southeast…

[roscoebarnes3]

Natchez Historical Society awarded $2,400 grant by Mississippi Humanities Council

Jessica Fleming Crawford, southeast regional director for The Archaeological Conservancy, spoke at the May 23 meeting of the Natchez Historical Society. She talked about an archeological site related to the “Natchez Massacre” and chattel slavery in Natchez.

---------------

By ROSCOE BARNES III Special for The Natchez Democrat Published 12:49 pm Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2023

NATCHEZ — Mississippi Humanities Council recently awarded a $2,400 grant to the Natchez Historical Society in support of the society’s monthly speakers’ program.

Specifically, the funding will cover the speakers’ honoraria of $2,400, said Alan Wolf, who serves as a director of the society and chair of its program committee. Wolf said that the society’s board of directors is all grateful to the council for the grant.

“It’s an endorsement of the importance and value to the civic life of the NHS’s programming about Natchez’s history,” Wolf said. “The idea is that by understanding the circumstances, people, and issues of our past we can better address the challenges and opportunities of the present.”

In other words, he added, “The award recognizes the NHS’s seriousness of civic purpose.” Wolf said the recent grant application was the first one submitted to the council.

“The Mississippi Humanities Council is excited to support the Natchez Historical Society’s outstanding programming,” said Dr. Stuart Rockoff, executive director of the council. “This year’s series offers speakers on a diverse array of topics that explore the richness and complexity of Natchez history.”

The society was organized in 1954 to collect and disseminate historical material about Natchez and Adams County. The nonprofit is dedicated to the historical study of Natchez and the surrounding area.

Danny Heitman, author of "A Summer of Birds: John James Audubon at Oakley House" (LSU Press, 2008), was the featured speaker at this year’s annual dinner meeting of the Natchez Historical Society.

---------------

Danny Heitman, author of "A Summer of Birds: John James Audubon at Oakley House" (LSU Press, 2008), was the featured speaker at this year’s annual dinner meeting of the Natchez Historical Society.

“The local history spans an exceptionally long timeline from the Grand Village of the Natchez Indians to the present day city atop the high bluffs of the Father of Waters, the mighty Mississippi River,” the society notes on its website. “The contributions of Native Americans, African-Americans, and European settlers, have combined to form a rich local tapestry important to the understanding of the larger regional and national historical record.”   The society meets twice a month at the Historic Natchez Foundation. A formal meeting of its board of directors is held on the second Monday; on the fourth Tuesday, a public forum is held where recognized experts and historians give lectures and lead discussions on diverse topics related to Natchez’s history.   Since the creation of the program, speakers have included authors, university professors, independent scholars, community leaders, and elected officials.   The society also hosts an annual dinner in January that includes a speaker and presentation of its Historic Preservation Award.  The award honors individuals or organizations who have made a significant contribution to historic preservation or the study of history within the Natchez area.      Read more at: https://www.natchezdemocrat.com/2023/09/13/natchez-historical-society-awarded-2400-grant-by-mississippi-humanities-council/

[lraquel]

Soothing, shallow and lazy, this spot on the Meramec River brings back summer vibes.  Close to St. Louis the river is more turbid but upstream it’s crystal clear. If you’re in the know, it has a few super chilly springs to explore.

The aquatic leafy stems are water-willow,  Justicia americana. 

My pic, near Crawford County MO 2019. 

[reading-writing-revolution]

December 30, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

Dec 31

And so, we are at the end of a year that has brought a presidential impeachment trial, a deadly pandemic that has killed more than 338,000 of us, a huge social movement for racial justice, a presidential election, and a president who has refused to accept the results of that election and is now trying to split his own political party.

It’s been quite a year.

But I had a chance to talk with history podcaster Bob Crawford of the Avett Brothers yesterday, and he asked a more interesting question. He pointed out that we are now twenty years into this century, and asked what I thought were the key changes of those twenty years. I chewed on this question for awhile and also asked readers what they thought. Pulling everything together, here is where I’ve come out.

In America, the twenty years since 2000 have seen the end game of the Reagan Revolution, begun in 1980.

In that era, political leaders on the right turned against the principles that had guided the country since the 1930s, when Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt guided the nation out of the Great Depression by using the government to stabilize the economy. During the Depression and World War Two, Americans of all parties had come to believe the government had a role to play in regulating the economy, providing a basic social safety net and promoting infrastructure.

But reactionary businessmen hated regulations and the taxes that leveled the playing field between employers and workers. They called for a return to the pro-business government of the 1920s, but got no traction until the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, when the Supreme Court, under the former Republican governor of California, Earl Warren, unanimously declared racial segregation unconstitutional. That decision, and others that promoted civil rights, enabled opponents of the New Deal government to attract supporters by insisting that the country’s postwar government was simply redistributing tax dollars from hardworking white men to people of color.

That argument echoed the political language of the Reconstruction years, when white southerners insisted that federal efforts to enable formerly enslaved men to participate in the economy on terms equal to white men were simply a redistribution of wealth, because the agents and policies required to achieve equality would cost tax dollars and, after the Civil War, most people with property were white. This, they insisted, was “socialism.”

To oppose the socialism they insisted was taking over the East, opponents of black rights looked to the American West. They called themselves Movement Conservatives, and they celebrated the cowboy who, in their inaccurate vision, was a hardworking white man who wanted nothing of the government but to be left alone to work out his own future. In this myth, the cowboys lived in a male-dominated world, where women were either wives and mothers or sexual playthings, and people of color were savage or subordinate.

With his cowboy hat and western ranch, Reagan deliberately tapped into this mythology, as well as the racism and sexism in it, when he promised to slash taxes and regulations to free individuals from a grasping government. He promised that cutting taxes and regulations would expand the economy. As wealthy people—the “supply side” of the economy-- regained control of their capital, they would invest in their businesses and provide more jobs. Everyone would make more money.

From the start, though, his economic system didn’t work. Money moved upward, dramatically, and voters began to think the cutting was going too far. To keep control of the government, Movement Conservatives at the end of the twentieth century ramped up their celebration of the individualist white American man, insisting that America was sliding into socialism even as they cut more and more domestic programs, insisting that the people of color and women who wanted the government to address inequities in the country simply wanted “free stuff.” They courted social conservatives and evangelicals, promising to stop the “secularization” they saw as a partner to communism.

After the end of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, talk radio spread the message that Black and Brown Americans and “feminazis” were trying to usher in socialism. In 1996, that narrative got a television channel that personified the idea of the strong man with subordinate women. The Fox News Channel told a story that reinforced the Movement Conservative narrative daily until it took over the Republican Party entirely.

The idea that people of color and women were trying to undermine society was enough of a rationale to justify keeping them from the vote, especially after Democrats passed the Motor Voter law in 1993, making it easier for poor people to register to vote. In 1997, Florida began the process of purging voter rolls of Black voters.

And so, 2000 came.

In that year, the presidential election came down to the electoral votes in Florida. Democratic candidate Al Gore won the popular vote by more than 540,000 votes over Republican candidate George W. Bush, but Florida would decide the election. During the required recount, Republican political operatives led by Roger Stone descended on the election canvassers in Miami-Dade County to stop the process. It worked, and the Supreme Court upheld the end of the recount. Bush won Florida by 537 votes and, thanks to its electoral votes, became president. Voter suppression was a success, and Republicans would use it, and after 2010, gerrymandering, to keep control of the government even as they lost popular support.

Bush had promised to unite the country, but his installation in the White House gave new power to the ideology of the Movement Conservative leaders of the Reagan Revolution. He inherited a budget surplus from his predecessor Democrat Bill Clinton, but immediately set out to get rid of it by cutting taxes. A balanced budget meant money for regulation and social programs, so it had to go. From his term onward, Republicans would continue to cut taxes even as budgets operated in the red, the debt climbed, and money moved upward.

The themes of Republican dominance and tax cuts were the backdrop of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. That attack gave the country’s leaders a sense of mission after the end of the Cold War and, after launching a war in Afghanistan to stop al-Qaeda, they set out to export democracy to Iraq. This had been a goal for Republican leaders since the Clinton administration, in the belief that the United States needed to spread capitalism and democracy in its role as a world leader. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq strengthened the president and the federal government, creating the powerful Department of Homeland Security, for example, and leading Bush to assert the power of the presidency to interpret laws through signing statements.

The association of the Republican Party with patriotism enabled Republicans in this era to call for increased spending for the military and continued tax cuts, while attacking Democratic calls for domestic programs as wasteful. Increasingly, Republican media personalities derided those who called for such programs as dangerous, or anti-American.

But while Republicans increasingly looked inward to their party as the only real Americans and asserted power internationally, changes in technology were making the world larger. The Internet put the world at our fingertips and enabled researchers to decode the human genome, revolutionizing medical science. Smartphones both made communication easy. Online gaming created communities and empathy. And as many Americans were increasingly embracing rap music and tattoos and LGBTQ rights, as well as recognizing increasing inequality, books were pointing to the dangers of the power concentrating at the top of societies. In 1997, J.K. Rowling began her exploration of the rise of authoritarianism in her wildly popular Harry Potter books, but her series was only the most famous of a number of books in which young people conquered a dystopia created by adults.

In Bush’s second term, his ideology created a perfect storm. His administration's disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina, which killed more than 1,800 people and caused $125 billion in damage in and around New Orleans in 2005, revealed how badly the new economy had treated Black and Brown people, and how badly the destruction of domestic programs had affected our ability to respond to disasters. Computers permitted the overuse of credit default swaps that precipitated the 2008 crash, which then precipitated the housing crisis, as people who had bet on the individualist American dream lost their homes. Meanwhile, the ongoing wars, plagued with financial and moral scandals, made it clear that the Republicans optimistic vision of spreading democracy through military conflict was unrealistic.

In 2008, voters put Black American Barack Obama, a Democrat, into the White House. To Republicans, primed by now to believe that Democrats and Black people were socialists, this was an undermining of the nation itself, and they set out to hamper him. While many Americans saw Obama as the symbol of a new, fairer government with America embracing a multilateral world, reactionaries built a backlash based in racism and sexism. They vocally opposed a federal government they insisted was pushing socialism on hardworking white men, and insisted that America must show its strength by exerting its power unilaterally in the world. Increasingly, the Internet and cell phones enabled people to have their news cater to their worldview, moving Republicans into a world characterized by what a Republican spokesperson would later call "alternative facts."

