#i found a few but they only talk about native american’s influence on *american* music

[drinkthemlock]

anyone knows any academic articles talking about (primarily British) punk rockers and their successors’ obsession with native north americans? from like siouxsie sioux literally naming herself after a native north american group, to the lyrics in kings of the wild frontier and just the general fashion they wore (anabella lwin had a sort of long loose mohawke as her signature hairstyle + her dance moves that are a lot like indigenous sweetheart dances/adam ant that was even confronted by natives about the way he dressed according to an article by the guardian in 1981) they borrow A LOT from indigenous ppl

[realbigpodcastslut]

Should You Listen to King Falls AM?

(Update at the bottom) 

Lately, I’ve seen a lot people looking to start KFAM and conflicting views on if you should listen. Being a fan for a long time, I’d like to put in my two-cents. I’m not going to tell you if you should listen or not, but I’ll present the facts so you can make your own choice.

Overall:

King Falls AM is a podcast, and out of the hundred+ I’ve listened to, it is definitely my favorite one and I always seem to be relistening to it. Taking place in the small town of King Falls, late-night radio hosts Sammy and Ben have to tackle the weird and whacky. It’s funny, the characters are amazing, and I just love the overall idea of love (platonic and romantic) conquering all. The music is also amazing. While the background music is to die for, this is really shown in their musical episode (which is done right).

Now, while it is my favorite podcast, there are a lot of faults. Representation is mishandled, there are problematic parts, and the creators and actors have had some not-so-great reactions to valid criticism. Also, the story is unfinished and there is no word if they’re coming back after COVID-19.

Characters:

I can’t deny, I love the characters (especially Lily Wright). The characters will worm their way into your heart until you fall in-love. Whether it’s the main characters of Sammy, Ben, (Emily, Troy, and Lily), or the townspeople, you’ll most likely end up loving them. And if you don’t love them, then you will hate them so much you love hating them. I’m going to avoid spoilers, but you will love these characters and feel for them. Even I, the stone-cold bitch that brags about not crying that much over media, ended up crying over them. 

On the other hand, the characters are not the stellar representation that a lot of podcasts have. There are plenty of LGBT characters later on, but a lot of them are stereotypes. Archie, a gay man, is overly camp, and Jacob, a bisexual man, is sex-crazed. Though, I should point out that almost every non-main character is a stereotype, but this can be off-putting to a lot of people. Women are also not represented great. They’re pretty one-dimensional and while they grow, they’re sort of looked-down upon and hated. This changes around episode 90 where it is specifically called out on and episodes 75+ start to change this poor representation somewhat. Though the representation of POC is just bad, with Walt being a stereotypical Native American man and Storm Sanders an alcoholic. There is also a racist witch, while hated by everyone, is still suspicious. 

Comedy:

King Falls AM is also extremely funny. There are several jokes they actually made me laugh out loud (hard to do) and in my relistens I still laugh. The character’s banter is hilarious and I just can’t state how funny some of the stuff is. While some stuff aren’t direct jokes, the absurdity of events are funny. For example, there is a vigilante named the Dirt who is basically a dimestore Batman in BDSM gear. Another thing is that there is a murderous Elf of the Shelf that says some things that are comedy gold. Even later on, they don’t sacrifice much of the comedy for arcs that will tear your heart out.

While the jokes are funny, there are many jokes that miss the mark and are not politically correct. One that sticks out is “Don’t assume my gender.” There are a lot of race jokes (ew) and quite a few on the holocaust. There are also a lot of gay jokes, which while sometimes done right, can make LGBT people uncomfortable. Especially when two characters (Archie and Lily) are made out to be too gay to function and make a lot of sexual jokes. This missing-the-mark is made clear as it is written by straight white men, which really can’t joke about stuff they don’t experience.

Themes:

The themes of KFAM are also good and you can’t ever go wrong with found-family. Love is the main aspect surrounding the show and whether platonic or romantic love, it’s embraced. I really enjoy how Sammy and Ben are able to say “I love you” to each other without it being seen as creepy or “gay.” Characters also grow for the better and are always pushing to be better. They even talk about mental health struggles and pushing each other up to be the best they can be. Lastly, the main storyline is compelling and it opens up for a lot of theorizing and trying to figure out what is going to happen (or what happened).

The themes of found family can be criticized over the fact that several characters already experienced found family due to being gay and already being a family, though I think this one is a little weak (but I included it). Some of the storylines may get boring and it can be a sort of slow-burn as things come to fruition. There are also plot holes (but not that noticeable).

Creators, Actors and Community:

This is the final point and the thing that has made many die-hard fans dislike KFAM and be ashamed for listening to it. Starting at episode 34, there was an episode on Helen Keller and it was essentially making fun of her. Obviously, fans did not like this episode and told the creators so. They did not apologize and basically said, “Sorry you didn’t like it.” Around April or March of 2020, one of the creators retweeted NSFW fan works and people told them how they needed to tag it, etc. They reacted poorly, only for a person to say “Death of the Author” (a literary idea where you ignore the author’s influence on a work), and then the creator freaked out, thinking this was a death threat. These were not the only events, so if you’d like to find out more, I have archived (with my friend) a decent amount on the blog @kfam-tea.

The community is also toxic. There have been a lot of times where die-hard fans will delete any criticism from the subreddit (though this has seemed to stop). These fans also started “attacking” WTNV after Cecil Baldwin (voice of Cecil) made a jab at other radio podcasts. The discord server is also closed off from everyone except those already on it, and they’ve deleted a lot of channels and such. Overall, the community is not the best and it’s quite divided.

Lastly, we don’t know if KFAM is coming back. While they said it was going to start after COVID-19, there’s reason to believe that isn’t the case. The creators unfollowed each other on Instagram and Twitter. There was a Reddit threat where people asked if it was coming back only for Kyle (co-creator) to call them entitled (yikes, I know). So far, there is another podcast made by everyone but Kyle and Trent (the actor for about half of the town).

Conclusion:

The choice to listen is up to you. You may or may not like it, but I’m not going to say this is strictly a terrible or amazing podcast. I think it is both. I fell in love with the story and while it has many, many, terrible warts, I think people should know what they are heading into. I see too many people either praising or hating KFAM completely, and it’s not fair. This story isn’t for everyone and has it’s bad moments, but it also has it’s wonderful moments. To listen, that is a personal decision for you to make.

UPDATE:

KFAM isn’t coming back and it left on a big cliffhanger so maybe don’t listen.

[barbara-stanwyck-1907-1990]

Barbara Stanwyck (born Ruby Catherine Stevens; July 16, 1907 – January 20, 1990) was an American actress, model and dancer. A stage, film and television star, she was known during her 60-year career as a consummate and versatile professional for her strong, realistic screen presence. A favorite of directors including Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang and Frank Capra, she made 85 films in 38 years before turning to television.

Stanwyck got her start on the stage in the chorus as a Ziegfeld girl in 1923 at age 16 and within a few years was acting in plays. She was then cast in her first lead role in Burlesque (1927), becoming a Broadway star. Soon after that, Stanwyck obtained film roles and got her major break when Frank Capra chose her for his romantic drama Ladies of Leisure (1930), which led to additional lead roles.

In 1937 she had the title role in Stella Dallas and received her first Academy Award nomination for best actress. In 1941 she starred in two successful screwball comedies: Ball of Fire with Gary Cooper, and The Lady Eve with Henry Fonda. She received her second Academy Award nomination for Ball of Fire, and in recent decades The Lady Eve has come to be regarded as a romantic comedy classic with Stanwyck's performance called one of the best in American comedy.

