#Twitty Marketing

[ourpickwickclub]

”Blake always said he wanted to be a country singer. He happens to be funny, great in front of a camera, and a great songwriter, but he really just wants to sing country music like a Conway Twitty type. There isn’t much market for that these days, so I kind of see his confusion.”

This 💯, B. It’s also a completely different landscape in the industry now, which I’m sure makes it all harder and more complicated for him to figure it out, particularly if he doesn’t have something specific in mind.

I’ve seen several asks questioning his “years” comment but it has been 3 years, which is longer than he generally waits between albums.

.

[coghive]

Steven Curtis Chapman Makes History, Receives His 50th No. 1 Radio Single With “Don’t Lose Heart”

Steven Curtis Chapman is already the most-awarded Christian music artist in history and as of this week, he continues his reign. His current radio single, “Don’t Lose Heart,” has hit No. 1, making it Chapman’s 50th career chart-topping song and the first artist to achieve this feat in the industry. It was his single “His Eyes” from 1988’s Real Life Conversations album that put Chapman on the course to a plethora of No. 1 songs, a list that also includes “I Will Be Here,” “The Great Adventure,” “Dive,” “Live Out Loud,” and “For The Sake Of The Call.” Chapman shares this historic milestone with just a few select artists who boast 50 or more top radio hits, including Madonna, George Strait, and Conway Twitty. “I’m completely blown away by the support for this song and for my music, even after so many years,” Steven Curtis Chapman exclaims. “To ever have a number one song at radio as an artist/songwriter is a dream come true, and to have fifty is simply unbelievable! This only happens because of an amazing team and a community of friends around me who have believed in the unbelievable. I’m grateful and humbled beyond words.”

“Don’t Lose Heart” was released in late 2022 and was the most-added song at radio for three straight weeks. As the first single from Chapman’s latest album, Still, he was inspired to write the song through his journey in the shallowed valley of grief and loss he and his family have traveled. He released a new version earlier this month featuring country artist Mitchell Tenpenny, a version that has quickly connected with listeners thanks to the song’s upbeat honesty and truth. Holly Zabka, President, Provident Entertainment/Sony Music, shares. “We are so honored and excited to be a part of Steven’s 50th No. 1 song with ‘Don’t Lose Heart.’ This unprecedented and monumental achievement for Steven is a testament to the incredible artist and songwriter he is and can only be outshined by the countless lives that have been changed by his music.” Chapman will be sharing “Don’t Lose Heart,” along with another fan favorite from the Still album, “Kindness,” as well as many of his top hits on tour. Kicking off this Friday, March 2, his “Still” Tour will hit 24 markets throughout the spring. Click HERE for the most updated tour schedule. https://youtu.be/VAMwqBynjCs Read the full article

[as-educate]

How to Create a Twitter Marketing Strategy for Your Store – Complete Guide

[prettylittlelyres]

2020: My Year in Reading

-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:- Part 6 -:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-

I also re-read “Midnight” by Jacqueline Wilson, which was even better than I remembered. My sister and I have been re-reading a lot of Jacqueline Wilson’s books recently, and, in doing so, have found that all our hang-ups about them were actually… just a bit twitty. They’re great stories, they keep you turning the pages, and the pure sass of some of the characters just goes right through the roof. “Midnight” however, is a story I’ve always loved – no silly hang-ups could ever touch it – in part, I guess, because Violet just feels so Sapphic-coded, and also because she had a room full of fairy dolls that she’d made out of love for her favourite series of books, “The Flower Fairies” (sadly fictional, but I would quite frankly die of happiness if Jacqueline Wilson wrote and published even one as a novelty!). That might seem an odd reason to love a book, but, when I was at primary school, I was obsessed with the “Rainbow Magic” books by Daisy Meadows (by several ghost-writers, actually, but I digress) when I first read it, and had my very own “India the Moonstone Fairy” doll, which my mother had helped me to sew! As far as I was concerned, I was Violet, minus the horrid (misunderstood) big brother, and plus a lovely (the best, actually) big sister. Didn’t hurt that I was a baby gay, either, and that I had a close friend who played dolls with me (and with whom I might have been a bit in love). I’m seriously considering writing to Jacqueline Wilson to tell her how much I adore “Midnight”, even at 22. (I’m just not sure how to do that without coming across as a sycophant.)

Somehow, I’d managed to forget how heart-breaking “Vicky Angel” and “My Sister Jodie” were (also Jacqueline Wilson), but re-reading them at the beginning of December brought all the Big Tears flooding back. I managed not to cry outwardly, but these books hit me hard! I loved the Gothic atmosphere of “My Sister Jodie”, though – it was quite a bit like “Midnight” – and all the references it had to “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett (which I need to read, actually; I’ve only ever read the Ladybird version). The descriptions of Melchester College as the family sees it for the first time, and then looks around their living quarters, are great, such a strong contrast between this beautiful vista and the drab dreariness of life-behind-the-scenes.

I took December to make my way through my small (but growing!) library of writer’s craft books, with “Writing Deep Point of View” and “Fiction Pacing” by Rayne Hall, and “Writing Your Story’s Theme” passing a few hours on a rainy afternoon by reinforcing all I learned at A’ Level and teaching even more, and “Ghost Stories and How to Write Them” by Kathleen McGurl giving me a much clearer idea of how to craft something spooky, as well as how to market it. I don’t really write many short stories, but that’s something I want to change, so I thought it would be a good idea to start with some craft revision! Further to wanting to write more spooky stories, I also took December to finish “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James (more popularly known since the brilliant Netflix series as “The Haunting of Bly Manor”!), and the novel we were set in our French class, “Et si c’était vrai” by Marc Levy (the basis for the film “Just Like Heaven”, which I adore).