And so, in 2016, we faced a clash between a relentlessly changing nation and the individualist ideology of the Movement Conservatives who had taken over the Republican Party. By then, that ideology had become openly radical extremism in the hands of Donald Trump, who referred to immigrants as criminals, boasted of sexually assaulting women, and promised to destroy the New Deal government once and for all.

In the 2016 election, the themes of the past 36 years came together. Embracing Movement Conservative individualist ideology taken to an extreme, Trump was eager enough to make sure a Democrat didn't win that, according to American intelligence services, he was willing to accept the help of Russian operatives. They, in turn, influenced the election through the manipulation of new social media, amplified by what had become by then a Republican echo chamber in which Democrats were dangerous socialists and the Democratic candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was a criminal. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision which permitted corporate money to flow into election campaigns, Trump also had the help of a wave of money from big business; financial institutions spent $2 billion to influence the election. He also had the support of evangelicals, who believed he would finally give them the anti-abortion laws they wanted.

Trump lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes but, as George W. Bush before him, won in the Electoral College. Once in office, this president set out to destroy the New Deal state, as Movement Conservatives had called for, returning the country to the control of a small group of elite businessmen who, theoretically, would know how to move the country forward best by leveraging private sector networks and innovation. He also set out to put minorities and women back into subordinate positions, recreating a leadership structure that was almost entirely white and male.

As Trump tried to destroy an activist government once and for all, Americans woke up to how close we have come to turning our democracy over to a small group of oligarchs.

In the past four years, the Women’s March on Washington and the MeToo Movement has enabled women to articulate their demand for equality. The travel ban, child separation policy for Latin American refugees, and Trump’s attacks on Muslims, Latin American immigrants, and Chinese immigrants, has sparked a defense of America’s history of immigration. The Black Lives Matter Movement, begun in July 2013 after George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering teenager Trayvon Martin, has gained power as Black Americans have been murdered at the hands of law enforcement officers and white vigilantes, and as Black Americans have borne witness to those murders with cellphone videos.

The increasing voice of democracy clashed most dramatically with Trump’s ideology in summer 2020 when, with the support of his Attorney General William Barr, Trump used the law enforcement officers of the Executive Branch to attack peaceful protesters in Washington, D.C. and in Portland, Oregon. In June, on the heels of the assault on the protesters at Lafayette Square, military officers from all branches made it clear that they would not support any effort to use them against civilians. They reiterated that they would support the Constitution. The refusal of the military to support a further extension of Trump's power was no small thing.

And now, here we are. Trump lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes and by an Electoral College split of 306 to 232. Although the result was not close, Trump refuses to acknowledge the loss and is doing all he can to hamper Biden’s assumption of office. Many members of the Republican Party are joining him in his attempt to overturn the election, taking the final, logical step of Movement Conservatism: denying the legitimacy of anyone who does not share their ideology. This is unprecedented. It is a profound attack on our democracy. But it will not succeed.

And in this moment, we have, disastrously, discovered the final answer to whether or not it is a good idea to destroy the activist government that has protected us since 1933. In their zeal for reducing government, the Trump team undercut our ability to respond to a pandemic, and tried to deal with the deadly coronavirus through private enterprise or by ignoring it and calling for people to go back to work in service to the economy, willing to accept huge numbers of dead. They have carried individualism to an extreme, insisting that simple public health measures designed to save lives infringe on their liberty.

The result has been what is on track to be the greatest catastrophe in American history, with more than 338,000 of us dead and the disease continuing to spread like wildfire. It is for this that the Trump administration will be remembered, but it is more than that. It is a fitting end to the attempt to destroy our government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 30, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

And so, we are at the end of a year that has brought a presidential impeachment trial, a deadly pandemic that has killed more than 338,000 of us, a huge social movement for racial justice, a presidential election, and a president who has refused to accept the results of that election and is now trying to split his own political party.

It’s been quite a year.

But I had a chance to talk with history podcaster Bob Crawford of the Avett Brothers yesterday, and he asked a more interesting question. He pointed out that we are now twenty years into this century, and asked what I thought were the key changes of those twenty years. I chewed on this question for awhile and also asked readers what they thought. Pulling everything together, here is where I’ve come out.

In America, the twenty years since 2000 have seen the end game of the Reagan Revolution, begun in 1980.

In that era, political leaders on the right turned against the principles that had guided the country since the 1930s, when Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt guided the nation out of the Great Depression by using the government to stabilize the economy. During the Depression and World War Two, Americans of all parties had come to believe the government had a role to play in regulating the economy, providing a basic social safety net and promoting infrastructure.

But reactionary businessmen hated regulations and the taxes that leveled the playing field between employers and workers. They called for a return to the pro-business government of the 1920s, but got no traction until the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, when the Supreme Court, under the former Republican governor of California, Earl Warren, unanimously declared racial segregation unconstitutional. That decision, and others that promoted civil rights, enabled opponents of the New Deal government to attract supporters by insisting that the country’s postwar government was simply redistributing tax dollars from hardworking white men to people of color.

That argument echoed the political language of the Reconstruction years, when white southerners insisted that federal efforts to enable formerly enslaved men to participate in the economy on terms equal to white men were simply a redistribution of wealth, because the agents and policies required to achieve equality would cost tax dollars and, after the Civil War, most people with property were white. This, they insisted, was “socialism.”

To oppose the socialism they insisted was taking over the East, opponents of black rights looked to the American West. They called themselves Movement Conservatives, and they celebrated the cowboy who, in their inaccurate vision, was a hardworking white man who wanted nothing of the government but to be left alone to work out his own future. In this myth, the cowboys lived in a male-dominated world, where women were either wives and mothers or sexual playthings, and people of color were savage or subordinate.

With his cowboy hat and western ranch, Reagan deliberately tapped into this mythology, as well as the racism and sexism in it, when he promised to slash taxes and regulations to free individuals from a grasping government. He promised that cutting taxes and regulations would expand the economy. As wealthy people—the “supply side” of the economy-- regained control of their capital, they would invest in their businesses and provide more jobs. Everyone would make more money.

From the start, though, his economic system didn’t work. Money moved upward, dramatically, and voters began to think the cutting was going too far. To keep control of the government, Movement Conservatives at the end of the twentieth century ramped up their celebration of the individualist white American man, insisting that America was sliding into socialism even as they cut more and more domestic programs, insisting that the people of color and women who wanted the government to address inequities in the country simply wanted “free stuff.” They courted social conservatives and evangelicals, promising to stop the “secularization” they saw as a partner to communism.

After the end of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, talk radio spread the message that Black and Brown Americans and “feminazis” were trying to usher in socialism. In 1996, that narrative got a television channel that personified the idea of the strong man with subordinate women. The Fox News Channel told a story that reinforced the Movement Conservative narrative daily until it took over the Republican Party entirely.

The idea that people of color and women were trying to undermine society was enough of a rationale to justify keeping them from the vote, especially after Democrats passed the Motor Voter law in 1993, making it easier for poor people to register to vote. In 1997, Florida began the process of purging voter rolls of Black voters.

And so, 2000 came.

In that year, the presidential election came down to the electoral votes in Florida. Democratic candidate Al Gore won the popular vote by more than 540,000 votes over Republican candidate George W. Bush, but Florida would decide the election. During the required recount, Republican political operatives led by Roger Stone descended on the election canvassers in Miami-Dade County to stop the process. It worked, and the Supreme Court upheld the end of the recount. Bush won Florida by 537 votes and, thanks to its electoral votes, became president. Voter suppression was a success, and Republicans would use it, and after 2010, gerrymandering, to keep control of the government even as they lost popular support.

Bush had promised to unite the country, but his installation in the White House gave new power to the ideology of the Movement Conservative leaders of the Reagan Revolution. He inherited a budget surplus from his predecessor Democrat Bill Clinton, but immediately set out to get rid of it by cutting taxes. A balanced budget meant money for regulation and social programs, so it had to go. From his term onward, Republicans would continue to cut taxes even as budgets operated in the red, the debt climbed, and money moved upward.

The themes of Republican dominance and tax cuts were the backdrop of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. That attack gave the country’s leaders a sense of mission after the end of the Cold War and, after launching a war in Afghanistan to stop al-Qaeda, they set out to export democracy to Iraq. This had been a goal for Republican leaders since the Clinton administration, in the belief that the United States needed to spread capitalism and democracy in its role as a world leader. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq strengthened the president and the federal government, creating the powerful Department of Homeland Security, for example, and leading Bush to assert the power of the presidency to interpret laws through signing statements.

The association of the Republican Party with patriotism enabled Republicans in this era to call for increased spending for the military and continued tax cuts, while attacking Democratic calls for domestic programs as wasteful. Increasingly, Republican media personalities derided those who called for such programs as dangerous, or anti-American.

But while Republicans increasingly looked inward to their party as the only real Americans and asserted power internationally, changes in technology were making the world larger. The Internet put the world at our fingertips and enabled researchers to decode the human genome, revolutionizing medical science. Smartphones both made communication easy. Online gaming created communities and empathy. And as many Americans were increasingly embracing rap music and tattoos and LGBTQ rights, as well as recognizing increasing inequality, books were pointing to the dangers of the power concentrating at the top of societies. In 1997, J.K. Rowling began her exploration of the rise of authoritarianism in her wildly popular Harry Potter books, but her series was only the most famous of a number of books in which young people conquered a dystopia created by adults.

In Bush’s second term, his ideology created a perfect storm. His administration's disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina, which killed more than 1,800 people and caused $125 billion in damage in and around New Orleans in 2005, revealed how badly the new economy had treated Black and Brown people, and how badly the destruction of domestic programs had affected our ability to respond to disasters. Computers permitted the overuse of credit default swaps that precipitated the 2008 crash, which then precipitated the housing crisis, as people who had bet on the individualist American dream lost their homes. Meanwhile, the ongoing wars, plagued with financial and moral scandals, made it clear that the Republicans optimistic vision of spreading democracy through military conflict was unrealistic.

In 2008, voters put Black American Barack Obama, a Democrat, into the White House. To Republicans, primed by now to believe that Democrats and Black people were socialists, this was an undermining of the nation itself, and they set out to hamper him. While many Americans saw Obama as the symbol of a new, fairer government with America embracing a multilateral world, reactionaries built a backlash based in racism and sexism. They vocally opposed a federal government they insisted was pushing socialism on hardworking white men, and insisted that America must show its strength by exerting its power unilaterally in the world. Increasingly, the Internet and cell phones enabled people to have their news cater to their worldview, moving Republicans into a world characterized by what a Republican spokesperson would later call "alternative facts."