By 1944, Stanwyck had become the highest-paid woman in the United States. She starred alongside Fred MacMurray in the seminal film noir Double Indemnity (1944), playing the smoldering wife who persuades MacMurray's insurance salesman to kill her husband. Described as one of the ultimate portrayals of villainy, it is widely thought that Stanwyck should have won the Academy Award for Best Actress rather than being just nominated. She received another Oscar nomination for her lead performance as an invalid wife overhearing her own murder plot in the thriller film noir, Sorry, Wrong Number (1948). After she moved into television in the 1960s, she won three Emmy Awards – for The Barbara Stanwyck Show (1961), the western series The Big Valley (1966), and miniseries The Thorn Birds (1983).

She received an Honorary Oscar in 1982, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1986 and was the recipient of several other honorary lifetime awards. She was ranked as the 11th greatest female star of classic American cinema by the American Film Institute. An orphan at the age of four, and partially raised in foster homes, she always worked; one of her directors, Jacques Tourneur, said of Stanwyck, "She only lives for two things, and both of them are work."

Barbara Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens on July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the fifth – and youngest – child of Catherine Ann (née McPhee) (1870-1911) and Byron E. Stevens (1872-1919), working-class parents. Her father, of English descent, was a native of Lanesville, Massachusetts, and her mother, of Scottish descent, was an immigrant from Sydney, Nova Scotia. When Ruby was four, her mother died of complications from a miscarriage after she was knocked off a moving streetcar by a drunk. Two weeks after the funeral, her father joined a work crew digging the Panama Canal and was never seen again by his family. Ruby and her older brother, Malcolm Byron (later nicknamed "By") Stevens, were raised by their eldest sister Laura Mildred, (later Mildred Smith) (1886–1931), who died of a heart attack at age 45. When Mildred got a job as a showgirl, Ruby and Byron were placed in a series of foster homes (as many as four in a year), from which young Ruby often ran away.

"I knew that after fourteen I'd have to earn my own living, but I was willing to do that ... I've always been a little sorry for pampered people, and of course, they're 'very' sorry for me."

Ruby toured with Mildred during the summers of 1916 and 1917, and practiced her sister's routines backstage. Watching the movies of Pearl White, whom Ruby idolized, also influenced her drive to be a performer. At the age of 14, she dropped out of school, taking a package wrapping job at a Brooklyn department store. Ruby never attended high school, "although early biographical thumbnail sketches had her attending Brooklyn's famous Erasmus Hall High School."

Soon afterward, she took a filing job at the Brooklyn telephone office for $14 a week, which allowed her to become financially independent. She disliked the job; her real goal was to enter show business, even as her sister Mildred discouraged the idea. She then took a job cutting dress patterns for Vogue magazine, but customers complained about her work and she was fired. Ruby's next job was as a typist for the Jerome H. Remick Music Company; work she reportedly enjoyed, however her continuing ambition was in show business, and her sister finally gave up trying to dissuade her.

In 1923, a few months before her 16th birthday, Ruby auditioned for a place in the chorus at the Strand Roof, a nightclub over the Strand Theatre in Times Square. A few months later, she obtained a job as a dancer in the 1922 and 1923 seasons of the Ziegfeld Follies, dancing at the New Amsterdam Theater. "I just wanted to survive and eat and have a nice coat", Stanwyck said. For the next several years, she worked as a chorus girl, performing from midnight to seven a.m. at nightclubs owned by Texas Guinan. She also occasionally served as a dance instructor at a speakeasy for gays and lesbians owned by Guinan. One of her good friends during those years was pianist Oscar Levant, who described her as being "wary of sophisticates and phonies."

Billy LaHiff, who owned a popular pub frequented by showpeople, introduced Ruby in 1926 to impresario Willard Mack. Mack was casting his play The Noose, and LaHiff suggested that the part of the chorus girl be played by a real one. Mack agreed, and after a successful audition gave the part to Ruby. She co-starred with Rex Cherryman and Wilfred Lucas. As initially staged, the play was not a success. In an effort to improve it, Mack decided to expand Ruby's part to include more pathos. The Noose re-opened on October 20, 1926, and became one of the most successful plays of the season, running on Broadway for nine months and 197 performances. At the suggestion of David Belasco, Ruby changed her name to Barbara Stanwyck by combining the first name from the play Barbara Frietchie with the last name of the actress in the play, Jane Stanwyck; both were found on a 1906 theater program.

Stanwyck became a Broadway star soon afterward, when she was cast in her first leading role in Burlesque (1927). She received rave reviews, and it was a huge hit. Film actor Pat O'Brien would later say on a 1960s talk show, "The greatest Broadway show I ever saw was a play in the 1920s called 'Burlesque'." Arthur Hopkins described in his autobiography To a Lonely Boy, how he came to cast Stanwyck:

After some search for the girl, I interviewed a nightclub dancer who had just scored in a small emotional part in a play that did not run [The Noose]. She seemed to have the quality I wanted, a sort of rough poignancy. She at once displayed more sensitive, easily expressed emotion than I had encountered since Pauline Lord. She and Skelly were the perfect team, and they made the play a great success. I had great plans for her, but the Hollywood offers kept coming. There was no competing with them. She became a picture star. She is Barbara Stanwyck.

He also called Stanwyck "The greatest natural actress of our time", noting with sadness, "One of the theater's great potential actresses was embalmed in celluloid."

Around this time, Stanwyck was given a screen test by producer Bob Kane for his upcoming 1927 silent film Broadway Nights. She lost the lead role because she could not cry in the screen test, but was given a minor part as a fan dancer. This was Stanwyck's first film appearance.

While playing in Burlesque, Stanwyck was introduced to her future husband, actor Frank Fay, by Oscar Levant. Stanwyck and Fay were married on August 26, 1928, and soon moved to Hollywood.

Stanwyck's first sound film was The Locked Door (1929), followed by Mexicali Rose, released in the same year. Neither film was successful; nonetheless, Frank Capra chose Stanwyck for his film Ladies of Leisure (1930). Her work in that production established an enduring friendship with the director and led to future roles in his films. Other prominent roles followed, among them as a nurse who saves two little girls from being gradually starved to death by Clark Gable's vicious character in Night Nurse (1931). In Edna Ferber's novel brought to screen by William Wellman, she portrays small town teacher and valiant Midwest farm woman Selena in So Big! (1932). She followed with a performance as an ambitious woman "sleeping" her way to the top from "the wrong side of the tracks" in Baby Face (1933), a controversial pre-Code classic. In The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933), another controversial pre-Code film by director Capra, Stanwyck portrays an idealistic Christian caught behind the lines of Chinese civil war kidnapped by warlord Nils Asther. A flop at the time, containing "mysterious-East mumbo jumbo", the lavish film is "dark stuff, and its difficult to imagine another actress handling this ... philosophical conversion as fearlessly as Ms. Stanwyck does. She doesn't make heavy weather of it."

In Stella Dallas (1937) she plays the self-sacrificing title character who eventually allows her teenage daughter to live a better life somewhere else. She landed her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress when she was able to portray her character as vulgar, yet sympathetic as required by the movie. Next, she played Molly Monahan in Union Pacific (1939) with Joel McCrea. Stanwyck was reportedly one of the many actresses considered for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939), although she did not receive a screen test. In Meet John Doe she plays an ambitious newspaperwoman with Gary Cooper (1941).