I’ve been trying to get into more subgenres of Alternate History and Fantasy, as I’m really enjoying “Kushiel’s Dart” by Jacqueline Carey, but I’m painfully aware that it’s Eurocentric in the extreme. I’m so glad I made an effort to push my reading horizons further this year, because I loved reading “Daughters of Nri” by Reni K. Amayo, and I’m looking forward to reading “Children of Blood and Bone” and its sequels by Tomi Adeyemi. I tried to read the first one two years ago, but my brain was mashed potato at the time, and I couldn’t concentrate on it at all. I’m doing much better now, so it’s on my reading list for 2021!

I also finally read “Alone: A Love Story” by Michelle Parise, which is the novel-version of a podcast with the same name. It helped me through a horrible time a few years ago and is just so beautifully written that – despite it being attached to some nasty memories – I really love it, and still listen to it to go to sleep. Obviously, I knew exactly what was going to happen, because it follows the same “storyline” as the podcast, but the book is just as excellent. They are both the author’s memoir, focussing on how she’s learned to enjoy living alone, being single, and carving out an independent life for herself. Suffice to say, it was the first step on my ladder to “feeling OK”. Steps 2, 3, 4… 10, 15… 86, etc. were spontaneous day trips to Winchester, where I would proceed to hole up in a coffee shop with a ball of yarn and a crochet hook, sipping tea while I worked, and tried not to think about what was making me sad. Those steps were not as good as the first one, and if I’m going to recommend you pick just one, I’d say, “Pick Step 1, and read or listen to “Alone: A Love Story” by Michelle Parise.”

For far too long, I’ve had “On Beauty” by Zadie Smith, and “The Returnees” by Elizabeth Okoh on my Kindle app (I don’t like Amazon, so I’m looking for alternatives!), and hadn’t read either one of them through to the end. I’d picked them both up on occasion, but only on short bus journeys, or while I was passing time, waiting for tea to cool; it made it hard to get into them, but I decided I’d sit down and read them both from the beginning, and not stop until I reached the end, and they’re both fabulous. I love Elizabeth Okoh’s painting of life in Nigeria, and as a British-Nigerian, and Zadie Smith’s lavish descriptions of everything are just wonderful. I can’t wait to see what Elizabeth Okoh does next (“The Returnees” is her debut novel), and I’m looking for my next read from Zadie Smith.

More speculative fiction finished off my reading in December! “Gone” by Michael Grant is perfect for fans of “The Society” (Netflix – please renew it! I would so love to see further seasons!), and “Q” by Christina Dalcher was deeply upsetting, but a gripping read. At last, I also finished “The Left/Right Game” from the r/NoSleep subreddit. I stayed up late, late, late, and then woke up early, early, early, to read the last chapters, on the morning of New Year’s Eve.

So, there you have it; a condensed overview of books I read in 2020. Condensed? Yes! Condensed quite a bit! This article is over 6,000 words long as it is, so I think I shall split it up into several posts, and queue them to be published, one per day.

I hope that I’ve helped you find something to read, or that I’ve reminded you of a favourite book you now want to re-read! Happy New Year to everyone, and may 2021 be much better!

[seedkeeping]

Amirah and Chris, proudly posing with their freshly harvested and freshly arranged Green Glaze Collards. We weeded and talked about our favorite collard recipes, and marveled over the waxiness and relatively few bug-eaten holes in this heirloom crop. Food historian Michael Twitty (@thecookinggene) says: “The variety you see in the picture above is my personal favorite, Green Glaze. They are pretty, waxy, crisp, tough against bugs and extremely delicious. They also happen to be the oldest variety we have/know of collard green dating back to the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with the Georgia Southern or Creole collard out of the Deep South going back to the 1860s-1880s.” See Twitty’s Afroculinaria blog (and probably his book, the Cooking Gene, which is currently packed away in our new house so now I can’t check) for a description of how this European crop combined with African tastes and became so closely associated with southern Black foodways. A sneak peek: “In tropical West Africa, greens were available year round in gardens and markets and figured prominently in regular meals.” William Woys Weaver (@roughwoodseeds) describes the origin of this particular variety: “One of the oldest [collards] to survive, however, is the Green Glaze collard, a colewort that evolved out of the Green Glaze cabbage introduced in 1820 by David Landreth of Philadelphia.” Highly recommended! #greenglazecollards #afroculinaria https://www.instagram.com/p/BzO1kCJAloe/?igshid=1tlkbl58avaq6

[sizzlingtacobear-blog]

Rockabilly's Sam Phillips Turned a Work Ethic Into The Formation of Rock and Roll

Of all the heroes you can indicate in the rockabilly world, one of the best of all was not a hero due to what he made with his own music, yet due to what he did for the music of others. Sam Phillips who owned a small Memphis recording studio called Memphis Recording Solution and started the Sun Records label was equally as in charge of the increase of rockabilly and also the extremely formation of rock and roll as his biggest beginning, Elvis Presley.

Phillips, who functioned as a DJ as well as radio station sound engineer throughout the 1940s started his workshop in a leased building on Union Method in Memphis, Tennessee in 1950. This was at a time in the post-World Battle Two years that ratings of independent record labels were springing up around the country. In 1952 Phillips launched Sun Records, the tag that would come be associated with rockabilly and is usually mentioned as the birth place of rock and roll.