And so, in 2016, we faced a clash between a relentlessly changing nation and the individualist ideology of the Movement Conservatives who had taken over the Republican Party. By then, that ideology had become openly radical extremism in the hands of Donald Trump, who referred to immigrants as criminals, boasted of sexually assaulting women, and promised to destroy the New Deal government once and for all.

In the 2016 election, the themes of the past 36 years came together. Embracing Movement Conservative individualist ideology taken to an extreme, Trump was eager enough to make sure a Democrat didn't win that, according to American intelligence services, he was willing to accept the help of Russian operatives. They, in turn, influenced the election through the manipulation of new social media, amplified by what had become by then a Republican echo chamber in which Democrats were dangerous socialists and the Democratic candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was a criminal. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision which permitted corporate money to flow into election campaigns, Trump also had the help of a wave of money from big business; financial institutions spent $2 billion to influence the election. He also had the support of evangelicals, who believed he would finally give them the anti-abortion laws they wanted.

Trump lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes but, as George W. Bush before him, won in the Electoral College. Once in office, this president set out to destroy the New Deal state, as Movement Conservatives had called for, returning the country to the control of a small group of elite businessmen who, theoretically, would know how to move the country forward best by leveraging private sector networks and innovation. He also set out to put minorities and women back into subordinate positions, recreating a leadership structure that was almost entirely white and male.

As Trump tried to destroy an activist government once and for all, Americans woke up to how close we have come to turning our democracy over to a small group of oligarchs.

In the past four years, the Women’s March on Washington and the MeToo Movement has enabled women to articulate their demand for equality. The travel ban, child separation policy for Latin American refugees, and Trump’s attacks on Muslims, Latin American immigrants, and Chinese immigrants, has sparked a defense of America’s history of immigration. The Black Lives Matter Movement, begun in July 2013 after George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering teenager Trayvon Martin, has gained power as Black Americans have been murdered at the hands of law enforcement officers and white vigilantes, and as Black Americans have borne witness to those murders with cellphone videos.

The increasing voice of democracy clashed most dramatically with Trump’s ideology in summer 2020 when, with the support of his Attorney General William Barr, Trump used the law enforcement officers of the Executive Branch to attack peaceful protesters in Washington, D.C. and in Portland, Oregon. In June, on the heels of the assault on the protesters at Lafayette Square, military officers from all branches made it clear that they would not support any effort to use them against civilians. They reiterated that they would support the Constitution. The refusal of the military to support a further extension of Trump's power was no small thing.

And now, here we are. Trump lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes and by an Electoral College split of 306 to 232. Although the result was not close, Trump refuses to acknowledge the loss and is doing all he can to hamper Biden’s assumption of office. Many members of the Republican Party are joining him in his attempt to overturn the election, taking the final, logical step of Movement Conservatism: denying the legitimacy of anyone who does not share their ideology. This is unprecedented. It is a profound attack on our democracy. But it will not succeed.

And in this moment, we have, disastrously, discovered the final answer to whether or not it is a good idea to destroy the activist government that has protected us since 1933. In their zeal for reducing government, the Trump team undercut our ability to respond to a pandemic, and tried to deal with the deadly coronavirus through private enterprise or by ignoring it and calling for people to go back to work in service to the economy, willing to accept huge numbers of dead. They have carried individualism to an extreme, insisting that simple public health measures designed to save lives infringe on their liberty.

The result has been what is on track to be the greatest catastrophe in American history, with more than 338,000 of us dead and the disease continuing to spread like wildfire. It is for this that the Trump administration will be remembered, but it is more than that. It is a fitting end to the attempt to destroy our government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[novareign]

December 30, 2020 (Wednesday)

And so, we are at the end of a year that has brought a presidential impeachment trial, a deadly pandemic that has killed more than 338,000 of us, a huge social movement for racial justice, a presidential election, and a president who has refused to accept the results of that election and is now trying to split his own political party.

It’s been quite a year.

But I had a chance to talk with history podcaster Bob Crawford of the Avett Brothers yesterday, and he asked a more interesting question. He pointed out that we are now twenty years into this century, and asked what I thought were the key changes of those twenty years. I chewed on this question for awhile and also asked readers what they thought. Pulling everything together, here is where I’ve come out.

In America, the twenty years since 2000 have seen the end game of the Reagan Revolution, begun in 1980.

In that era, political leaders on the right turned against the principles that had guided the country since the 1930s, when Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt guided the nation out of the Great Depression by using the government to stabilize the economy. During the Depression and World War Two, Americans of all parties had come to believe the government had a role to play in regulating the economy, providing a basic social safety net and promoting infrastructure.

But reactionary businessmen hated regulations and the taxes that leveled the playing field between employers and workers. They called for a return to the pro-business government of the 1920s, but got no traction until the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, when the Supreme Court, under the former Republican governor of California, Earl Warren, unanimously declared racial segregation unconstitutional. That decision, and others that promoted civil rights, enabled opponents of the New Deal government to attract supporters by insisting that the country’s postwar government was simply redistributing tax dollars from hardworking white men to people of color.

That argument echoed the political language of the Reconstruction years, when white southerners insisted that federal efforts to enable formerly enslaved men to participate in the economy on terms equal to white men were simply a redistribution of wealth, because the agents and policies required to achieve equality would cost tax dollars and, after the Civil War, most people with property were white. This, they insisted, was “socialism.”

To oppose the socialism they insisted was taking over the East, opponents of black rights looked to the American West. They called themselves Movement Conservatives, and they celebrated the cowboy who, in their inaccurate vision, was a hardworking white man who wanted nothing of the government but to be left alone to work out his own future. In this myth, the cowboys lived in a male-dominated world, where women were either wives and mothers or sexual playthings, and people of color were savage or subordinate.

With his cowboy hat and western ranch, Reagan deliberately tapped into this mythology, as well as the racism and sexism in it, when he promised to slash taxes and regulations to free individuals from a grasping government. He promised that cutting taxes and regulations would expand the economy. As wealthy people—the “supply side” of the economy-- regained control of their capital, they would invest in their businesses and provide more jobs. Everyone would make more money.

From the start, though, his economic system didn’t work. Money moved upward, dramatically, and voters began to think the cutting was going too far. To keep control of the government, Movement Conservatives at the end of the twentieth century ramped up their celebration of the individualist white American man, insisting that America was sliding into socialism even as they cut more and more domestic programs, insisting that the people of color and women who wanted the government to address inequities in the country simply wanted “free stuff.” They courted social conservatives and evangelicals, promising to stop the “secularization” they saw as a partner to communism.

After the end of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, talk radio spread the message that Black and Brown Americans and “feminazis” were trying to usher in socialism. In 1996, that narrative got a television channel that personified the idea of the strong man with subordinate women. The Fox News Channel told a story that reinforced the Movement Conservative narrative daily until it took over the Republican Party entirely.

The idea that people of color and women were trying to undermine society was enough of a rationale to justify keeping them from the vote, especially after Democrats passed the Motor Voter law in 1993, making it easier for poor people to register to vote. In 1997, Florida began the process of purging voter rolls of Black voters.

And so, 2000 came.

In that year, the presidential election came down to the electoral votes in Florida. Democratic candidate Al Gore won the popular vote by more than 540,000 votes over Republican candidate George W. Bush, but Florida would decide the election. During the required recount, Republican political operatives led by Roger Stone descended on the election canvassers in Miami-Dade County to stop the process. It worked, and the Supreme Court upheld the end of the recount. Bush won Florida by 537 votes and, thanks to its electoral votes, became president. Voter suppression was a success, and Republicans would use it, and after 2010, gerrymandering, to keep control of the government even as they lost popular support.

Bush had promised to unite the country, but his installation in the White House gave new power to the ideology of the Movement Conservative leaders of the Reagan Revolution. He inherited a budget surplus from his predecessor Democrat Bill Clinton, but immediately set out to get rid of it by cutting taxes. A balanced budget meant money for regulation and social programs, so it had to go. From his term onward, Republicans would continue to cut taxes even as budgets operated in the red, the debt climbed, and money moved upward.

The themes of Republican dominance and tax cuts were the backdrop of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. That attack gave the country’s leaders a sense of mission after the end of the Cold War and, after launching a war in Afghanistan to stop al-Qaeda, they set out to export democracy to Iraq. This had been a goal for Republican leaders since the Clinton administration, in the belief that the United States needed to spread capitalism and democracy in its role as a world leader. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq strengthened the president and the federal government, creating the powerful Department of Homeland Security, for example, and leading Bush to assert the power of the presidency to interpret laws through signing statements.

The association of the Republican Party with patriotism enabled Republicans in this era to call for increased spending for the military and continued tax cuts, while attacking Democratic calls for domestic programs as wasteful. Increasingly, Republican media personalities derided those who called for such programs as dangerous, or anti-American.

But while Republicans increasingly looked inward to their party as the only real Americans and asserted power internationally, changes in technology were making the world larger. The Internet put the world at our fingertips and enabled researchers to decode the human genome, revolutionizing medical science. Smartphones both made communication easy. Online gaming created communities and empathy. And as many Americans were increasingly embracing rap music and tattoos and LGBTQ rights, as well as recognizing increasing inequality, books were pointing to the dangers of the power concentrating at the top of societies. In 1997, J.K. Rowling began her exploration of the rise of authoritarianism in her wildly popular Harry Potter books, but her series was only the most famous of a number of books in which young people conquered a dystopia created by adults.

In Bush’s second term, his ideology created a perfect storm. His administration's disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina, which killed more than 1,800 people and caused $125 billion in damage in and around New Orleans in 2005, revealed how badly the new economy had treated Black and Brown people, and how badly the destruction of domestic programs had affected our ability to respond to disasters. Computers permitted the overuse of credit default swaps that precipitated the 2008 crash, which then precipitated the housing crisis, as people who had bet on the individualist American dream lost their homes. Meanwhile, the ongoing wars, plagued with financial and moral scandals, made it clear that the Republicans optimistic vision of spreading democracy through military conflict was unrealistic.

In 2008, voters put Black American Barack Obama, a Democrat, into the White House. To Republicans, primed by now to believe that Democrats and Black people were socialists, this was an undermining of the nation itself, and they set out to hamper him. While many Americans saw Obama as the symbol of a new, fairer government with America embracing a multilateral world, reactionaries built a backlash based in racism and sexism. They vocally opposed a federal government they insisted was pushing socialism on hardworking white men, and insisted that America must show its strength by exerting its power unilaterally in the world. Increasingly, the Internet and cell phones enabled people to have their news cater to their worldview, moving Republicans into a world characterized by what a Republican spokesperson would later call "alternative facts."