In Preston Sturges's romantic comedy The Lady Eve (1941), she plays a slinky, sophisticated con-woman who falls for her intended victim, the guileless, wealthy snake-collector and scientist Henry Fonda, she "gives off an erotic charge that would straighten a boa constrictor." Film critic David Thomson described Stanwyck as "giving one of the best American comedy performances", and its reviewed as brilliantly versatile in "her bravura double performance" by The Guardian. The Lady Eve is among the top 100 movies of all time on Time and Entertainment Weekly's lists, and is considered to be both a great comedy and a great romantic film with its placement at #55 on the AFI's 100 Years ...100 Laughs list and #26 on its 100 Years ...100 Passions list.

Next, she was the extremely successful, independent doctor Helen Hunt in You Belong to Me (1941), also with Fonda. Stanwyck then played nightclub performer Sugerpuss O'Shea in the Howard Hawks directed, but Billy Wilder written comedy Ball of Fire (1941). In this update of the Snow White and Seven Dwarfs tale, she gives professor Gary Cooper a better understanding of "modern English" in the performance for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

In Double Indemnity, the seminal film noir thriller directed by Billy Wilder, she plays the sizzling, scheming wife/blonde tramp/"destiny in high heels" who lures an infatuated insurance salesman (Fred MacMurray) into killing her husband. Stanwyck brings out the cruel nature of the "grim, unflinching murderess", marking her as the "most notorious femme" in the film noir genre. Her insolent, self-possessed wife is one of the screen's "definitive studies of villainy - and should (it is widely thought) have won the Oscar for Best Actress", not just been nominated. Double Indemnity is usually considered to be among the top 100 films of all time, though it did not win any of its seven Academy Award nominations. It is the #38 film of all time on the American Film Institute's list, as well as the #24 on its 100 Years ...100 Thrillers list and #84 on its 100 Years ...100 Passions list.

She plays the columnist caught up in white lies and a holiday romance in Christmas in Connecticut (1945). In 1946 she was "liquid nitrogen" as Martha, a manipulative murderess, costarring with Van Heflin and newcomer Kirk Douglas in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. Stanwyck was also the vulnerable, invalid wife that overhears her own murder being plotted in Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) and the doomed concert pianist in The Other Love (1947). In the latter film's soundtrack, the piano music is actually being performed by Ania Dorfmann, who drilled Stanwyck for three hours a day until the actress was able to synchronize the motion of her arms and hands to match the music's tempo, giving a convincing impression that it is Stanwyck playing the piano.

Pauline Kael, a longtime film critic for The New Yorker, admired the natural appearance of Stanwyck's acting style on screen, noting that she "seems to have an intuitive understanding of the fluid physical movements that work best on camera". In reference to the actress's film work during the early sound era, Kael observed that the "early talkies sentimentality...only emphasizes Stanwyck's remarkable modernism."

Many of her roles involve strong characters, yet Stanwyck was known for her accessibility and kindness to the backstage crew on any film set. She knew the names of their wives and children. Frank Capra said of Stanwyck: "She was destined to be beloved by all directors, actors, crews and extras. In a Hollywood popularity contest, she would win first prize, hands down." While working on 1954s Cattle Queen of Montana on location in Glacier National Park, she did some of her own stunts, including a swim in the icy lake.[49] A consummate professional, when aged 50, she performed a stunt in Forty Guns. Her character had to fall off her horse and, with her foot caught in the stirrup, be dragged by the galloping animal. This was so dangerous that the movie's professional stunt person refused to do it. Her professionalism on film sets led her to be named an Honorary Member of the Hollywood Stuntmen's Hall of Fame.

William Holden and Stanwyck were longtime friends and when Stanwyck and Holden were presenting the Best Sound Oscar for 1977, he paused to pay a special tribute to her for saving his career when Holden was cast in the lead for Golden Boy (1939). After a series of unsteady daily performances, he was about to be fired, but Stanwyck staunchly defended him, successfully standing up to the film producers. Shortly after Holden's death, Stanwyck recalled the moment when receiving her honorary Oscar: "A few years ago, I stood on this stage with William Holden as a presenter. I loved him very much, and I miss him. He always wished that I would get an Oscar. And so, tonight, my golden boy, you got your wish."

As Stanwyck's film career declined during the 1950s, she moved to television. In 1958 she guest-starred in "Trail to Nowhere", an episode of the Western anthology series Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre, portraying a wife who pursues, overpowers, and kills the man who murdered her husband. Later, in 1961, her drama series The Barbara Stanwyck Show was not a ratings success, but it earned her an Emmy Award. The show ran for a total of thirty-six episodes. She also guest-starred in this period on other television series, such as The Untouchables with Robert Stack and in four episodes of Wagon Train.

She stepped back into film for the 1964 Elvis Presley film Roustabout, in which she plays a carnival owner.

The western television series, The Big Valley, which was broadcast on ABC from 1965 to 1969, made her one of the most popular actresses on television, winning her another Emmy. She was billed in the series' opening credits as "Miss Barbara Stanwyck" for her role as Victoria, the widowed matriarch of the wealthy Barkley family. In 1965, the plot of her 1940 movie Remember the Night was adapted and used to develop the teleplay for The Big Valley episode "Judgement in Heaven".

In 1983, Stanwyck earned her third Emmy for The Thorn Birds. In 1985 she made three guest appearances in the primetime soap opera Dynasty prior to the launch of its short-lived spin-off series, The Colbys, in which she starred alongside Charlton Heston, Stephanie Beacham and Katharine Ross. Unhappy with the experience, Stanwyck remained with the series for only the first season, and her role as "Constance Colby Patterson" would be her last. It was rumored Earl Hamner Jr., former producer of The Waltons, had initially wanted Stanwyck for the role of Angela Channing in the 1980s soap opera Falcon Crest, and she turned it down, with the role going to her friend, Jane Wyman; when asked Hamner assured Wyman it was a rumor.

Stanwyck's retirement years were active, with charity work outside the limelight. In 1981, she was awakened in the middle of the night, inside her home in the exclusive Trousdale section of Beverly Hills, by an intruder, who first hit her on the head with his flashlight, then forced her into a closet while he robbed her of $40,000 in jewels.

The following year, in 1982, while filming The Thorn Birds, the inhalation of special-effects smoke on the set may have caused her to contract bronchitis, which was compounded by her cigarette habit; she was a smoker from the age of nine until four years before her death.

Stanwyck died on January 20, 1990, aged 82, of congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California. She had indicated that she wanted no funeral service. In accordance with her wishes, her remains were cremated and the ashes scattered from a helicopter over Lone Pine, California, where she had made some of her western films.

[chiseler]

Lost in the Blues: The Search for Dyin’ Dog

In June of this year, an unidentified seller posted a Jewel Records promo single on eBay. The asking price was $20. The simple accompanying description read:

“DJ PROMO RECORD 45 rpm  70s blues/R&B . Condition is Used. Bought this puppy at an estate sale for the late, great Stan Lewis. The artist is Dyin' Dog; I never heard of him but it's a pretty good record. I picked up two of them and thought I'd see what it's worth. It's a hand cut acetate DJ promo so I figure it must be pretty rare. Date on the label is 1975.”

This was only the second time I had seen proof of the physical existence of a Dyin’ Dog recording. I immediately contacted the seller, who informed me the single was “Bury My Bone” b/w “River Runs Dry,” but he was unable to tell me anything more.

It’s not surprising the seller, or anyone else, doesn’t remember raucous Louisiana blues singer Dyin’ Dog, as he never officially released any records, and never performed in public.