At its creation, Sunlight Records released mostly blues and R&B material as well as Phillips is attributed with discovering Howlin' Wolf as well as numerous various other bluesmen. Working in these categories of course indicated that Phillips, a white man, worked with a great deal of black performers in his studio. He gained the online reputation for fair, straightforward, and respectful treatment of these musicians. That price Phillips some standing with his white neighbors that-- in a starkly segregated American South-- hurled every disrespect you can possibly imagine at him for his organization with black individuals. That's the very first location where Phillips' ethic truly became apparent. To him it didn't matter whether a man was white, black, or green. What mattered was whether the artist had ability and also possibility. He stood up to the stress from narrow-minded whites and continued videotaping these black musicians.

However, Phillips reportedly commonly talked about just how he could make a million dollars if he could locate a white entertainer that seemed like a black male. That straightforward statement, which was most likely disregarded by the majority of that heard it, betrayed the unbelievable understanding that Phillips had as well as his prediction was quickly to come real. As part of making ends meet in the studio, he likewise offered the solution of reducing an acetate recording for anybody who walked in with 3 or four dollars to spend. One day a truck driver named Elvis walked right into the studio to make one of these documents as well as Phillips' propensity for identifying uncommon ability prompted him to sign Elvis to Sun Records.

Elvis was much from a developed entity then, which makes it even more impressive that Phillips saw the possible he had. After that one day in February of 1954, Elvis gave a hint of that capacity (which he possibly didn't also recognize he had) as well as Phillips-- that acknowledged it instantaneously upon seeing as well as hearing it-- directed him to breaking loose and also rockabilly was birthed.

Elvis was a hit feeling as well as Phillips had his white man that sings like a black man. Sadly for Phillips, he had to market Elvis' contract for a simple $35,000 (plus a $5,000 signing bonus that he won for Elvis) from RCA Victor. So, just part of Phillips' prediction came to life as Elvis made his millions with a different document tag.

However Phillips was identified that Sunlight would not be a one-act label as well as he authorized many young youngsters that took place to be several of the greatest names in all of rock-and-roll as well as country. Johnny Cash, Conway Twitty, Jerry Lee Lewis, Charlie Rich, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison ... every one of them videotaped for Sunlight Records as did lots of, many others that had differing levels of success with their Sunlight Record launches. It's just stunning the number of huge celebrities recorded in front of the microphones for the small independent document tag on Union Method!

Once the original rockabilly wave waned in 1959 or 1960, the magic of Sun Records waned with it. Phillips ran the tag until he offered it in 1968 but never ever realized the type of success the label did in the mid 1950s. Yet because short five- or six-year duration, no person had a larger influence on the development of rock and roll than Sam Phillips. With an ethic that forced him to treat his musicians relatively and to strive, he was instrumental in the development of rockabilly as well as hence rock and roll overall.

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[pawsnread]

Aster, peony, wisteria 🖤

AAster: What’s one of your favorite quotes? - When Magnus tells Alec “You are not trivial.” It’s something I have to remind myself of every day, that even if I feel insignificant that I have things I need to do and I shouldn’t think of myself as trivial.

Peony: What was your first job? - Professionally, I was a lab teaching assistant. Before that, though, my parents owned a tailor shop so I did a lot of customer transactions and phone calls (which is probably why I am totally turned off talking on the phone).

Wisteria: How many books have you read in the past few months? What were they called? - This year I have read roughly 24 books. One was a textbook, and the others were:

Fushigi Yugi Genbu Kaiden vol. 1, by Yuu Watase

Fushigi Yugi Genbu Kaiden vol. 2, by Yuu Watase

Adulthood is a Myth, by Sarah Anderson

Obsidio, by Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman

Fence vol. 1, by Joanna the Mad and C.S. Pacat

Lady Midnight, by Cassandra Clare

Lord of Shadows, by Cassandra Clare

Queen of Air and Darkness, by Cassandra Clare

Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy

The Red Scrolls of Magic, by Cassandra Clare and Wesley Chu (2 times)

The Mortal Instruments Graphic Novel Vol. 1, by Cassandra Clare and Cassandra Jean

The Mortal Instruments Graphic Novel Vol. 2, by Cassandra Clare and Cassandra Jean

Running with Lions, by Julian Winter

Aru Shah and the End of Time, by Roshani Chokshi

Bloom, by Kevin Panetta and Savanna Ganucheau

The Runaways vol. 2, by Rainbow Rowell and Kris Anka

Same Kind of Different as Me (DNF)

The Cooking Gene, by Micheal Twitty

Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Prachett

Red, White & Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston

What If It’s Us, by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera

Shades of Magic The Steel Prince, by V.E. Schwab

I am currently rereading CoB and Ghosts of the Shadow Market, but have been in a reading slump lately.

Thanks for the ask, dear!

Flower Asks

[note-a-bear]

THE BEARD AWARDS NEED TO RECOGNIZE BLACK ACHIEVEMENTS

How to ensure diversity wasn't a one-time thing

Nicole Taylor

September 26, 2018

Photo: Lade Ademu-John

Something was different at the 2018 James Beard Awards. More women, more people of color, and more diverse voices were recognized than ever before. But the question of whether this was evidence of more profound change taking place in our industry remained unanswered. As a leading organization of the food movement in the U.S., we wanted to do more to support equity in the industry and access to its highest honors.

For advice, we reached out to some of the most thoughtful, vocal members of our community to share their opinions about how the Beard Foundation could improve. Today we begin by publishing the first of a series of four op-eds that resulted from this outreach, and will continue to post throughout the week.  