And so, in 2016, we faced a clash between a relentlessly changing nation and the individualist ideology of the Movement Conservatives who had taken over the Republican Party. By then, that ideology had become openly radical extremism in the hands of Donald Trump, who referred to immigrants as criminals, boasted of sexually assaulting women, and promised to destroy the New Deal government once and for all.

In the 2016 election, the themes of the past 36 years came together. Embracing Movement Conservative individualist ideology taken to an extreme, Trump was eager enough to make sure a Democrat didn't win that, according to American intelligence services, he was willing to accept the help of Russian operatives. They, in turn, influenced the election through the manipulation of new social media, amplified by what had become by then a Republican echo chamber in which Democrats were dangerous socialists and the Democratic candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was a criminal. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision which permitted corporate money to flow into election campaigns, Trump also had the help of a wave of money from big business; financial institutions spent $2 billion to influence the election. He also had the support of evangelicals, who believed he would finally give them the anti-abortion laws they wanted.

Trump lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes but, as George W. Bush before him, won in the Electoral College. Once in office, this president set out to destroy the New Deal state, as Movement Conservatives had called for, returning the country to the control of a small group of elite businessmen who, theoretically, would know how to move the country forward best by leveraging private sector networks and innovation. He also set out to put minorities and women back into subordinate positions, recreating a leadership structure that was almost entirely white and male.

As Trump tried to destroy an activist government once and for all, Americans woke up to how close we have come to turning our democracy over to a small group of oligarchs.

In the past four years, the Women’s March on Washington and the MeToo Movement has enabled women to articulate their demand for equality. The travel ban, child separation policy for Latin American refugees, and Trump’s attacks on Muslims, Latin American immigrants, and Chinese immigrants, has sparked a defense of America’s history of immigration. The Black Lives Matter Movement, begun in July 2013 after George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering teenager Trayvon Martin, has gained power as Black Americans have been murdered at the hands of law enforcement officers and white vigilantes, and as Black Americans have borne witness to those murders with cellphone videos.

The increasing voice of democracy clashed most dramatically with Trump’s ideology in summer 2020 when, with the support of his Attorney General William Barr, Trump used the law enforcement officers of the Executive Branch to attack peaceful protesters in Washington, D.C. and in Portland, Oregon. In June, on the heels of the assault on the protesters at Lafayette Square, military officers from all branches made it clear that they would not support any effort to use them against civilians. They reiterated that they would support the Constitution. The refusal of the military to support a further extension of Trump's power was no small thing.

And now, here we are. Trump lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes and by an Electoral College split of 306 to 232. Although the result was not close, Trump refuses to acknowledge the loss and is doing all he can to hamper Biden’s assumption of office. Many members of the Republican Party are joining him in his attempt to overturn the election, taking the final, logical step of Movement Conservatism: denying the legitimacy of anyone who does not share their ideology. This is unprecedented. It is a profound attack on our democracy. But it will not succeed.

And in this moment, we have, disastrously, discovered the final answer to whether or not it is a good idea to destroy the activist government that has protected us since 1933. In their zeal for reducing government, the Trump team undercut our ability to respond to a pandemic, and tried to deal with the deadly coronavirus through private enterprise or by ignoring it and calling for people to go back to work in service to the economy, willing to accept huge numbers of dead. They have carried individualism to an extreme, insisting that simple public health measures designed to save lives infringe on their liberty.

The result has been what is on track to be the greatest catastrophe in American history, with more than 338,000 of us dead and the disease continuing to spread like wildfire. It is for this that the Trump administration will be remembered, but it is more than that. It is a fitting end to the attempt to destroy our government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

[uwlmvac]

Thanks to Jim Theler for this week’s post –

Early European travelers from the time of Louis Hennepin in 1680 frequently encountered timber rattlesnakes, especially along the rocky margins of the Upper Mississippi Valley as far north as the Falls of St. Anthony at modern day St. Paul/Minneapolis. Native Americans must have been on guard for timber rattlesnakes when on warm season resource trips into the rocky uplands of western Wisconsin.  In western Wisconsin prior to 1975, rattlesnakes were killed by the thousands for a bounty of $3 to 5$ per rattle. In 1964 and 1965 Crawford County, Wisconsin paid bounties on more than 10,000 rattlesnakes a year (Schorger 1967-68).  

The trunk vertebrae of rattlesnakes have a particular bony structure that allows easy identification of these pit vipers when compared to other large bodied non-venomous snakes such as blacksnakes and bull snakes.  Based on the many tens of thousands of animal bones analyzed in western Wisconsin, there is no indication that snakes of any kind were used as a food item by regional precontact Native Americans. Snake vertebrae do show up in relatively small numbers at archaeological sites. At late precontact Oneota sites, bull (= gopher) snake vertebrae have been found, probably representing “natural rain” of a species that co-occurred with pocket gopher colonies that were once common on the La Crosse terrace. Bones of other species including garter snake and four rattlesnake vertebrae were recovered at one Oneota site. Excavations at regional rockshelters have produced bones of a variety of snakes, including rattlesnakes—again, apparently as remains from natural deaths at the site or brought in by raptors or scavengers.

Native Americans of the Midwest and beyond from precontact times have apparently regarded snakes, including rattlesnakes, as having special (spiritual/ritual) implications. A few Woodland period human burials in Illinois and Kentucky were accompanied by skeletons of large snakes. Some of this reverence might have been linked to Mesoamerican beliefs regarding horned or plumed serpents such as “Quetzalcoatl.”  A serpent effigy cut from mica, found at the Hopewell culture Turner Works site in southwestern Ohio, might represent a horned or plumed rattlesnake. During later Mississippian times in the southeastern U.S., marine shell and stone disks from ritual contexts have been found with a variety of striking rattlesnake representations (see: Hero, Hawk and Open Hand 2004). Rattlesnakes were recorded on the walls of the La Moille Cave in Winona County, Minnesota (Winchell 1911).        

Finally, one remarkable snake representation is “The Great Serpent [Mound] in Adams County Ohio.” (https://www.ohiohistory.org/visit/museum-and-site-locator/serpent-mound) Squier and Davis recorded and surveyed the mound in detail in 1846 and described this 1300-foot-long effigy (unrelated to the animal-shaped mounds of Wisconsin’s Effigy Mound culture) as “Probably the most extraordinary earthwork thus far discovered…” (1848:96) (see also Romain 2018).  

Romain, William F. 2018 Serpent Mound in Its Woodland Period Context: Second Rejoinder to Lepper. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 44 (1):57-83. 

Schorger, A. W. 1967-1968 Rattlesnakes in Early Wisconsin. Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters 56:29-48.

Squier, E.G. and Davis, E.H 1848 Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley: Comparing the results of Extensive Original Surveys and Explorations. Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, Vol. 1. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 

Townsend, Richard F. and Sharpe, Robert V. (editors) Hero, Hawk and Open Hand: American Indian Art of the American Midwest and South. Art Institute of Chicago, in association with Yale University press. New Haven. 

Winchell, N.H. 1911 The Aborigines of Minnesota. The Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul. 

Image credit: Winchell, N.H. 1911 The Aborigines of Minnesota. The Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul 563, plate II.

[toongrrl-blog]

The Mommy Myth: Threats from Within (Part Three)

Just some Didi Pickles anxiety for you before we start ahead, I think we’d all feel this way.

We start with the Lisa Steinberg (buried as Elizabeth “Lisa” Launders) case where a six year old was abused to death by her adoptive father Joel Steinberg while her mother Hedda Nussbaum looked on (and was abused herself), there is still some controversy as to whether Hedda was an accomplice to her daughter’s abuse and death, or if she’s merely a victim in her own right (also Joel is walking around free after parole). Media coverage of child abuse have improved, being kicked off by the publication of Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford and Oprah even covering it in her show “Scared Silent”, interview with Michael Jackson, her disclosure of childhood trauma, and her coverage of child abuse in a Montana town. The darker side is that the coverage overtly covered Black or Latina mothers and were aimed at underfunded and understaffed child welfare services (without assigning culpability to the government and agency support or lack of it) and these stories didn’t address structural problems like unemployment, poverty, generational trauma, racism, etc. Instead they came up with “the Maternal Delinquent”, who was more shocking and newsworthy than fathers who murdered and abused their children. 

We talk about Susan Smith, where the story starts off with a 23 year old woman’s Mazda being carjacked by a “black man in a ski mask”, taking her car and her two young children (age 3 and 14 months, respectively). An alert was put on for the suspect and the whole community (the small South Carolina town of Union) went on a search for the boys while their separated parents went on national television to beg for the safe return of the boys, while David Smith could barely keep himself together, Susan was very composed (they had filed for divorce) causing many viewers to speculate if the two of them or one of them were involved in the kidnapping. This led to Susan saying that it’s so hurtful someone would think that of them and then hours later, Susan Smith confessed to the FBI that she had driven her car into the lake John D. Long with the kids in the backseat and let the car roll off the boat ramp into the deep murky waters of the lake. This also occurred around the same time as the O.J. Simpson trial so it was a time where people were really tuning into their screens where there was coverage up until Smith was sentenced in late July 1995. The community (that supported her and her family) were chanting “baby killer” at her on her way to the courthouse and it turned out that she had been dating the most eligible (and wealthy) man in town, Tom Findlay, who didn’t want to get involved with a woman with children, so she went La Llorona on them. Here’s a break from Coco:

I don’t have to tell you that when reading these stories that you can feel free to take time to go outside, smell fresh air, cuddle puppies or look at pictures of puppies. But I will continue: 

She became Time magazine’s cover girl, people built a shrine to the boys on the lake’s bank, including mothers with their children while they asked “How could a Mother do that to her children?” with one African American mom (one of the skimpy times where moms of color were shown in a more positive life than white mothers) snarking: “She couldn’t eat ‘cause they were hungry, she couldn’t sleep ‘cause they were cold. I guess she couldn’t take a bath ‘cause she thought they was drowning.” The news was a shock to a lot of people, even her ex husband insisted she was a dedicated mother in interviews, but she bamboozled law enforcement, viewers, a whole town, the media, and set the southern African-American community on high alert (look up pogroms and look up the Springfield race riot) and she reminded people that motherhood may be an act. It also made people wonder: are kids just commodities to their parents? The further coverage was worse: they figured the kids were aware when they went in the water (there goes my hopes that they were asleep then). The Union County Sheriff’s office re-created the crime with cameras in a car so people and see and feel what it was like for the boys to go under, then was aired by the networks; at a time when mothers were told to put themselves in their childrens’ shoes and see the world through their eyes, it was jarring. There were two women from the community who cried over the idea of these two little boys and their last moments.