My own search for Dyin’ Dog, whose real name, I’ve since learned, may or may not have been Alvin Snow, began back in 2008, after stumbling across another Jewel promo 45 at a record fair in Jersey City, NJ. Like the seller on eBay, I had never heard of Dyin’ Dog, but the fact I hadn’t heard of him piqued my interest, along with the fact it had been a Jewel release. The seller, who was from Arkansas and specialized in rare indie label blues and R&B singles from the Sixties and Seventies, could tell me nothing about the artist, and couldn’t even remember how he’d come across the promo in the first place.

I brought the record home and put it on the turntable. As rough and minimalist as the production was, I could tell immediately this was unlike any other standard blues being produced in the mid-Seventies, or any other time. In spite of the modern instrumentation, it was raw and primitive, the song structure more akin to the American proto blues coming out of the rural South  of the Twenties than the more urbane sounds coming out of the New Orleans or Chicago scenes in later decades.

Overpowering the band was Dyin’ Dog himself, a voice that shrieked and roared a howl of the most abject anguish from the lower depths of some personal hell we hope we never know. The Howlin’ Wolf influence was clear, but Dying Dog, whoever he was, had taken what Howlin’ Wolf wrought and dragged it with heavy iron chains into much darker, much more horrifying territory, some barren landscape where redemption is not possible.

After all my years of researching the mostly forgotten corners of blues history, how was it I never heard of him? I went to the bookshelf and pilled down all the standard reference works—Kunstler, of course,The Cambridge Guide to Blues and Gospel, Nothing But the Blues, several years worth of the journal American Music and a few others—but search as I might there was absolutely no mention anywhere of any performer who went under the name “Dyin’ Dog.” I did an Internet search, and not only were there no recordings posted anywhere, there was no mention of this character. Had I heard a ghost on that record? Maybe more likely a demon.

The next obvious step was to contact Stan Lewis.

In 1948, Lewis opened Stan’s Record Store in Shreveport, Louisiana. Within a few years the store had expanded into a minor regional chain, and by the end of the Fifties Stan’s Record Store, with it’s huge selection of titles across every popular genre you can imagine, had become the largest mail-order music shop in the American South.

Deciding to expand the operation, in 1964 Lewis founded Jewel Records (joined soon thereafter by the subsidiary labels Ronn and Paula). Lewis signed hundreds of acts—country, R&B, jazz, blues, gospel, rock’nroll, whatever sold—and his stable of artists included, among others, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Memphis slim and John Lee Hooker.

After a successful twenty-year run, Lewis was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1983. In the late Nineties all of Jewel’s master tapes were obtained by the online company eMusic, and at present the rights to the entire Jewel catalog are held by a New York-based holding company, Fuel 2000. Lewis himself passed away in July of 2018 at age 91, which explains the above-mentioned estate sale.

I had the opportunity to speak with Lewis two or three times in the Nineties while researching other Jewel acts. He’d always been friendly and willing to offer as much as he could, so I reached out again in 2009 to see what he could tell me about Dyin’ Dog.

When I’d spoken with him earlier, Lewis could not only share entertaining anecdotes about any act I was curious about, he could cite contract details and sales numbers from memory. But when I mentioned Dyin’ Dog he drew a complete blank. He had no memory of him whatsoever. I even played the single over the phone hoping that might spark something, some kind of memory, but while he admitted he was clearly impressed with the performance, the name rang no bells. He did, however, invite me to pore through the Jewel archives in Shreveport to see what I could find.

The voice I’d heard on that record, guttural, unearthly, scraped to the sinew, continued to haunt me. I couldn’t even tell if Dyin’ Dog was black or white. I had to find out who was behind that sound, and how he got there.

I was able to schedule a trip to Louisiana two months later, and after a week of digging through cardboard boxes overflowing with contracts, press releases and sales reports, I at last came across my first solid lead. In a brief series of correspondence dated early 1975, a young musician named Roland Sheehan sang the praises of a wild new blues singer he was working with. The description sounded decidedly like Dyin’ Dog, though the name Sheehan used was “Alvin Snow.” More exciting still, another note from Sheehan made reference to some demos recorded by Snow and a small band headed by Sheehan on keyboards. He mentioned a few titles—“The Dog’s Dream,” “Pass for White”—which made me even more excited. In his encouraging response, Lewis, who was clearly acquainted with Sheehan, tentatively agreed to put Jewel behind Snow, adding, “But need to do something about the name. And the cursing. He curses too much.”

That was it. There was no further correspondence, no evidence the records were ever released. No press releases, no sales reports, nothing at all. Just those tantalizing hints Dyin’ Dog/Alvin Snow was real.

The next step was to contact Sheehan. He was not hard to find. He was still alive and living in Ruston, Louisiana. With no important business pulling me back to New Jersey, I rented a car in Shreveport and drove seventy miles to the north, to a small town near the Louisiana Tech campus. It was a typically sultry Louisiana afternoon in late July when I knocked on Sheehan’s door. He invited me in and offered me a beer.

Unlike Lewis, Sheehan, a burly man of 58 at the time with the unmistakable accent of a native, could remember Snow well, and was eager to talk about him.

“”Yeah, Alvin and Dyin’ Dog were the same,” Sheehan confirmed. “But Dyin’ Dog came along later. Close to the end. That was Stan’s idea. He thought Alvin needed a bluesier name, so we were Dyin’ Dog and the Mongrels.”

He said he first encountered Snow on the street in Ruston around 1974. Sheehan was in his early twenties and had been playing keyboards for a local blues rock band called The Alliance. He recalls that when he first saw Snow, he mistook him for Johnny Winter.

“He was hard to miss,” Sheehan said. “Ruston’s an itty-bitty town, and you don’t see many albinos just walking down the street here.”

I nearly did a spit take. Dyin’ Dog was an albino?

“Yeah,” Sheehan nodded. “White hair, chalky white skin, everything. Except he had these real pale blue eyes, not pink.”

What really caught his attention, he said, was less Snow being an albino than the song he was singing.

“Just belting it out as he was walking down the street. Screaming it almost. But he was good, like nothing I’d heard.”

So Sheehan stopped him, and the two started talking about music.

“I never really learned that much about him. His personal life or past or anything. He told me once he was raised in an orphanage, but that was it. I think he may have mentioned that his mom was black and his dad was white, or maybe the other way around, I’m not sure. I do remember his birthday was January thirteenth. Always liked to say he was born on Friday the thirteenth. I think it was 1938 or ’39, but I could be wrong. He was living with this nice older lady who had some money. We all just knew her as Miss Lillian. She really loved him. And he had this little dog. Chester, after Chester Burnet. I think someone had abandoned it or something. Its back legs were crippled, so Alvin made it this little cart or chariot or whatever. A thing with wheels so it could pull itself around. Ugliest little thing you ever seen, but Alvin was crazy about it.”

The picture that was coming together of Dyin’ Dog/Alvin Snow in no way corresponded with the picture I’d imagined after hearing that single, but that shouldn’t have surprised me.

Snow, Sheehan said, had a headful of songs, but didn’t know how to read or write music and couldn’t play any instruments, so the two of them would get together and Snow would hum or sing and Sheehan would transcribe the music.

“It was really wild stuff, really not like anything else. And if you’ve heard his voice you know. I mean he worshipped Howlin’’ Wolf. Really almost literally worshipped the guy, but I think he was doing something different.”

Sheehan pulled together a small backup band and they began rehearsing.

“Everything was coming together. We recorded ten or twelve demos at little studios in Shreveport, places Stan liked to use. I had Stan interested. And then I set up this show. It was going to be kind of a showcase with Dyin’ Dog and The Mongrels opening for my band The Alliance. That was gonna be in January of ’76. The thirteenth, Alvin’s birthday. But then he vanished just a couple days before. No word, nothing. E just vanished.”