As we digest the writers’ suggestions, we intend to operationalize several changes which we believe will have a substantive impact on the Awards and the industry. We will share changes to the policies and procedures for the 2019 James Beard Awards ahead of the “Open Call for Entry” on Monday, October 15, 2018. This is the beginning of a process, not the end, and we know there is much more work we can all do to ensure everyone has an equal opportunity to thrive.

--

One night last May, I lay in bed re-reading Uplift the Race: the Construction of School Daze by Spike Lee and Lisa Jones, when a friend watching the Beard Awards ceremony live on Twitter texted me the names of the winning restaurants and chefs. I had been reading about how Spike Lee made the movie School Daze on a budget, how he was part of this cultural renaissance, and when I saw the year’s winners—with chefs Nina Compton, Edouardo Jordan, Rodney Scott, and Dolester Miles on the list—it felt like a whole new renaissance was bubbling up.

Days before at the Journalism Awards, wins by Michael Twitty, Osayi Endolyn, and the ghost of Princess Pamela had also given a universal “I see you” to black writers and cooks who toil in isolation. A time capsule was unburied. Generations of bakers whisking frothy buttermilk, men whacking down pecan or pimento trees for firewood, and dandy butlers polishing silver trays rose from our African diaspora graves. The 2018 James Beard Awards signified that black cooks, black writers—both dead or alive—mattered.

The wonderment of this year’s achievements shouldn’t be a once-in-a-blue-moon occasion. Why had this moment taken so long to come? There are two major reasons: the first is that the Beard Award categories—and the types of restaurants and publications nominated—don’t reflect the realities of today’s dining and media scenes.

My own infatuation with eating out started in Atlanta in the early 2000s. Swiping my orange-and-black Discover card at Canoe, Atlanta Fish Market, Two Urban Licks, and Pura Vida was a pastime. Rolling the names of those restaurants off my tongue denoted a certain level of cosmopolitan aptitude. At that time, black fine-dining chefs like Todd Richards, Duane Nutter, and the late Darryl Evans were Atlanta stars, but few people were paying attention. Back then, the only path to gain recognition as a chef was to work in a white tablecloth, fine-dining restaurant��the kind of restaurants with a high barrier to entry for young chefs. Fast forward 20 years later, and chefs Omar Tate, Greg Collier, Kia Damon, and Mike and Shyretha Sheats have gone out on their own, creating different kinds of spaces where excellence and creativity converge. In Charlotte, Brooklyn, Athens, and Tallahassee, supper clubs and pop-ups have replaced white tablecloth experiences. Not only are these sorts of eating experiences more representative of how people eat and consume food culture, but they’re a lot easier and less expensive for entrepreneurial chefs to launch. These are the sorts of spaces where the Beard Awards should look for nominees.

The media landscape has undergone a similar evolution. I’m a digital subscriber to the Charleston, South Carolina–based The Local Palate, to New York Magazine, and to the New York Times. I no longer receive mainstream glossies via snail mail. There were times when friends would gift me niche publications like Edible Hawaii; now they bring back titles like Whetstone and Crwn. I consume culinary podcasts and Instagram for savory rhubarb recipes, food books for tips on growing windowsill herbs, and articles on food apartheid. A movie night is inhaling United Shades of America’s “The Gullah” and Ugly Delicious’s “Fried Chicken” episodes. The definition of professional food writer has shifted—having a staff gig no longer denotes success. By the time magazines like Bon Appétit have published a piece on a restaurant trend, we’ve already heard about it on our favorite food podcast. Indie media makers are the new voices. Times have changed. The Beard Awards should reflect these changes.

There’s another reason that moments like this past year’s are so scarce, and one look at the people who are choosing the nominees and winners gives us a major clue: out of the 54 Beard Award committee members, fewer than six are black. If power is measured by who occupies a seat at the table, a person who looks like me has little influence.

To ensure the ongoing recognition of black achievements by the Beard Awards, we must take a closer look at the term limits and selection process of the individuals who make up each of the committees that select the nominees and winners of the award categories: broadcast media, books, journalism, design, and restaurant and chef awards.

As it stands, the committees or recognition programs are often brimming with individuals serving multiple three-year terms. The current bylaws state that “members serve staggered terms of one to three years” but doesn’t address what happens if members move from committee to committee. According to the James Beard Foundation governance structure, an additional group (bringing the total to eight) oversees the Awards program as a whole; this committee consists of the chairperson of each Awards category, members of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees, and members at large. A bylaw change to address the makeup of these groups will help to foster a permanent shift in voters and nominees.

In recent years, organizations like the Grammys and Academy Awards have addressed similar issues, after receiving criticism for the lack of diversity on their ballots (thanks in part to the #oscarssowhite campaign). In 2016, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences modified membership to mix up the pool of voters. This past May, the Recording Academy created a diversity and inclusion task force to “examine barriers affecting women and underrepresented voices”; the group includes former chairman and CEO of BET Networks Debra Lee and hip-hop artist Common.

I’m a believer that institutional knowledge anchors the ship. Our professional community needs infinite wisdom, plus a new leadership overhaul. Equality means making the system fair, and equity means transferring power. All of our collective culinary past and our future should see themselves reflected in the backbone of the James Beard Foundation Awards’s governing body: entrepreneurs from small rural towns; Caribbean souls planted in port cities; mature Southern black women; an East Coast–born man living in the Pacific Northwest; catering chefs running grassroots organizations: a food scientist turned stay-at-home mom.

The clock starts now.

--

Do you have thoughts about how the culinary industry and/or the James Beard Foundation can be more inclusive? Please share your feedback with us atawards@jamesbeard.org.