Speaking of horror and children, it turned out that Susan Smith’s stepfather, a member of the conservative Christian Coalition, had been sexually molesting her since she was sixteen and (according to his testimony) was still having sex with her and her own father committed suicide when she was six (a social worker said she tried to press charges but the sheriff said the case was closed and “it’s file disappeared”); Susan even attempted suicide as a teenager. David Smith testified he doesn’t know what to do now his kids were gone and he had plans to see them grow up and teach them how to ride a bike and go fishing. A Newsweek poll revealed that 63% respondents said she should receive the death penalty. The trial even revealed that white picket fence small towns like Union, with it’s churches numbering over 100, would have it’s dark secrets and Tom Brokaw said, “And in every small town in America tonight residents comfortable in the sanctuary of their familiar surroundings are wondering, ‘What’s going on here that we don’t know about?’”

Instead of probing “how could she?”, the media focused on sentimentalization with Medea Syndrome with even Cosmopolitan magazine taking time away from blow jobs and the thing that Sir Mix A Lot ain’t down with, saying there were a lot of mothers killing their children. And then we met the moms who made mistakes that are so fatal: Lisa Beth Hathaway, mother of Jessica Dubroff. The “miniature Sally Ride” who wanted to be a pilot and was already training to be a pilot and was flying with her instructor and father from Half Moon Bay to go across the country, the weather wasn’t that great and the plane crashed and killed all the passengers. Her father, Lloyd Dubroff was blamed for pushing her to be the next Amelia Earhart, but mom Lisa was portrayed as a monster...although if everything went right she would have been held as an example of exemplary mothers raising exceptional kids (just sayin’). The moms interviewed were outraged at Lisa’s permissiveness and at the fact that she said she wouldn’t have kept Lisa from doing it because it’s her dream (if she did keep her, we’d say she was toxic). Then she was grouped with Wanda Holloway, Brooke Sheilds’s mom, Macaulay Culkin’s dad, and Steffi Graf’s dad as a “pushy parent”. She just wanted her daughter to be happy is all that is, but the media went on to drag her through the mud when they saw she was a hippie feminist who didn’t play a TV  and gave her musical instruments for her daughter, now mothers were policed in private even if their husbands did the fucking up. If things had gone right, Lisa would have been congratulated for raising an exceptional daughter with a variety of talents. She has written a book about her daughter.

The hand wringing went on with their coverage of teen moms like Melissa Drexler and Amy Grossberg, who gave birth and abandoned their babies in the trash outside. Newsweek covered the stories and similar ones, suggesting an epidemic. There was no exploration of how US culture uses sex to sell everything and turns around tells kids to “just say no”, the poor state of sex ed in a country where people are too squeamish to discuss sex in a clear and mature manner, or why was dumping a baby in a dumpster the only viable option? 

These stories affected how moms were looked and judged and the public vilification covered was designed to keep moms on their toes and never let your guard down, or you will be condemned. Also do it all yourself Mom. 

[petnews2day]

Adoptable pets from Arizona Humane, Maricopa County and Arizona Small Dog Rescue (11/9/22)

New Post has been published on https://petnews2day.com/pet-industry-news/pet-charities/adoptable-pets-from-arizona-humane-maricopa-county-and-arizona-small-dog-rescue-11-9-22/

Adoptable pets from Arizona Humane, Maricopa County and Arizona Small Dog Rescue (11/9/22)

Butternut | 5 years old | 40lbs| spayed female | ID# A4780263 | Butternut approached our field officers with a wagging tail on September 2nd and since then she’s been waiting to greet you with the same level of excitement! She loves getting attention from her humans including but not limited to: belly rubs and lap cuddles. Butternut is spayed, microchipped, and vaccinated and is available for a blind adoption at our East facility. Visit maricopa.gov/pets for more information about how you can adopt your new best friend!MCACC

Crawford | 7 years old | 59lbs | neutered male | ID# A4783353 | Crawford always greets staff and volunteers with a wagging tail! Once he’s out of his kennel, he loves to explore the play yards and then sit with the handlers for treats and pets. He’s a staff favorite because he’s such a good boy. Crawford is neutered, microchipped, vaccinated, and ready to go home! His adoption fee is currently waived. Visit maricopa.gov/pets for more information about how you can adopt your new best friend!MCACC

Elvira: https://www.azhumane.org/adopt/#A709868AHS

Jack Jack: https://azsmalldog.org/meet-our-dogs/AZSDR

Dorito | 4 years old | 62lbs| neutered male | ID# A4807515 | Dorito likes to run around and play with toys! The shelter environment is a stressful place for him and he hopes his forever family comes to meet him soon. He is vocal inside his kennel because he wants out so bad, but once he is in the play yard, he “dances” and gets the zoomies! Come meet Dorito at our West shelter—his adoption fee is waived! Visit maricopa.gov/pets for more information about how you can adopt your new best friend!MCACC

Caramel – https://azsmalldog.org/meet-our-dogs/AZSDR

Demi | 5 years old | Spayed female | ID# A3922317 | Demi has been at the shelter since September and is ready to go into a comfortable, loving home! She’s a little shy at first but if you give her time to warm up she’ll prance around with a happy wagging tail! Demi’s adoption fee is also waived and she is ready to meet her new best friend! Visit maricopa.gov/pets for more information about how you can adopt your new best friend!MCACC

Ziggy | 8 years old | 70lbs | spayed female | ID# A4072269 | Ziggy has been waiting for her forever home for 75 days! You can tell she’s ready to leave the shelter because her tail can’t stop wagging when customers walk by. Ziggy is an 8-year-old lady who has that puppy nonsense behind her and is ready to show you that she’s housetrained, loves to play fetch, and knows a few tricks like “sit” and “stay” and “shake.” Volunteers say she is friendly, playful, and affectionate and would be a great addition to a family! Ziggy’s adoption fee is currently waived and she is spayed, microchipped, vaccinated, and ready to go home! Visit maricopa.gov/pets for more information about how you can adopt your new best friend!MCACC

Max | 6 years old | 63lbs | neutered male | ID# A4779097 | Max is an easy-going three-legged guy who loves to meet new people while out on his walks with staff and volunteers. He has been at the shelter since August 30th—that’s 70 days! Max is a people pleaser, and all he asks is that he doesn’t want to be around any cats! He is neutered, microchipped, vaccinated, and ready to go home! His adoption fee is currently waived. Visit maricopa.gov/pets for more information about how you can adopt your new best friend!MCACC

Henry: azsmalldog.org/meet-our-dogs/AZSDR

Tabby: https://www.azhumane.org/adopt/#A715273AHS

Luna: https://www.azhumane.org/adopt/#A714543AHS

Cinnamon – https://azsmalldog.org/meet-our-dogs/AZSDR

Marlo: https://www.azhumane.org/adopt/#A702475AHS

Jakoda: https://azsmalldog.org/meet-our-dogs/AZSDR

Sissy Sue – azsmalldog.org/meet-our-dogs/AZSDR

Chocolate – https://azsmalldog.org/meet-our-dogs/AZSDR

Sarah: https://www.azhumane.org/adopt/#A715994AHS

Georgia: https://www.azhumane.org/adopt/#A715653AHS

Cooper Phoenix – https://azsmalldog.org/meet-our-dogs/AZSDR

window.fbAsyncInit = function() FB.init(

appId : '1561178210822538',

xfbml : true, version : 'v2.9' ); ; (function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js"; js.async = true; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); (document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments); if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window, document,'script', 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '4623846407645954'); fbq('track', 'PageView');

[ladysmeg13]

Mom's Hometown Schleswig Iowa

Schleswig is located in western Iowa and Crawford county. It's 200 miles or more away from Cedar Falls depending on which way you go and how many detours you go around or through. A one way trip can take 4 or 5 hours depending who is driving and how many stops we make.

Once getting to town we drive passed the park with pool and down the street to grandma and grandpa's house. After unloading the green panel station wagon we are free to play. There are so many things to do I don't know where to start. So using grandma's phone I start dialing to see who is home only need the last 5 digits of the number making it easier when you have a lot of numbers to dial. I dialed 5-5641, 5-6632, 5-4521, 5-3577 and so on until everyone know where to meet and when. Everyone is to meet at the park by 9:00 am making sure they bring snacks to decide on were we would go or do first.

The next morning a 9:00 am everyone's at the park and we all decide on going to the telephone company building on the north side of town. First we make a few stops dropping off and picking up some thing we well need. Been bye there a few times but never up close.

While growing up I heard all the stories that back in the 30's and 40's when they still used telephone operators to answer calls and make calls out. The story goes that one night around midnight a single woman operator was brutally attacked and murdered with an axe leaving only pieces of her body around the building. On the walls and floor there were cuts from the axe and blood, skin also other body bits.

By the time we got to the telephone company brick building it would be 2:00 pm making sure we weren't seen trying to go through the tall grass. Walking around 2 or 3 times looking in through the windows stopping short of the only door to see if it could be opened or not.

Me being the oldest at 9 climbed up the 3 steps to the front door. Using the crowbar I borrowed from my grandpa's work shop. Prying the door open and waited for the dust to settle and or getting up enough courage to go inside. 20 minutes later I'm walking through the door with flashlight in hand taking it very slow watching out for the holes in the floor which looked like it could have been done by an axe.

Stopping and going through my pack for my camera which I didn't find remembering it's on my bed back in Cedar Falls so NO pictures. Hitting my knee into the frame of the switchboard made me jump and spin around. Turning back I took a closer look at the switchboard there were small brown spots and a bigger spot of brown all over it. In the middle is a big hole which is pointing downward shaped like a V. On the floor were a chair would have sat is covered in dust using a rage to remove it I can see an even bigger spot of brown.

Next walking over to the wall I could see lots of holes in it. I turned using my flashlight to look at all the walls being covered in holes too. Turning back I used my finger to trace some of the hole which formed the V shape.

I froze when I see a light going by outside a window and everyone hide in the tall grass so no one would be seen. Someone yelled in letting me know it's time to start back out. Going back out the way i came left only a few foot prints and a safe way out.