Sheehan says a number of things happened in the weeks before Snow disappeared. His beloved dog died in an accident. Then Miss Lillian, the older woman he was living with, passed away on January tenth, three days before his first live show. And though it may be nothing but a strange coincidence, Howlin’ Wolf/Chester Burnett died the same day as Miss Lillian.

“To Alvin, that must’ve been like hearing God Almighty himself had up and died,” Sheehan commented.

Sheehan never saw or heard from Snow again. He also claimed to have no knowledge of what became of the master tapes of those first and only demos.

The ten years following my research trip to Louisiana witnessed enough detours, dead ends, red herrings and smashed hopes to fill a very long and frustrating book. Even with what I presume was his real name and his date of birth, record searches yielded nothing. I can find no information at all about Snow dating either before or after his time in Ruston, ca. 1974-’75.  You would think there would be at least some mention somewhere of an albino named Alvin Snow, whether or not he was still singing, but it was like he had emerged from that barren landscape I heard on that first record, then returned there again.

But now with the emergence of a second promo recording, it’s clear the story isn’t over yet. Someday, I’m confident, we may know what he did those first three and a half decades before he materialized singing on a Louisiana street, and what became of him afterward. Or maybe he’ll join the enigmatic ranks of Emmet Miller and Henry Thomas, and these two remarkable singles will remain the only record we’ll ever have.

by Paul Lyllyde

[adityatodi]

New Orleans

October 6, 2019 Sunday

On my way back to Boston from New Orleans.

I arrived in New Orleans late Thursday night (midnight) on the same flight as Angel Saez. We took an Uber to our AirBnB in the French district.

Friday morning started with breakfast at Bear Cat Café with Ben, his wife Ilkania, Akash, Dana, Jaclyn and her boyfriend Blake, Rebecca, Macy and Kumiko. The huge portion sizes served as a welcome to the city. We then headed to the Whitney Plantation to get a tour of the plantation and learn about the history of the plantation and more about slavery. Some of my takeaways/learnings:

Often when we think of slavery, we think of slaves working in plantation or house maids. But system of slavery also included skilled Black labor and craftsmen whose stories are often not ones told

The first form of dehumanization in this whole process was stripping the recently arrived Africans of their African name and giving them French name

While in 1808 Trans-Atlantic slave trade ended, it continued to flourish within US boundaries until 1864 and beyond

When we talk about colonialism, often large portions of blame is assigned to British. Why do we not put same blame on the French, Belgian or the Portugese, who were actually the ones who were “pioneers” of Trans-Atlantic slave trade

Often times when we talk about humans doing bad things to other humans the reference is Holocaust. Slavery was brutal, why are these analogies not made—because they are Black lives?

Why are the rebellions that slaves fought, e.g. there was one in 1811, not given the same heroic importance as the Revolutionary Wars for American Independence?

After the tour we head to the historic Café Du Monde to get coffee and the delicious beignets. Walk around the area, head home to do some work, drinks at Cane and Table and 3-course dinner at Sylvain. We then go to a bar playing Jazz on Frenchmen street (really good music), then a handful of us (Kumiko, Dana, Liz, Akash, Zubby and I) go bar hopping along Bourbon Street.

Saturday morning starts with brunch at Ruby Slipper with people in my AirBnB (Kuba, his girlfriend, Tory, Claire, Graciela, Eren and Katie). I then join a group from the other AirBnB to do a walking tour concentrating on the musical and artistic history of New Orleans. Thankfully the weather is bearable and not too hot. The guide carried a speaker and iPad with him to show us pictures and take us through the evolution of music starting with Armstrong Park dedicated to Louis Armstrong. I had first heard of Armstrong in college when I heard “What a Wonderful World” and was blown away by the melody and the tune. Some learnings

Urban slavery was different than rural slavery (e.g. plantation). In New Orleans given the influence of the Catholic Church, Sunday was a holiday for all including the enslaved. There were Sunday market gatherings at Congo Square where enslaved people could buy and trade for money it this became a step towards emancipation

Jazz originates from the confluence of traditional European music, particularly brass band with the Afro beats that African slaves brought with them

Armstrong received very little formal music education. It was a total of 18 months that he spent in jail because of firing blank bullets during a celebration when he was 11. In a crazy coincidence, his first wife dies of a heart attack while playing the piano at Armstrong’s funeral

After the tour we walk around, go to a café and then I head to the AirBnB to get some work done. At 7:45 Zubby, Kumiko and I go to the Spotted Cat Bar on Frenchmen street to hear some jazz. This was certainly the highlight of my trip. It’s a small bar and we’re all gathered around the stage. The band of 7 plays amazing amazing jazz—probably the best live jazz performance I’ve heard. Band name—Panaroma Jazz Band. The vibe of being in this small bar in New Orleans, drinking beer and chilling with a couple of friends on a wonderful evening with great music. This is the sort of stuff one imagines doing in New Orleans and I’m glad I got to do this. Zubby and I then head to get some Cajun food at Pierre Maspero’s. We strike a deep conversation on race, sexuality, and how often times those who complain of being oppressed are oppressors in other situations. After our meal we find ourselves walking back to Frenchmen street and somehow end up doing Karaoke on the way and improvising and just having a great time singing, making things up, being complimented by passerby’s on our skills, goofing around. The karaoke session continues at the AirBnB with the culmination of Louis Armstrong’s “What a wonderful world”. Ah! Grateful for such moments of pure joy. Zubby has an early morning flight so he heads to bed. I head out to Blue Nile to join a few others who are there. Some more jazz performance and back home for the night.

Sunday morning—late wake up, pack-up and get ready. Brunch at Satsuma Café and then I go to explore the WWII Museum. Takeaway/Learnings/Thoughts:

WWII was framed as a fight for democracy and democratic ideals. If today the US does not stand up and defend these ideals abroad, can one not say that WWII was fought in vain

Good to see a portion of the museum devoted to Japanese internment and the treatment of African Americans as second class citizen along with Native Americans and Latinos. However, the section seemed very small and I would have liked they spent more time talking about the implications of war on minorities

• I was able to better understand the significance of D-Day and the heroic efforts of the troops to capture Normandy. I especially enjoyed learning about the detailed deceptions that were devised to trick Nazi Germany to believing that the Allied Troops would instead attack Calais. The sheer number of tanks, planes, ships, boats and troops used for this battle was mind blowing

I found myself eager to see how this museum would talk about the dropping of the atomic bombs especially since the Hiroshima Peace Museum left a lasting memory on me. I was disappointed (but also not shocked) that only a very small small portion is devoted to it. Basic narrative---the Japanese were not willing to surrender->Americans dropped the first bomb->Japanese still not willing to surrender->Americans drop second bomb->Japanese finally surrender->Pictures of some devastating effects of the bomb->This evil was used to stop a greater evil of losing more people through conventional fighting

This narrative and the fact that the human impact and after affect of the dropping of the nuclear bomb was not covered thoroughly left me deeply frustrated. You have devoted 90% of the museum on technicalities, on how brutal war was for soldiers, how industry and Americans mobilized to fight the war, but how the f*** can you not talk about the bombing in a more sensitive way. War is not glorious. Let’s engage with this issue

Would Americans have given it more of a thought if they had the option to drop the atomic bomb on the German population? Of course, definitely yes. Because these were “Japs” who are supposed to be brutal and animal-like according to all the propaganda you spread, you find ways to justify killing civilian population and use mathematical logic of numbers to explain a war crime. Had Germany dropped nuclear bomb on U.S. cities and lost war, would the planners and executors of it not been tried for such an atrocity? Of course they would have. F*** this sh** and this convoluted logic. The U.S. needs to issue a blanket apology for what they did. It is a war crime and the American leaders who made this decision should have been tried—yes Truman should have been tried.