Editor’s Note: Nicole Taylor has previously served as a judge for the James Beard Foundation Book Awards.

Nicole A. Taylor is a food writer based in Brooklyn, New York. She has written for Food & Wine, Esquire, and the New York Times. Nicole serves on the advisory board of EATT (Equity At The Table), a database for food-industry professionals featuring only women/gender non-conforming individuals and focusing primarily on POC and the LGBTQ community. Find her on Twitter

[hasufin]

On head bumps

A couple weeks ago we went to the Fairfax History fair, it being literally just down the street from us. Sadly, it was one of those “Everything is happening on this day” deals - there was the history fair, archaeology lab, a couple of farmers’ markets starting for the year, a new exhibit opening at my favorite art gallery, and so on. Never rains but it pours.

But, the history day won out as it’s only the one day each year.

Being where we are, of course it was all about the American Civil War. With, well, re-enactors and such. Pretty much all local volunteers. Eventually I could be one of those people, if I have enough free time

I learned a fair bit. The taking of Falls Church - where we used to live - is the first time hot air balloons were used in a military action. And, more importantly in my opinion, the first use of targeted over-the-horizon artillery. Guy goes up in a balloon, he sees where the cannon fire hits, he directs the artillery to improve their aim. That must have been pretty terrifying. Oddly, I haven’t been able to find information about just where the balloon went up! They were attacking Falls Church, but nobody is clear on where he tethered his balloon. Might be a research project for another day.

I got to talk with a gentleman who has done a great deal of research on the old train lines in the area. Which is in my opinion terribly important and much overlooked: before the advent of the automobile trains were a very important means of transit for both people and goods, and we’ve largely forgotten about how significant they were. So recalling the past might be important to reviving this technology for a modern world. I kind of want to bring more information about train tracks into the Alexandria Archaeology Museum - the work we’re doing somewhat pre-dates that, but I think it’s relevant all the same. It’ll take some convincing, though.

I also managed to speak to this wonderful older black woman, who taught me a bit about agriculture in the area and food for slaves. I was somewhat aware that corn was grown in Virginia, but as a boy from Illinois my relationship with The Corn is not the same as a Virginian’s. She also taught me quite a bit about the area after the ACW and filled in some gaps. See, historically Fairfax had a very large black population, but today only 0.5% - 1 in 200 people - are black. Not just a reduction from historical times but waaaay below the national average. I had thought it was mostly due to redlining, which it is, but also there were multiple policies made to break up the black community and drive black people out, including intentionally misusing desegregation laws to get rid of primarily black institutions. So very much racism. Kinda makes me want to get involved in local government just so we can Do Better - but I’m not so arrogant as to think I can.

She also pointed me to Michael Twitty,a  food historian from whom I could stand to learn a very great deal.

After speaking with her, I ended up talking to a guy who styled himself as the “county lawyer”. I’ve come to realize that historically the courthouse was a much more prominent and important building in the American landscape. Today it’s a place we visit sometimes to handle paperwork - my wife and I got married there - or to pay off traffic tickets, but that’s it. In the past it was so much more - land sales, voting, resolving disputes... basically it’s where anything “official” happened, and as it was where everyone HAD to go, inevitably it also acted as a community center. Now we take most of those functions for granted and ignore the rest. My conversation with this historical lawyer was... I managed to extricate myself. I apparently seemed markedly conversant on such matters. He asked me about Lincoln’s suspension of the writ of habeus corpus, a subject I do understand and whose nuance I appreciate, and well it went from there. Once again my ability to retain information and grasp implications allows me to fake expertise. He was impressed but I did not want to argue the matter of whether it’s right to say the ACW was about slavery.

The last person I spoke to actually educated me on a subject of which I was wholly unfamiliar: phrenology. She had a booth in which she would make silhouettes for people, and would also do phrenology readings. Phrenology is the pseudoscience of measuring the shape of a person’s head and in so doing determine “scientifically” aspects of their abilities and character. I know it from the standpoint of physical anthropology; it was used to justify a great deal of (please pretend to be shocked) racism. I was also curious as to what she’d have to say about my head: I have a ridge, and an occipital process more like one you’d find in a neandertal than a modern human. Kind of an “off the charts” kind of thing. I have some interesting bone structures.

But the thing about phrenology is, I’d only ever hear dof it bereft of context. Of course it tracks that as people realized that the brain is important in thinking, one can grasp why they’d suppose the shape of the head would reflect the shape of the underlying brain, and so be able to learn about the brain from measuring the head - but they never properly tested their assumptions, which puts it firmly in the realm of charlatans.

But there’s a more important social context which truly explains why phrenology was given credence: the Third Great Awakening. America has experienced several religious revivals, which I am markedly unable to fully understand or explain. But for this purpose, a key factor is the incorporation of the idea of penitence and improvement.

Most morality of the time held that basically your character was a matter of predestination: that God had decreed whether you would be a good or bad person, diligent or lazy, drunk or sober, wise or foolish - and that it was both wrong and impossible to challenge God’s will. Meaning that the town drunk simply could not become sober - not in their own eyes, and not in the eyes of the community. By contrast, the morality of the Third Great Awakening held that through prayer and devotion to the Lord, you could change yourself for the better. And the science of phrenology showed you how. A phrenologist could tell you that your willpower was weak, and that was why you always ended up drinking yourself into a stupor. And knowing that, you could pray to improve your willpower and thus no longer be a drunk. You could pray for better ability with language, better eyesight - whatever needed improvement. In that context, offering the ability to have a better life, phrenology becomes terribly appealing.