Before leaving we all pinky swear not to tell anyone ever which I'm breaking now after 30 some years later by telling you this story. I got home for supper which is at 5:30 pm mom wanted to know about my big adventure of the day. So I told her about all the places we went too and all the things we did with some friends.

And I did keep the best adventure to myself because I wanted and did go back there a lot more times. Each time I visited I would make a trip there to explore it some more. Until one year the town torn it down.

So after that I had to find another big adventure to go on too.. Which didn't take that long for me to find.

[uniqueartisanconnoisseur]

Art, Honor & More in Southeast Kansas

I was amazed by the variety of art, artists and fun dining options in Southeast Kansas. On a hosted trip from Explore Crawford County Kansas, I saw murals, sculptures, a veteran’s wall and beautiful jewelry. I came in contact with a variety of experiences that make me want to come back and see what I missed! Traveling with a group of Midwest Travel Network bloggers, The Driveby Tourist, Myles To…

[blackkudos]

Ahmad Jamal

Ahmad Jamal (born Frederick Russell Jones, July 2, 1930) is an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader, and educator. For five decades, he has been one of the most successful small-group leaders in jazz.

Biography

Early life

Jamal was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He began playing piano at the age of three, when his uncle Lawrence challenged him to duplicate what he was doing on the piano. Jamal began formal piano training at the age of seven with Mary Cardwell Dawson, whom he describes as greatly influencing him. His Pittsburgh roots have remained an important part of his identity ("Pittsburgh meant everything to me and it still does," he said in 2001) and it was there that he was immersed in the influence of jazz artists such as Earl Hines, Billy Strayhorn, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner. Jamal also studied with pianist James Miller and began playing piano professionally at the age of fourteen, at which point he was recognized as a "coming great" by the pianist Art Tatum. When asked about his practice habits by a New York Times critic, Jamal commented that, "I used to practice and practice with the door open, hoping someone would come by and discover me. I was never the practitioner in the sense of twelve hours a day, but I always thought about music. I think about music all the time."

Beginnings and conversion to Islam

Jamal began touring with George Hudson's Orchestra after graduating from George Westinghouse High School in 1948. He joined another touring group known as The Four Strings, which soon disbanded when the violinist, Joe Kennedy. Jr., left. He moved to Chicago in 1950 (where he legally changed his name to Ahmad Jamal), and played on and off with local musicians such as saxophonists Von Freeman and Claude McLin, as well as performing solo at the Palm Tavern, occasionally joined by drummer Ike Day.

Born to Baptist parents in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Jamal did not discover Islam until his early 20s. While touring in Detroit (where there was a sizable Muslim community in the 1940s and 1950s), Jamal became interested in Islam and Islamic culture. He converted to Islam and changed his name to Ahmad Jamal in 1950. In an interview with The New York Times a few years later, Jamal said his decision to change his name stemmed from a desire to "re-establish my original name." Shortly after his conversion to Islam, Jamal explained to The New York Times that he "says Muslim prayers five times a day and arises in time to say his first prayers at 5 am. He says them in Arabic in keeping with the Muslim tradition."

He made his first sides in 1951 for the Okeh label with The Three Strings (which would later also be called the Ahmad Jamal Trio, although Jamal himself prefers not to use the term "trio"): the other members were guitarist Ray Crawford and a bassist, at different times Eddie Calhoun (1950–52), Richard Davis (1953–54), and Israel Crosby (from 1954). The Three Strings arranged an extended engagement at Chicago's Blue Note, but leapt to fame after performing at the Embers in New York City where John Hammond saw the band play and signed them to Okeh Records. Hammond, a record producer who discovered the talents and enhanced the fame of musicians like Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, and Count Basie, also helped Jamal's trio attract critical acclaim. Jamal subsequently recorded for Parrot (1953–55) and Epic (1955) using the piano-guitar-bass lineup.

At the Pershing: But Not For Me

The trio's sound changed significantly when Crawford was replaced with drummer Vernel Fournier in 1957, and the group worked as the "House Trio" at Chicago's Pershing Hotel. The trio released the live album, Live at the Pershing: But Not For Me, which stayed on the Ten Best-selling charts for 108 weeks. Jamal's well known song "Poinciana" was first released on this album.

Perhaps Jamal's most famous recording and undoubtedly the one that brought him vast popularity in the late 1950s and into the 1960s jazz age, At the Pershing was recorded at the Pershing Hotel in Chicago in 1958. Jamal played the set with bassist Israel Crosby and drummer Vernel Fournier. The set list expressed a diverse collection of tunes, including "The Surrey with the Fringe On Top" from the musical Oklahoma! and Jamal's arrangement of the jazz standard "Poinciana". Jazz musicians and listeners alike found inspiration in the At the Pershing recording, and Jamal's trio was recognized as an integral new building block in the history of jazz. Evident were his unusually minimalist style and his extended vamps, according to reviewer John Morthland. "If you're looking for an argument that pleasurable mainstream art can assume radical status at the same time, Jamal is your guide," said The New York Times contributor Ben Ratliff in a review of the album.

After the recording of the best-selling album But Not For Me, Jamal's music grew in popularity throughout the 1950s, and he attracted media coverage for his investment decisions pertaining to his "rising fortune". In 1959, he took a tour of North Africa to explore investment options in Africa. Jamal, who was twenty-nine at the time, said he had a curiosity about the homeland of his ancestors, highly influenced by his conversion to the Muslim faith. He also said his religion had brought him peace of mind about his race, which accounted for his "growth in the field of music that has proved very lucrative for me." Upon his return to the U.S. after a tour of North Africa, the financial success of Live at the Pershing: But Not For Me allowed Jamal to open a restaurant and club called The Alhambra in Chicago. In 1962, The Three Strings disbanded and Jamal moved to New York City, where, at the age of 32, he took a three-year hiatus from his musical career.

Return to music and The Awakening

In 1964, Jamal resumed touring and recording, this time with the bassist Jamil Nasser and recorded a new album, Extensions, in 1965. Jamal and Nasser continued to play and record together from 1964 to 1972. He also joined forces with Fournier (again, but only for about a year) and drummer Frank Gant (1966–76), among others. Until 1970, he played acoustic piano exclusively. The final album on which he played acoustic piano in the regular sequence was The Awakening. In the 1970s, he played electric piano as well. It was rumored that the Rhodes piano was a gift from someone in Switzerland. He continued to play throughout the 1970s and 1980s, mostly in trios with piano, bass and drums, but he occasionally expanded the group to include guitar. One of his most long-standing gigs was as the band for the New Year's Eve celebrations at Blues Alley in Washington, D.C., from 1979 through the 1990s.

Later career

In 1986, Jamal sued critic Leonard Feather for using his former name in a publication.

Clint Eastwood featured two recordings from Jamal's But Not For Me album — "Music, Music, Music" and "Poinciana" — in the 1995 movie The Bridges of Madison County.

Now in his eighties, Ahmad Jamal has continued to make numerous tours and recordings. His most recently released albums are Saturday Morning (2013), and the CD/DVD release Ahmad Jamal Featuring Yusef Lateef Live at L'Olympia (2014).

Jamal is the main mentor of jazz piano virtuosa Hiromi Uehara, known as Hiromi.

Style and influence

Trained in both traditional jazz ("American classical music", as he prefers to call it) and European classical style, Ahmad Jamal has been praised as one of the greatest jazz innovators over his exceptionally long career. Following bebop greats like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Jamal entered the world of jazz at a time when speed and virtuosic improvisation were central to the success of jazz musicians as artists. Jamal, however, took steps in the direction of a new movement, later coined "cool jazz" – an effort to move jazz in the direction of popular music. He emphasized space and time in his musical compositions and interpretations instead of focusing on the blinding speed of bebop.

Because of this style, Jamal was "often dismissed by jazz writers as no more than a cocktail pianist, a player so given to fluff that his work shouldn't be considered seriously in any artistic sense". Stanley Crouch, author of Considering Genius, offers a very different reaction to Jamal's music, claiming that, like the highly influential Thelonious Monk, Jamal was a true innovator of the jazz tradition and is second in importance in the development of jazz after 1945 only to Parker. His unique musical style stemmed from many individual characteristics, including his use of orchestral effects and his ability to control the beat of songs. These stylistic choices resulted in a unique and new sound for the piano trio: "Through the use of space and changes of rhythm and tempo", writes Crouch, "Jamal invented a group sound that had all the surprise and dynamic variation of an imaginatively ordered big band." Jamal explored the texture of riffs, timbres, and phrases rather than the quantity or speed of notes in any given improvisation. Speaking about Jamal, A. B. Spellman of the National Endowment of the Arts said: "Nobody except Thelonious Monk used space better, and nobody ever applied the artistic device of tension and release better." These (at the time) unconventional techniques that Jamal gleaned from both traditional classical and contemporary jazz musicians helped pave the way for later jazz greats like Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, and McCoy Tyner.

Though Jamal is often overlooked by jazz critics and historians, he is frequently credited with having a great influence on Miles Davis. Davis is quoted as saying that he was impressed by Jamal's rhythmic sense and his "concept of space, his lightness of touch, his understatement". Jamal characterizes what he thought Davis admired about his music as: "my discipline as opposed to my space." Jamal and Davis became friends in the 1950s, and Davis continued to support Jamal as a fellow musician, often playing versions of Jamal's own songs ("Ahmad's Blues", "New Rhumba") until he died in 1991.

Jamal, speaking about his own work says, "I like doing ballads. They're hard to play. It takes years of living, really, to read them properly." From an early age, Jamal developed an appreciation for the lyrics of the songs he learned: "I once heard Ben Webster playing his heart out on a ballad. All of a sudden he stopped. I asked him, 'Why did you stop, Ben?' He said, 'I forgot the lyrics.'" Jamal attributes the variety in his musical taste to the fact that he grew up in several eras: the big band era, the bebop years, and the electronic age. He says his style evolved from drawing on the techniques and music produced in these three eras. In 1985, Jamal agreed to do an interview and recording session with his fellow jazz pianist, Marian McPartland on her NPR show Piano Jazz. Jamal, who said he rarely plays "But Not For Me" due to its popularity since his 1958 recording, played an improvised version of the tune – though only after noting that he has moved on to making ninety percent of his repertoire his own compositions. He said that when he grew in popularity from the Live at the Pershing album, he was severely criticized afterwards for not playing any of his own compositions.

In more recent years, Jamal has embraced the electronic influences affecting the genre of jazz. He has also occasionally expanded his usual small ensemble of three to include a tenor saxophone (George Coleman) and a violin. A jazz fan interviewed by Down Beat magazine about Jamal in 2010 described his development as "more aggressive and improvisational these days. The word I used to use is avant garde; that might not be right. Whatever you call it, the way he plays is the essence of what jazz is."