Step back. New Orleans.

Glad I came for this trip and was able to see this part of the U.S. Amazing food and music—such a touristy New Orleans thing to say. But honestly, that evening in the Spotted Cat bar was magical!

[onestowatch]

How Los Retros Turned ‘70s Jazz Into Your New DIY Indie Obsession [Q&A]

Photo: Ross Harris

Los Retros is proof that the only thing you need to make a great record in the modern age is a living room, some instruments, and a fire under your ass. Mauri Tapia, the mastermind behind Los Retros, writes and records all of his music from his parents’ home in Oxnard, California (a city that has also served as an incubator for artists like Madlib and Anderson .Paak.) Despite the barebones setup, Tapia manages to create recordings that paint a vast expanse of sound and color.

For the last few years, Tapia has been touring with a recurring cast of individuals around Southern California, spreading the gospel of his music and recording yet more songs from Oxnard in between shows. With the release of Los Retros’ debut EP, Retrospect, on June 21 via Stones Throw Records, the public outside of the Golden State gets to experience Los Retros’ unique sound for the first time. 

It was Ones to Watch’s distinct pleasure to sit down with Mauri Tapia to talk DIY recording, sources of inspiration, and turning a ride to a show into a marriage.

OTW: When did you start writing music, and how did that evolve into Los Retros?

MT: Well, uh, I don’t actually write most of it down; I just kind of form it and do it, it’s all memorized. I didn’t have access to any recording software until I was about 15, and that’s when I started really recording audio for the first time. At first, I just tracked guitar, then eventually drums, and yeah it kind of developed from there.

OTW: Your music has a very distinct feel that blends American indie/pop with Latin elements. Who are some artists that influenced the development of your sound?

MT: My parents for a long time when I was a little kid would play a lot of Spanish rock bands, some of those were, like, Los Freddys, Los Terricolas, Los Ángeles Negros, and so on. I never really cared for the sound until I got older. You know, maturity. I think a lot of those songs were in my head, just thinking about them and remembering all those moments, and I was like, “Hey that sounds like something cool that I’d like to make.” So I took some of those songs as a sort of reference to what I started making. Some of the others, like two on the album are kind of influenced by this dude named Tonetta. The whole album is actually a twist on a lot of stuff I listen to – it is original, but definitely reflects what I was listening to at the time. I recorded the album two years ago, actually, and I just finally decided to release it.

OTW: You took the inspiration for your moniker from a Chilean band called Los Ángeles Negros that has been active since the 70s – can you dig into this connection a little deeper?

MT: Yeah. So our project actually used to be called what the album is called, Retrospect. That was the original name, but there was already a band with that name, and we didn’t want to get sued, you know? We thought, “Alright, let’s switch it up.” I wanted to keep Retro in there because that’s just something that, like, maintains with our whole reality. And I thought, I lot of those bands I grew up with have “Los” in their name, and in English the same for bands like The Strokes. Actually, somebody on my live channel mentioned the name Los Retros and I was like “You know what, that’s a pretty cool name,” so I just kept it and here we are.

OTW: With the DIY approach you take to recording your music, do you face any interesting challenges translating the pieces to a live show? How do you adapt your music for a live setting where you can’t play drums, guitar, and bass all at once?

MT: Well, like I mentioned I write – well, not write down but you know what I mean – come up with the tunes, you know, record them, mix them. When we perform I have several friends that play with me. My little brother plays with me now and my wife does too, actually. And my friend who’s been there since the beginning playing bass. I guess that’s what makes it Los Retros.

OTW: I want to congratulate you on your debut EP that just dropped last month, Retrospect. How did you choose the six songs that would be featured on the project? Did you take anything in particular into consideration when choosing the play order?

MT: Kinda. So me and Wolf, the founder of Stones Throw, we hang out every now and then and we would always change it up. We had a bunch of other songs that we thought about putting on the album but we just thought these ones were better. We never really talked much about the order, we sat down and picked it in maybe, I dunno, four or five minutes. We thought, well, let’s put “Last Day On Earth” at the end, because you know the “last day” implies the end. The first couple songs are all about my wife. But the truth is, I don’t think it really matters what order its in. We just kind of threw it together.

OTW: A lot of your songs involve complex chord structures, and I’m told that you play every instrument featured on each track. How did you go about learning all these instruments?

MT: I started playing guitar when I was eight. I eventually got my own guitar at 11, and really started getting better at it. My school had this after school program called Rock Band, and me and a friend would go there, and I just had access to so many more instruments there than I had at home. So I just played around with anything I could get my hands on. I picked up a bass and tried some bass lines, which is actually pretty similar to guitar. I eventually got on the drums around 8th grade. I didn’t get my own drum set ‘til about a year and a half ago, actually, but I’d always play whenever I was at school. Then three and a half years ago I got my first keyboard, some people on YouTube started sharing my music and all that. Around that time I started getting into a lot of old bands from the 70s, kinda started playing around with the chords they were using, and it all developed from there as I found my own sound.

OTW: What is your favorite story behind one of the tracks on Retrospect?

MT: Yeah, the song “Friends.” It’s about my wife. So long story short, I didn’t have a ride to show one day. I was kind of acquaintances with this girl, we had talked a little bit in the past, nothing too special. Then I invited her to one of my shows, and *laughs* I didn’t necessarily lie, but I said I didn’t really have a ride, since the car my drummer was taking was too packed with gear for me to fit. So she gave me a ride, and we ended up becoming friends for a pretty good while, you know, and there was definitely something there. So I wrote this song and figured I’d show it to her, and she’d have to do something about it, so… yeah, now we’re married.

Photo: Ross Harris

OTW: You’ve developed a devoted following in your native Southern California and have played shows all around the region. As your career continues to develop, where are some areas that you want to tour? Do you have any bucket list venues?

MT: Hmm, I don’t know, I haven’t really though about it. I just wanna go play places where people will watch me. If I had my choice I guess I’d like to play in Japan, I’ve always been interested in Japanese 70s funk stuff. Honestly, New York sounds cool, too. I’ve only left California once when I was about two years old. I went to Mexico. But now the laws are a little different regarding specific people and my parents can’t go back, and for me I’d rather visit with my parents than go by myself. I don’t really have any bucket list venues. Maybe some cool back yards – I like intimate shows, haha.

OTW: Assume next year you could support any artist on an international arena tour – who would you want to support and why?

MT: Well, if he could even still play, I’d say this dude Alain Mion. He was a composer for this soul-jazz band called Cortex from the 70s. He’s probably almost 80 though. Roy Ayers too, but I know he was just hospitalized, so that would be tough. Really any of those old funk guys, because that’s the sort of music I wanna be making. It’s a long shot but maybe George Clinton, though I know he’s retiring pretty soon.

OTW: Clearly you have the chops to do great things on your own – but if you had the opportunity to collaborate with any active artist, writer, or producer on a project, who would it be and what sort of project would you undertake?

MT: Well actually, I’m collaborating with one of the best right now, Steve Arrington. I wish I could give you more details on that project right now, but I can’t.

OTW: Who are your Ones to Watch?