Overall I learned a great deal. I know some people think this kind of history is boring and pointless. I think it matters how we got to where we are, what motivated the choices we made, and how those choices will seem to others. It does no good to simply laugh at the foolishness of the past; our ancestors did not think themselves fools, and if we dismiss them so, we are prey to the same mistakes.

[ourpickwickclub]

BS said it's been yrs since his last album, it was 2021😂

His heart needs to be in the next album, not the record company just wanting it.

I am amazed at this point Blake does not seem to still know what the heck he wants to do with career.

Blake always said he wanted to be a country singer. He happens to be funny, great in front of a camera, and a great songwriter, but he really just wants to sing country music like a Conway Twitty type. There isn’t much market for that these days, so I kind of see his confusion.

- B

[reasonreblogs]

Dat Half-time Show

So I’mma say it: If you are seriously mad about there not being more of Spongebob, there’s a few things you need to understand.

The Super Bowl is one of the biggest events of the year.  It’s costs an insane amount of money for all who are involved from commercials to the game itself to the shows.  There’s a reason they have a ton of sponsors, the commercials are outrageous, and all time slots are highly coveted.

Yeah, a million people signing the petition is a lot, but the average viewing audience of the Super Bowl is made up of 100+ million people.  That is over 100 times more than the people who were vocal about wanting to honor Mr Hillenburg.

This means that the average audience member will already be confused about why there were 5 seconds of suddenly cartoon if they even recognized what show it was (not to mention it wasn’t even Spongebob himself, it was Squidward.  That is they DID NOT use probably one of the most identifiable cartoon characters outside of their viewership and instead a supporting/secondary main character which is p big when you consider from a marketing standpoint, that is a big nono)

Mr Hillenburg passed less than 3 months ago.  Something like this halftime show takes much MUCH longer to organize, choreograph, rehearse and pay for than that.  This means that they thought it would be fun to see if they could fit something in because like I said: A million people is still a million people.  Spongebob is a 20 year old show this year which means that a lot of people in their 30s to 40s had watched it.  So at the very least, there would be enough recognition of such an early episode in older viewers enough to maybe google “why was Squidward in the half time show?”

Also that was clearly new animation they made for the occasion.  They had *new animation made for this*

And let’s just appreciate they clearly had fun with the idea and like it enough to hype it?  I don’t even care if it’s pandering, they still did it.  And I think the video they put up on twitter of playing the full song to the empty stadium on the jumbotron is indication of “Hey I really wish we could do this during the game, but we still played with the giant fuckin TV and thought you’d like that.  Here’s hoping!”

They could have ignored it, they could have swept it under the rug, they could have even mocked us for being so obsessed over a cartoon and written it off as a bunch of cartoon obsessed weirdo adultchildren.

And look at it this way: For those who were super hype about the recent RWBY or SU finales, imagine if they slipped in there 5 seconds of idk X-Files or CSI to transition between a natural pause.  Now imagine if instead it was over a minute long (we all know how much the Conway Twitty cut away that was a full song was so loved by anyone watching Family Guy and that was just a regular episode).

Everyone I told about this irl first of all had no idea who Steven Hillenburg was until I told them.  They knew of Spongebob, but plenty didn’t remember or know the ep that would be appropriate for the Super Bowl.  When I explained, they thought that’d be cool, but still didn’t really feel strongly about it.

This is a big, expensive show.  This is targeted at an audience that, let’s face it, is not familiar with what is happening in animation.  Also us internet dwellers have one other thing: Spongebob as a staple of fuckin memes.  We have surrounded ourselves with Spongebob memes for years and that has definitely kept the good of the show fresh in our memories.

I’m all for taking jabs for fun, but if you are honestly, truly, seriously mad about this, equate every second of the super bowl to a million dollars.

They saw a tiny fraction of an audience that probably wasn’t even their regular demographic and decided hey, they could maybe shuffle something in since they have a few months.

So see this for what it was: A direct, unmissable shout out to a loud minority of people who are passionate about honoring the memory of a great creator.  They saw that and wanted to include that love, especially since it is a show that a lot of people would know enough to do a quick google search and see what was up.

So don’t go slinging shit at the stadium, the performers, the organizers, etc.

Because they saw this massive love for a cartoon and an episode that endured so long, they thought it appropriate to acknowledge it.

And maybe in the future, if the risk is more worth taking and the perception of animation shifts to being a more accepted universal medium, we can get a full performance of Sweet Victory.

So please, if you are going to flood the tags, let them know it was worth acknowledging us.  Show them that it’s worth doing again or doing it bigger.  Maybe they’ll be more inclined to take risks and maybe sponsors will be more willing to go along with it if it brings more eyes.

This was a win, this was a huge deal, this was a Sweet Victory, and that five seconds shows that we were worth 5 million dollars of air time to honor Mr Hillenburg.

[lettie21y222-blog]

10 A Lot Of Impressive Places Between East.

When our company imagine where the very best locations for a LGBT household to stay is, areas like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles happen right away to mind. New Delhi shows up 4th on the list of the best 10 most inexpensive metropolitan areas in the world to stay in. The Indian capital, it is a relatively brand new metropolitan area having actually been created mainly in the last one hundred years. Coming from Astronauts to Emissaries, actors and professional athletes, and certainly, loads of cowboys and also Indians, Oklahoma is including a wealthy as well as varied record of producing Famous Americans. Nyc urban area people possess small rooms along with 2 feets long tub and kitchenette.