Saxophonist Ted Nash, a longtime member of the Lincoln Center Orchestra, had the opportunity to play with Jamal in 2008 for Jazz at Lincoln Center. Nash described his experience with Jamal's style in an interview with Down Beat magazine: "The way he comped wasn't the generic way that lots of pianists play with chords in the middle of the keyboard, just filling things up. He gave lots of single line responses. He'd come back and throw things out at you, directly from what you played. It was really interesting because it made you stop, and allowed him to respond, and then you felt like playing something else – that's something I don't feel with a lot of piano players. It's really quite engaging. I guess that's another reason people focus in on him. He makes them hone in [sic]."

Bands and personnel

Jamal typically plays with a bassist and drummer: his current trio is with bassist Reginald Veal and drummer Herlin Riley. He has also performed with percussionist Manolo Badrena. Jamal has recorded with the voices of the Howard A. Roberts Chorale on The Bright, the Blue and the Beautiful and Cry Young; with vibraphonist Gary Burton on In Concert; with brass, reeds, and strings celebrating his hometown of Pittsburgh; with The Assai Quartet; and with saxophonist George Coleman on the album The Essence.

Awards and honors

1959: Entertainment Award, Pittsburgh Junior Chamber of Commerce

1980: Distinguished Service Award, City of Washington D.C., Anacostia Neighborhood Museum, Smithsonian Institution

1981: Nomination, Best R&B Instrumental Performance ("You're Welcome", "Stop on By"), NARAS

1986: Mellon Jazz Festival Salutes Ahmad Jamal, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

1987: Honorary Membership, Philippines Jazz Foundation

1994: American Jazz Masters award, National Endowment for the Arts

2001: Arts & Culture Recognition Award, National Coalition of 100 Black Women

2001: Kelly-Strayhorn Gallery of Stars, for Achievements as Pianist and Composer, East Liberty Quarter Chamber of Commerce

2003: American Jazz Hall of Fame, New Jersey Jazz Society

2003: Gold Medallion, Steinway & Sons 150 Years Celebration (1853–2003)

2007: Living Jazz Legend, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

2007: Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, French government

2011: Down Beat Hall of Fame, 76th Readers Poll

2015: Honorary Doctorate of Music, The New England Conservatory

Discography

As leader

1951: Ahmad's Blues (Okeh)

1955: Ahmad Jamal Plays (Parrot) – also released as Chamber Music of the New Jazz (Argo)

1955: The Ahmad Jamal Trio (Epic)

1956: Count 'Em 88 (Argo)

1958: At the Pershing: But Not for Me (Argo)

1958: At the Pershing, Vol. 2 (Argo)

1958: Ahmad Jamal Trio Volume IV (Argo)

1958: Portfolio of Ahmad Jamal (Argo)

1959: The Piano Scene of Ahmad Jamal (Epic)

1959: Jamal at the Penthouse (Argo)

1960: Happy Moods (Argo)

1960: Listen to the Ahmad Jamal Quintet (Argo)

1961: All of You (Argo)

1961: Ahmad Jamal's Alhambra (Argo)

1962: Ahmad Jamal at the Blackhawk (Argo)

1962: Macanudo (Argo)

1963: Poinciana (Argo)

1964: Naked City Theme (Argo)

1965: The Roar of the Greasepaint (Argo)

1965: Extensions (Argo)

1966: Rhapsody (Cadet)

1966: Heat Wave (Cadet)

1967: Cry Young (Cadet)

1968: The Bright, the Blue and the Beautiful (Cadet)

1968: Tranquility (ABC)

1968: Ahmad Jamal at the Top: Poinciana Revisited (Impulse!)

1970: The Awakening (Impulse!)

1971: Freeflight (Impulse!)

1972: Outertimeinnerspace (Impulse!)

1973: Ahmad Jamal '73 (20th Century)

1974: Jamalca (20th Century)

1974: Jamal Plays Jamal (20th Century)

1975: Genetic Walk (20th Century)

1976: Steppin' Out with a Dream (20th Century)

1976: Recorded Live at Oil Can Harry's (Catalyst)

1978: One (20th Century)

1980: Intervals (20th Century)

1980: Live at Bubba's (Who's Who in Jazz)

1980: Night Song (Motown)

1981: In Concert (Personal Choice Records)

1982: American Classical Music (Shubra)

1985: Digital Works (Atlantic)

1985: Live at the Montreal Jazz Festival 1985 (Atlantic)

1986: Rossiter Road (Atlantic)

1987: Crystal (Atlantic)

1989: Pittsburgh (Atlantic)

1992: Live in Paris 1992 (Birdology)

1992: Chicago Revisited (Telarc)

1994: I Remember Duke, Hoagy & Strayhorn (Telarc)

1994: Ahmad Jamal with The Assai Quartet (Roesch)

1994: Ahmad Jamal at Home (Roesch)

1995: The Essence Part One (Birdology)

1995: Big Byrd: The Essence Part 2 (Birdology)

1996: Live in Paris 1996 (Birdology)

1997: Nature: The Essence Part Three (Birdology)

2000: Picture Perfect

2001: Ahmad Jamal à l'Olympia

2003: In Search of Momentum

2005: After Fajr

2008: It's Magic

2008: Poinciana – One Night Only

2009: A Quiet Time

2012: Blue Moon (Jazzbook)

2013: Saturday Morning (Jazzbook)

2014: Ahmad Jamal featuring Yusef Lateef, Live at L'Olympia. 2012 — 2 CDs/1 DVD (Jazzbook/Bose/Jazz Village)

2017: Marseille (Jazz Village)

Compilations

1967: Standard Eyes (Cadet)

1972: Inspiration (Cadet)

1974: Re-evaluations: The Impulse! Years (Impulse!)

1980: The Best of Ahmad Jamal (20th Century)

1998: Ahmad Jamal 1956–66 Recordings

1998: Cross Country Tour 1958–1961 (GRP/Chess)

2005: The Legendary Okeh & Epic Recordings (1951–1955) (Columbia Legacy)

2007: Complete Live at the Pershing Lounge 1958 (Gambit)

2007: Complete Live at the Spotlite Club 1958 (Gambit)

As sideman

With Ray Brown

Some of My Best Friends Are...The Piano Players (Telarc, 1994)

With Shirley Horn

May the Music Never End (Verve, 2003)

Wikipedia

[readsbones]

“ please don’t scare me like that again.  i can take a lot of things,  but not losing you.  ” - jack, riley

soft(ish) meme: accepting.

@trckstaer said: “ please don’t scare me like that again.  i can take a lot of things,  but not losing you.  ” - jack, riley

this entire situation is ugly. riley knows in her heart that she has not only disappointed her uncle, but has downright scared him half to death. and she knows even worse that jack does not deserve this sort of heartache. jack has too much else that he needs to do. jack is trying to catch a serial killer. jack is trying to keep his agents alive. jack is already grieving for his wife who is not dead yet but who will be: aunt bella does not want chemo.

and here she is: riley jean crawford, the reckless, the foolish, the addict. here she is, after a horrible decision to sneak out last night, to explore baltimore's underbelly and to find those who would sell her what she always craved. here she was, after having to call her poor uncle at 3:30 am from county lockup, after getting arrested for wreaking havoc on the neighborhoods with some punks she met. and now here she is, after a quiet drive home, in smothering silence, now seated on her bed with her hands in her lap and dried tears on her face.

"I know, uncle jack. I'm sorry."

this apology feels weak to her. it feels pathetic. but what else does she have to say? her throat feels tight; nothing seems to want to come out. it feels like something has hold of her, strangling her. she sniffs and reaches, wiping red eyes.

[digitalimagingfall2018]

Project #2 Vision Statement

Taylor Huddleston

My project’s ‘working’ title is: “A Day in the Life of a Detective.” The subject of my project is a detective from the Kanawha County Sheriff’s Department. The detective I want to focus on is Detective Adam Crawford. My project is focused on the day in the life of a detective. I want to be able to explore what a detective does on a daily basis, especially in a police department work setting. I feel like it would be a really cool opportunity to show others what it is like to be detective and what all goes on because their jobs are not always the easiest, but they are interesting.

I plan to execute my project by setting up a formal interview in Detective Adam Crawford’s office at the Kanawha County Sheriff’s Office in Charleston, WV. I want to get background information about him, how he developed this career path, and how he got to where he is today being a detective with a police department. I plan on shooting him working at his desk, working on different crime scenes evidence (if possible/allowed), and executing what being a detective is like every day. Some days are boring, and some days are interesting. Hopefully, when we work together on this project, there will be a good amount of evidence to work with!

[secretvirginia]

Secret Virginia Podcast Episode 5: Crawford Road Bridge

Secret Virginia Podcast Episode 5: Crawford Road Bridge #secretvirginia #secret_virginia #virginia #virginialore #virginiafolklore #ghoststories #folklore #yorkcountyva #newportnews #newportnewsva #crawfordroadbridge #crawfordbridge

The sinister reputation of haunted places are often unearned, but in the case of this remote bridge in the woods of York County, Virginia, the truth is more horrifying than fiction. Join our host, the mercurial Morella Belle, for episode five of this eight part series where she explores the hidden mysteries of the Old Dominion and its neighbors.

[warninggraphiccontent]

30 April 2021

Open season

Do you think the UK government should be more transparent, accountable and participatory?

Are you interested in health, the environment, justice, data ethics and algorithmic accountability, open contracting, misinformation, freedom of information, democracy building and standards in public life?

Would you like to help shape policy pledges on those issues (and maybe others) that government will commit to?

Then sign up to take part in the development of the latest Open Government National Action Plan - the process kicks off next week. With perfect timing, really. (Full disclosure: I'm on the civil society steering group. Some more info on the whole thing here.)

Please do express your interest, and share as widely as possible - it would be great to have as much of UK civil society and the public involved as possible.

Other bits and pieces:

One of those thematic groups will be on freedom of information. Plenty of links on that this week below, including mySociety's (excellent) new report on the topic. (And something something government making an exhibition of itself.)

Remember we have another great Data Bites for you next week - sign up here, catch up on the previous events here.

And IfG have an event today with the new senior digital figures in the UK government - hopefully we'll hear more than we have so far about the new Central Digital and Data Office, and its relationship with the Government Digital Service.

Trying to find basic information is more complicated than you might think, part whatever we're on now.