MT: Huh, I don’t know, I listen to a lot of old music, haha. He’s not new, but I think people should know about Alan Hawkshaw. Brian Bennett, too. Oh, and Bill Evans. There you go.

[ascot016-blog]

Facts, what learned, and my advice on Costa Rica

The name of my host country is Costa Rica. It is located in Central America. The countries that borders is Nicaragua in the North and Panama in the Southwest. The bodies of water that borders Costa Rica is the Pacific Costa in the West and the Caribbean Sea in the East. Costa Rica is culturally influence by the Span because they were colonize by them. Therefore, the official language of Costa Rica is Spanish. Majority of the people there speak Spanish, but the native indigenous people have their own language. The indigenous The pre- Colombian languages that are from Indian tribes in Costa Rica. Theses tribes speak Boruca, Bribri, Cabecar, Chibchan, and Maleku. These languages derived from sections of the Central America language and a small percent of the population speak the native language. Also, Nicaraguan and Honduras are close to the Costa Rica culturally because the countries united to gain their independence from William Walker. Costa Rica is culturally close with the Unites States. Costa Rica has been influenced by America. The United States government has put a lot money into Costa Rica in standards and America companies have open up stores in the country. The Capital of Costa Rica is San Jose. The major cities there is San Jose, Limon, San Franciso, and Liberia. San Jose is the capital this where majority the government congregate to for politics. Costa Rica government is a democracy. It is similar to the United States government. The Constitution of Costa Rica was approved in 1949. So the country government is relatively new and only exist for over a little half of a decade. Then in 1950 they establish their currency which is colon. The colon has also exist for over a little of a decade too. But, they established three branches in the government the  executive, legislation, and the judicial branch. They also have a president that the citizens directly voted in office for four year term. The current president that is in office right now is Carlos Andres Alvarado and, he was elected in May 8th 2018. He has two vice presidents one male and one female. Also, the church and government maintain a close relationship with the church in Costa Rica. Even though a survey was taken among the people and 47 percent would rather live a secular state. But, the dominant religion in Costa Rica is the Christianity. Most of the citizens identify with the Roman Catholics, about 70 percent of the people follow behind the church beliefs. About 44 percent of the people that is practicing Catholic and the other 25 percent is non-practicing Catholics. Then, the rest of the people follow behind the Protestant beliefs which is 16 percent. The other 14 percent follow other religions beliefs or have no religions preference.

The social class of Costa Rica. The middle class is group of people that are between the upper and lower class of people that have median skill jobs such as professional and business workers. The middle class makes up 50 percent of the population. The class earns about 45 percent of the country’s income. I did not know that Costa Rica middle class made up the majority of the country’s income. In Costa Rica society the people admire citizens that are hardworking. The lower class makes up 25 percent and they only earn 7 percent of the country’s income. While the upper class makes up 2 percent of the population and they earn 20 percent of the nation’s income. Some of their wealth can be traced back to the first colonists. The distribution of wealth is very unequal with the upper class earning one third percent of the nation’s income while the lower class only earn roughly 10 percent of the country’s income. The class system is open. There is social mobility and everyone shares the value of hard work in Costa Rica. They have a strong belief in “The American Dream” where an individual puts in effort and works hard in school. Therefore, they will succeed in life.

The gender roles in Costa Rica are traditional. This country has a typical gender role the men are supposed to go out and work hard for the family. While the women stay at home and take care of the children. However, the roles are starting to change in country. The women of Costa Rica staring to convert from traditional roles to more modern roles. This started when women’s education was promote in the 20th century. Then, in 2010 Costa Rica had their first women president, Laura Chinchilla. Even though women work in the work force and have government jobs they still have responsible of housewife. Some families can hired a maid to take on the responsibilities of the wife, but economically lower income families cannot afford it. Also, women have made long strives to change their roles, but still have disadvantages. The women of Costa Rica are still fighting to change the role of women in their country.

Costa Rica has many media outlets. The main Costa Rica media for newspapers are the La Gaceta Government Official Newspaper, La Nacion, La Republic, Al Dia, and LA Prensa. These are just a few of the main newspapers in Costa Rica. If you looking for a newspaper that is in English I would recommend The Costa Rica. This newspaper is in English.  Some of the television news are Telenoticias, Noticias Repretel, and the Extra Noticias. When I was in Costa Rica and I tried to watch t.v. the shows look like typical American shows, but they were in Spanish. My roommate and I found a couple of t.v. channels that were in English. The radio stations that I found in Costa Rica were named RadioU and Beatz106. These radio stations were up tempo and Latin America music. I like the beat of the music even though I did not know the lyrics. In the film industry a lot of American made movies are film in Costa Rica. Jurassic Park, Spy Kids 2, and Suicide Squad are major films that were shot in Costa Rica. There are many more films that American made in Costa Rica. I did not know that Costa Rica is a good place to film movies. But the country is so beautiful I can see why people would wanted to shot movies there. Also, most of the America films that are film in Costa Rica are action movies. While I was in the country I saw several America made films that were advised around the city and on billboards. The only difference was that the title of the movie were written in Spanish.

Most of the food in Costa Rica is delicious. The second day I was in Costa Rica I went to restaurant in San Jose. The meal was excellent. They first serve us salad that had tomatoes in it. The dressing they gave us was olive oil and vinegar which interesting. You have to find the perfect balance for yourself. I also added salt to dressing to balance out the taste. The drinks they serve us was called casa. I really enjoy. It had a unique flavor and taste like lime juice. How the restaurant serve the main course was different. The serves brought us the meat that we ask for and then serve us a variety of options with our meal. You could either have vegetables, baked potatoes, and French fries. I know our waiter was probably thinking that my table ate a lot of food because we kept asking for a refill on the options that they gave us. It was a really unique and cool way to eat dinner. I would recommend that a traveler go to a restaurant like that in Costa Rica to get a different experience. One of the deserts that was popular in Costa Rica is plantain. This dessert is fried banana and this is a sweet dessert. I would try it before leaving the country.  But, the main dish that people eat in Costa Rica is rice, black beans and it served with eggs and sour cream this dish is called gallo pinto. At the hotel, I ate the rice and beans that they had out at breakfast. I like it, but I don’t know if I could eat rice and beans every day. In Costa Rica the people eat in the morning with the dish I talked about gallo pinto and then have a big lunch in the late afternoon normally with some type of meat rice and beans. Finally, for dinner they have a light dinner that is easy to digest. The people of Costa Rica typical eat with their family and friends. Also, Costa Ricans have probably eaten all there dinners at dinner since the have 12 hours of dark and light since they are so close the equator. I would strongly recommend taking a trip to Costa Rica. The people there friendly. I would normally greet them by smiling and saying hola. But, the country is beautiful.  Before I took this trip I have never been out of the country. I had an open mind of Costa Rica and, I am happy I did that. I truly enjoy my trip and recommend anyone to explore this beautiful and wonderful country.  

[deanmiles13]

Johnny Cash/Tables for 3

My move from Indiana to Tucson was my transition into adulthood. The trip was on a Greyhound bus and was my first time ever being further west than St. Louis.

I moved into my fathers place which was located on a “reservation”. The domicile we shared was a travel trailer. Just a step up from the pop up kind.The kind you can spit from one end to the other. It was THAT small.

It sucked living there with a stranger basically, and I hated it. I actually looked forward to school, which was a rarity. I took the bus from our way out post, to the school located a few miles away. Almost every day on the trip home, we would get off the bus a stop or two early, just to watch a fight. It was always the typical fights, but these Mexican kids always made up after. It was cool. 