Although the activities are still ten years away, the choice is a factor in establishing which metropolitan area would be finest matched to host the Summer season Olympics, and also whether the USOC is going to also place a proposal to hold the video games. The SustainLane U.S. City Rankings factor in each area's capacity to maintain healthy air, alcohol consumption water, parks as well as public transportation systems, as well as a sturdy, maintainable local economy with environment-friendly building, farmers markets, renewable resource and http://Phpbb.toplista.pl alternate fuels.Synopsis: Penguin (Robin God Taylor) supposes his project as mayor of Gotham Metropolitan area however swiftly discovers his authority being tested by the re-emergence of the Reddish Bonnet Group, this time around under the leadership of his close friend, Butch (Drew Powell).SimCity was discharged for the Super Nintendo in 1991, being one of the first games discharged, straight after the initial three (Mario Planet, F-Zero as well as Pilotwings). When people are actually living paycheck to income, it can seem almost difficult to specify any type of additional money aside monthly.Accept to hubpages Said, a great deal of visitors they will cherish the details you supplied regarding the cities as well as specifically the component where you chose 5 touristics attractions from each city. Conway Twitty: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and also Norman, Oklahoma: Nation singer.To find landscape bulbs in bloom, browse through Inniswood City Park Landscape, proverbs in the Playground of Roses, the premises of Franklin glasshouse, the prominent bulb program at Kingswood (35,000 tulips! If your only knowledge of Quito is actually hanging around delayed in web traffic on your way out of the urban area, your opinion may certainly not be actually higher.Simultaneously lovely in its very own right and a referral aspect for numerous Madrid times, it likewise organizes the urban area's primary traveler office, a X-mas market in December and also arches leading to street ways leading out into the labyrinth.A permanent settlement was lastly established in 1835 by a variety of settlers from Van Dieman's Land (modern-day Tasmania), including one John Batman who acquired 600,000 acres of property coming from the local area Wurundjeri Aboriginal group.

[bookclub4m]

This episode we’re discussing Non-Fiction Food and Cooking books! We talk about the mystery of electric kettles, bodybuilding expertise, and fear of trying to make recipes that look like the pictures. Plus: Songs about bananas!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | Robert Hamaker

Books We Discuss This Month

Geek Sweets: An Adventurer's Guide to the World of Baking Wizardry by Jenny Burgesse

The Official DC Super Hero Cookbook by Matthew Mead

Batman: Through the Genres

The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty

Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World by Mark Pendergrast

Eat Live Love Die: Selected Essays by Betty Fussell

Kitchen Yarns: Notes on Life, Love, and Food by Ann Hood

An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler

Dirt Candy: A Cookbook: Flavor-Forward Food from the Upstart New York City Vegetarian Restaurant by Amanda Cohen,  Grady Hendrix, and Ryan Dunlavey

Cook Korean!: A Comic Book with Recipes by Robin Ha

Thug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook: Eat Like You Give a F*ck by Matt Holloway and Michelle Davis

Protest Kitchen: Fight Injustice, Save the Planet, and Fuel Your Resistance One Meal at a Time by Carol J. Adams and  Virginia Messina

Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel

Other Media We Mention

The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook: They Came, They Cooked, They Left (But We Ended Up with Some Great Recipes) by Erin Ergenbright and  Thisbe Nissen

The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer,  Marion Rombauer Becker and Ethan Becker

So many editions:  Robert's travel copy with Marion's illustration is from 1954. He says the editions to avoid are 1962 and 1997.

Coffee Isn't Rocket Science: A Quick and Easy Guide to Buying, Brewing, Serving, Roasting, and Tasting Coffee by Sébastien Racineux,  Chung-Leng Tran, Yannis Varoutsikos (Illustrations)

Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley

Nanny Ogg's Cookbook: A Useful and Improving Almanack of Information Including Astonishing Recipes from Terry Pratchett's Discworld by Terry Pratchett, Stephen Briggs, Tina Hannan, and Paul Kidby

How to Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food by Mark Bittman

Knife Skills Illustrated: A User's Manual by Peter Hertzmann

à la carte: the author's website

Chopping Vegetables with 8-Foot-Long Knives by Simone Giertz (features chopping an oven in half)

Murder in the Kitchen by Alice B. Toklas

The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek by Howard Markel

A Month of Sundaes by Michael Turback

Knickerbocker glory

The Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen

The Enchanted Broccoli Forest by Mollie Katzen 

Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford

In Pursuit of Flavor by Edna Lewis

Links, Articles, and Things

Cup (unit)

Postum shows up in old restaurant menus and in a marketing campaign using Mr. Coffee Nerves. Search for it in New York Public Library’s historical menus. We also discuss it in Episode 029 - Westerns.

Rubenstein Library Test Kitchen

Goblin Sandwiches

Geographical indications and traditional specialities in the European Union

The Cook’s Thesaurus

Yes! We Have No Bananas

Louis Prima - Yes We Have No Bananas

Chiquita Banana The Original Commercial

Is this the bananana song? We think so… (Clearly we misheard the lyrics.)

Matthew published a cooking zine called “Slugs and Spice / Sugar and Snails” for Food Not Bombs Vancouver almost ten years ago. He found a terrible scan you can look at if you’re interested.

Crying in H Mart By Michelle Zauner

Sobbing near the dry goods, I ask myself, “Am I even Korean anymore if there’s no one left in my life to call and ask which brand of seaweed we used to buy?”

Check out our Pinterest board and Tumblr posts, follow us on Twitter, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, September, 4th, when we’ll talk about our travel reading habits!

Then come back on Tuesday, September 18th, when we’ll talk about Romance Fiction!