My list of data series - newsletters, podcasts, events - is so very nearly at 100 entries, so do add any that we've missed. And thanks to all who've contributed so far. One of those listed is Politico's Digital Bridge, which has a good run down of the G7 digital and technology track this week.

The Alan Turing Institute and the Royal Statistical Society have been working with the Joint Biosecurity Centre on various statistics and machine learning projects during the pandemic. You can hear about some of them at an event this afternoon.

RIP astronaut Michael Collins. This extract from his autobiography is quite a piece of writing.

Have a great weekend

Gavin

Enjoying Warning: Graphic Content?

Tell your friends - forward this email, and they can:

Subscribe via email

Follow on Twitter

Follow on Tumblr

Or:

Buy me a coffee (thank you!)

Follow me, Gavin Freeguard, on Twitter

Visit my website (I'm available for work!)

Today's links:

Graphic content

Viral content

India’s catastrophic second covid wave shows no sign of slowing* (The Economist)

COVID-19: The crisis in one of India's worst-hit cities, where someone dies every five minutes (Sky News)

NHS app will be used as Covid ‘vaccine passport’ for foreign travel (The Guardian)

Vax populi

See How the Vaccine Rollout Is Going in Your County and State* (New York Times)

Vaccine diplomacy boosts Russia’s and China’s global standing* (The Economist)

40m Pfizer jabs bought as Covid booster shots* (The Sunday Times)

After a blistering start, Biden’s vaccine rollout faces new hurdles* (FT)

Vaccine uptake rises among England’s ethnic minorities* (FT)

What the ONS can tell you about the COVID-19 Vaccine programme (ONS)

Side effects

How has lockdown changed our relationship with nature? (ONS)

In need of support? Lessons from the Covid-19 crisis for our social security system (Resolution Foundation)

After shocks: Financial resilience before and during the Covid-19 crisis (Resolution Foundation)

‘We are drowning in insecurity’: young people and life after the pandemic* (FT)

More Americans Are Leaving Cities, But Don’t Call It an Urban Exodus* (Bloomberg)

Joe 90 (+10)

Joe Biden’s first 100 days: by the numbers* (FT)

What America thinks* (The Economist)

After 100 days, Joe Biden is polling better than Donald Trump did* (The Economist)

At the 100-day mark, has Biden kept his campaign promises?* (Washington Post)

Prolific yet quiet: Joe Biden’s first 100 days in numbers* (New Statesman)

17 Metrics to Watch in the Biden Era* (Bloomberg)

Taking leave of their...

2020 Census shows U.S. population grew at slowest pace since the 1930s* (Washington Post)

Which States Will Gain or Lose Seats in the Next Congress* (New York Times)

Once-A-Decade Census Numbers to Redraw U.S. Political Landscape* (Bloomberg)

Which States Won — And Lost — Seats In The 2020 Census? (FiveThirtyEight)

US politics

Biden’s $4 Trillion Economic Plan, in One Chart* (The Upshot)

By the numbers: States weighing voting changes (Axios)

Advantage, GOP (FiveThirtyEight)

Americans From Both Parties Want Weed To Be Legal. Why Doesn’t The Federal Government Agree? (FiveThirtyEight)

Derek Chauvin was found guilty – how typical is that of US police who kill? (The Guardian)

Science and nature

Visualised: glaciers then and now (The Guardian)

Siberian fires not an isolated event, EU earth observatory shows* (FT)

The U.S. Will Need a Lot of Land for a Zero-Carbon Economy* (Bloomberg)

The Hidden Science Making Batteries Better, Cheaper and Everywhere* (Bloomberg)

Our Earth in context with other worlds (Axios)

The intricate life of the International Space Station (via Chris Hadfield)

UK politics and government

Will Greensill be a Barnard Castle-sized issue for the Tories? (UK in a Changing Europe)

Boris Johnson’s £200k refurbishment of 11 Downing Street could buy you a whole house in much of the UK* (New Statesman)

Labour’s lost heartlands. Can it win them back?* (FT)

Green gains in red-brick England* (New Statesman - though I'd have put Labour at the base of the bars)

Procuring inequality: Understanding the gender pay gap in government contracting (Spend Network - and summary)

Devolved public services: The NHS, schools, and social care in the four nations (IfG)

Let's get fiscal, fiscal

The fiscal position of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (IfG)

The national balance sheet and capital stocks, preliminary estimates, UK: 2021 (ONS)

Putting a value on the UK – faster than ever before (ONS)

Nominal spending figures understate China’s military might* (The Economist)

Everything else

Inheritances and inequality over the life cycle: what will they mean for younger generations? (IFS)

Exploring the State Papers with Word Embeddings (Networking Archives)

Nomadland, Disney and the drive for Oscars dominance in 2021* (FT)

Survival curves (Max Roser)

Meta data

Open for the best

Registration: Open Government Thematic Groups (UK Open Government Network)

Civil society urged to join groups on government transparency. (UK Open Government Network)

Statement on the UK’s New Global Anti-Corruption Sanctions (UK Anti-Corruption Coalition)

Relight my FOIA

New policy paper: Reforming Freedom of Information (mySociety)

Reforming Freedom of Information: mySociety policy paper launch event (mySociety)

Public information request monitor (mySociety)

Freedom of Information in danger of ‘sliding into obsolescence’, new report finds (openDemocracy)

We are going to court to force the government to release full details about its controversial FOI ‘Clearing House’ – a secretive unit inside the Cabinet Office (openDemocracy)

Press freedom: how governments are using COVID as an excuse to crack down on the public’s right to know (Media@LSE)

A transparent FOI system is vital for good government* (The Times)

Thread (George Greenwood)

Government obfuscation has become 'art form' - MPs and journalists say Freedom of Information not working (Press Gazette)

Viral content

NHS app set to feature vaccine passport (Public Technology)

COVID-19 Update (UK Government)

AI got 'rithm

Ensuring trustworthy algorithmic decision-making (CDEI for OECD.AI)

Error-riddled data sets are warping our sense of how good AI really is* (MIT Technology Review)

Artificial Intelligence in Local Government (Oxford Commission on AI & Good Governance)

Now is the time for a transatlantic dialog on the risk of AI (VentureBeat)

AI at work isn’t always intelligent* (FT)

Artificial Intelligence Is Misreading Human Emotion* (Kate Crawford, The Atlantic)

The Challenges of Animal Translation* (The New Yorker)

We need more bias in artificial intelligence (Bruegel)

Stop talking about AI ethics. It’s time to talk about power.* (MIT Technology Review)

Working for an Algorithm: Shadow Bans, Dopamine Hits, and Viral Videos, All in the Life of TikTok Creators (The Markup)

Home Office algorithm to detect sham marriages may contain built-in discrimination (TBIJ)

Missing data

What's missing? Evaluating social sector data gaps (Commission on Civil Society)

ONS to publish suicide data by ethnicity from June as charities say ‘no excuse’ for gaps in data (The Independent)

///so.very.predictable

App used by emergency services under scrutiny (BBC News)

Why What3Words is not suitable for safety critical applications (Cybergibbons)

*All* English ambulance services use #What3Words, according to health minister (Owen Boswarva)

Government

Proud to be the Government Analysis Function (Government Analysis Function)

ADR UK three years in: Harnessing the power of administrative data three years in (ADR UK)

Supercomputing leap in weather and climate forecasting (Met Office)

Transforming Government: Six key recommendations (Foundry4)

Help us set a new data standard for vulnerable people services (Data in government)

Government gives Verify a stay of execution (UKAuthority)

Texting times

Boris Johnson’s tax texts show perils of government by WhatsApp (Politico)

Lobbying row: Why ministers have two mobile phones (BBC News)

Big tech, trade and competition

UK digital competition - it’s about your data, stupid (diginomica)

UK lobbying questions raised by Big Tech cash for MP interest groups (Politico)

Facebook v Apple: The ad tracking row heats up (BBC News)

The Counterbalance – The European System of Monopoly (Brave New Europe)

Twitter censored tweets critical of India’s handling of the pandemic at its government’s request (The Verge)

Technology wars are becoming the new trade wars* (FT)

Data

techUK on the Future of Data Governance for the UK (techUK)

Ireland stress-tests Europe’s data protection law* (FT)

Data Brokers Are a Threat to Democracy* (Wired)

An airline glitch reveals the dangers of discriminatory data (Tech Monitor)

For public review: The GDB research handbook (Global Data Barometer)

Fact and fiction

The Anti-Vaccine Influencers Who Are Merely Asking Questions* (The Atlantic)

Facts are Pieces of a Puzzle, not the Puzzle Itself (Zeynep)

Everything else

Justice Lost In The Post: How the Post Office wrecked the lives of its own workers (Private Eye)

Unified UK measures of rurality and deprivation (mySociety)

What is going on here? (Hilary Cottam)

Shaping the future of digital technology in health and social care (King's Fund)

Should Tech Make Us Optimistic About Climate Change? (Tony Blair Institute for Global Change)

Scottish Elections 2021: WE’RE TRACKING WHERE THE PARTIES STAND (Open Rights Group Scotland)

Opportunities

EVENT: Turing-RSS Lab webinar #3: using algorithms and AI in the response to COVID-19 (The Alan Turing Institute, Royal Statistical Society)

EVENT: What is the Future of Free Speech on the Internet? Jillian C York (Bristol Festival of Ideas)

EVENT: Rethinking how we regulate Big Tech (Bennett Institute)

JOB: Editor in Chief (openDemocracy - more)

JOBS (Full Fact)

JOB: Data Investigations Advisor (Global Witness)

JOB: Director, Technology and Human Rights (Human Rights Watch)

JOB: Data Scientist - NHS Test & Trace (Grade-G7) (DHSC)

JOB: Head of Digital ID (Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, via Jukesie)

JOB: Lead Data Scientist - Datalab (BBC, via Jukesie)

JOB: Service Manager, WhatDoTheyKnow (mySociety)

JOB: We're hiring - could you be our new Data Analyst? (Data Orchard)

JOBS (Information Commissioner's Office)

TENDER: Evaluating the data assurance market (ODI)

And finally...

When you label a plot the wrong way and suddenly discover a new graph type (João Martins)

How High Airplanes have been Able to Go from INTERNATIONAL PICTURE LANGUAGE by Otto Neurath, 1936 (RJ Andrews)

For the last six years I’ve kept a spreadsheet listing every parking spot I’ve used at the local supermarket in a bid to park in them all (Gareth Wild, via Alice)