[kevindoylejones1]

Snapshot of the Community Equity Fund

Snapshot of the Community Equity Fund

Fund Profile: Community Equity Fund Addressing the “Rich Uncle Problem” with Venture Philanthropy Stephanie Swepson Twitty and Kevin Jones are North Carolina-based veteran social entrepreneurs. And they are doing just what such folks love to do: filling a gap they spotted in the way the world works. The two make a powerful combination. Twitty is the CEO of Eagle Market Streets Community…

[jewish-privilege]

So as you must imagine this is a pretty festively ADHD time of year for me:

–Hannukah Time—

–Xmas in all its various permutations including 50 versions of “This Christmas” and “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” to be followed by Chinese food and a movie….

—Kwanzaa–yes I celebrate it and Love it!

So let’s start with Hannukah.

A Hannukah primer for the unintiated:

Hannukah is not the Jewish Christmas.  It predates Christmas as a commemoration by a couple hundred years.  Gift-giving as an element of Hannukah emerged fairly late in Jewish tradition and in North America its inextricably tied to the proximity of the holiday to Christmas.  In Eastern Europe and Germany it was traditional for Jews to give a little “gelt,” or Yiddish for gold coins, to their children on Hannukah.  Along the Mediterranean coast and the Middle East Jewish children were encouraged to give tzedakah (which means righteousness but in this case refers to charitable giving) on Hannukah and many received money on Purim or Passover.  If you have ever wondered about those gold or silver foiled chocolate coins–they took the place of the real thing once Jews lived in countries with paper money.

Hannukah has several traditional narratives.  The first one, you may have heard of involves a revolt against the so-called Syrian-Greeks (Greek colonists and Greek influenced Middle Easterners who wanted everybody to follow Greek culture and civilization) and those Jews who really wanted to join them and those who wanted to remain true to Yehudah/Judea and her indigenous Monotheistic temple cult and cultural traditions and laws based around the observance of the Torah.  A war, lasting several years ensued and a heroic figure Yehudah Maccabee emerged leading the Jewish people to victory against the Hellenists and Hellenizers.  The holiday miracle passed down from generation to generation was that there was only one jar of consecrated oil and this oil should only have lasted one day, but lasted eight days.

...Some Hannukah traditions you might want to read up on include eating foods fried in oil–to recall the miracle (all Jewish holidays are keyed towards food and most Jewish foods are keyed with specific Jewish holidays); playing the dreidel–a spinning top with Hebrew letters used to do harmless gambling involving candy and other treats, and lighting the hannukiyah—(what you may have learned as a menorah) each night for eight nights. We are also supposed to say special prayers including the Maoz Tzur (kinda my favorite tune) which means Rock of Ages and the Hallel–Psalms of Praise and Shehecheyanu–which is a prayer on new seasons.  The candlelighting is blessed every night and some, like myself observe a special “umph” day called Zot Hannukah on the last day…

...What do I serve on Hannukah?  Well typically its usually a one day thing that I cook for and I pretty much make the rounds on all other days of the holiday.  While I do like the traditional stuff–latkes-or potato pancakes (some of ya’ll might say hash browns LOL), with sour cream and dill or sour cream and green onions, and doughnuts–always a yum—deep frying is a cooking style particularly important and endemic to both the Middle East and Africa.  It is of course, the cooking style–for good or for ill–that the Southern United States is best known for.

Hannukah meals to me include a lot of treats from the Sephardic world.  My home synagogue is a Sephardi synagogue.  The traditions come from the Middle East and the Mediterranean basin while Ashkenazi traditions come from Central, Northern and Eastern Europe as well as the former Russian Empire.  I will do latkes however as you see above

Just in case you were wondering, traditionally African Jewish communities–the Beta Yisrael of Ethiopia, the Lemba of Southern Africa, and groups in West Africa, did not celebrate Hannukah.  For the Beta Yisrael in particular because Hannukah was not a Biblical holiday they didn’t know of it!  Now in Israel, many Jewish communities of African descent celebrate Hannukah with Jews from around the world.

The Hannukiyah and the Kinara of Kwanzaa are similar in form but don’t have the same meaning.  Hannukiyah’s are in the home because its called in Judaism the Mikdah Me’at–the little Temple. The original menorah was in the Holy Temple–and that menorah—with seven branches instead of nine, held the oil mentioned in the story of the miracle.  The Kinara has seven distinct principles associated with it.

Oh one more thing–Hannukah, Kwanzaa, this, that…all holidays are “made up,”  by human beings for human beings.  I have the feeling that Kwanzaa would be a lot more “official” to the wider world if market forces could benefit from it–but its not a holiday that’s meant to be commercialized.  It is a holiday where African Americans and people of African descent who choose to celebrate it are supposed to keep money in their community (cooperative economics) and to overall avoid spending a lot of money on needless things and commercializing the observance… So for you Kwanzaa-naysayers, put that in your kinara and light it!

I know Hannukah is over for this year, but Michael Twitty has some excellent recipes at the link!

[stuarteverettdj]

A great rockin show lined up this week with tracks from Conway Twitty , Jackie Wilson , Rusti Steel & The Startones plus New Tracks from Dylan Kirk & The Killers and loads more . Join me 9am Sunday morning on http://www.splinterwoodradio.uk, Ask Alexa to play Splinterwood radio via Tunein , or download the FREE splinterwood app from your app store. #rockabilly #rocknroll #onair #radio #radiolife #media #marketing #vintage #boppers #strollers #radioadvertising #jivers #doowop #splinterwood #1950s #jive #radio https://www.instagram.com/p/CE9yZlwA8VK/?igshid=11urc1zuypabb