Going to the school I went to, was wild. I was one of about 50 white kids attending. The rest were Mexican Americans or Native American. 

When I moved out to Tucson, I was thinking this was gonna be some real punk rock landing pad. Little did I know where I was going to land. Coming from the midwest I was used to getting shit for the way I dressed. Alot…

I never really got hassled at my new school. At Cholla, everyone seemed to respect the fact that I stood out and went out on a limb to do so. But every once in a while, I did have a couple of goofballs that would yell out “Hey Sid Vicious!” They seemed to have fun doing it. They laughed at themselves more than at me and the way they talked it seemed they knew WHO Sid Vicious at was. 

Finally one day, I “confronted” them. “What’s up with the SID VICIOUS stuff, man?” 

They just busted out laughing and invited me to lunch with them. We were friends from that moment forward.

The lunch’s at this school meant you could leave campus to pursue other options. In Indiana, that was never the case, we couldn’t even leave the parking lot. We were pretty removed and it was a haul to get food around there. When I first learned we could leave for lunch here in Tucson, I was blown away.In this new situation, I often found myself not wanting to return for the second half of the day.

But these two guys, Joe and Adam, are my new besties. We go to record stores and music stores and I even start to stay with their families at night so I don’t have to make the journey all the way out to my dads. Unbelievable kindness I was shown by total strangers.They are of Mexican descent and there parents are pretty much the kindest people I have ever encountered. They must have totally known what was up when I was around there houses. They fed me, and looked the other way as I climbed in and out of there windows at night to sleep in a safe place.

Adam and Joe also are musicians. And this is a HUGE plus. 

Adam plays guitar and is hugely influenced by Peter Buck of R.E.M. and Joe plays a Gibson S.G. bass. They both have a wacky sense of humor. A ton of inside jokes between them and just a real loose attitude. I would like to think they were EMO way before that was even a thing.

They don’t drink and they love the Descendants. We would listen to records in Adams room and talk about them. Sometimes, he would just take it off the turntable and give the record to me if he didn’t like it. That happened a few times. We would jam on his guitar and play tunes. They also are forming a band.

And needed a drummer. 

See, when I moved out to Arizona, I had pretty much put the drums behind me and was giving the guitar ALL my attention. I practiced a lot and loved the instrument. I would hole up in my dads trailer with Zero Boys on my walkman and the guitar plugged into my amp. I just played all day long out there in that hot tin can.

But, drummers were as rare as hens teeth in Tucson and these guys offered to buy me a drum set if I played in their band. Count me in like Dee Dee Ramone.

My dad had usually called me up around Christmas every year with the same shameful call… “So, what are you into? Drums huh?!?! Maybe I’ll get you a drum set for Christmas!” Man, I heard that for years and the balls it must have taken him to get the courage up to make that call. To lie to his own kids face. Over and over… Well, not literally to his face.

And here these home boys wanted to buy me a drum set? TODAY?!?!

MY first ever drum kit was bought by Adam Lopez. A friend that was working as a bus boy.

More on that in a minute…

Thank you Adam. My gratitude is eternal. 

He took me downtown Tucson to the legendary Chicago Store. That place deserves a story of its own for sure....

Now, Adam always seemed to have a little extra scratch to spend. I was broke as shit all the time. I remember asking him one day how he got all this “cash” he had. He told me he worked as a bus boy at night at an Italian Restaurant. This had my interest. “Hey, If they ever need any help, let me know” I offered. It was almost immediately that I got the job. We would carpool together from school and then I would crash at Adam’s. 

I would sneak in and out the window in the morning so his parents wouldn’t know. They eventually found out, and when they did, they insisted that I stay in the guest house that was outfitted for Adam’s older brother to live in. He was away at the time and this was an awesome opportunity for me. I would actually stay in the park across the street from Adams house sometimes just so I wouldn’t jeopardize  him getting in trouble or me wearing out my welcome

.

So, at this point, we are attached at the hip and if I remember correctly, it was Adam who was going to a new school. It was an alternative H.S. called Project MORE. This was exactly what I needed.

The restaurant we worked at was called Scordatos and it’s kind of a big deal in Tucson. From memory, it was basically an “upscale” Italian joint. The location seemed to add to the overall “allure” of the place.

When hired, I was alerted to the movie stars who would wonder in from time to time. 3 Amigos had just filmed in Old Tucson and I had heard that Steve Martin had come into the restaurant recently. It was talked about in hushed tones and secrecy. We were told in no uncertain terms to NEVER approach the guest.

Makes perfect sense. They are out for a nice dinner and don’t want the attention or the hassle. I GET IT…..

And then it happened!!!

It was just another normal shift. Take out the trash, feed the leftover lettuce to the Javelina that wondered down from the hills at dusk. Back inside, change the linens, get the silverware, wipe the booths down and be seen and not heard. Also, stay out of the way of the waiters and their guest. This was my first real taste of work and I was just getting the whole feel of my place and getting my timing right. So, I was changing a table’s linen one night. I happened to be about two tables from the door where customers come in from the outside. Just as the floating table clothe lands on the table, the door opens. About 3-4 people come in. Just fuzzy shapes to my peripheral vision. 

Not really noticing faces or anything… 

They stand for about 10 seconds waiting for staff to help them and no one is coming to help them as I continue my work and stay out of the way. Then the room starts to go silent. The phrase “Can kill conversation, just by walking in a room”? That was this situation to a tee. Forks hit the plates and you just heard clanking silverware, murmurs and whispers. 

I looked up from the forks and spoons I was setting and notice the party had moved closer to ME as I seemed to be the only “Help” that was there. As, I go to give them a standard greeting like “My name is Dean, and someone will be right with you.”, I look at their faces for the first time really. 

It was like seeing Mt. Rushmore or something for the first time. Something so familiar is staring right back at you. I takes a second to register that this is a face you’ve seen a million times before. On TV? On album covers? So familiar but foreign because of the reality of the situation.

“I’m Johnny Cash” the tall man of the party says as he extends his long arm and shakes my hand.

By this time, it sunk in that this was indeed, the man in black. 

JC- Johnny F’n Cash.

I watched his show on TV growing up. My grandparents listened to him. My parents listened to him. He was synonymous with AMERICA. The gravity of the situation was swirling in my head.

When we shook hands, the rest of the group started to take focus. He was there with June Carter and his daughter Rosanne Cash. Un Frickin’ Believable….

I worried for a nano second about my job and the policy I knew they had about guest. Maybe they would take it easy on me? In truth, I didn’t care AND I didn’t  get in trouble at all. 

But, I did get to meet the Man in Black and the most important women in his life. 

While a very brief encounter, this sticks with me today.

It’s about time and place. Synchronistic stuff.  

I probably would have lost my mind if I had worked a different day and had missed my shot. 

But as fate would have it… we met.

I honored him the day of my marriage. When I married the most important woman in my life. 

Darcy and I had planned to sing “If I were a carpenter” at our wedding. We practiced for a month or two before the big day. Me on guitar and her doing the June Carter parts. 

We were married on Sept. 13th. 2003.

It was Sept. 12th  2003 when Johnny Cash passed away.

As fate would have it…

[cutkatty]

Dwarf Cats - The Origin Of The Names Of The Breeds

The dwarf cat has some interesting breed names. Dwarf cats are unusual and popular. People are interested in them. What is equally unusual and fascinating are the names of the various dwarf breeds and, more particularly, how these interesting names came about. Here are the stories about how they were created.

The stories about the creation of the name come from the person who created the breed and invented the name. Fittingly, sometimes the name, just like the dwarf cat, is a hybrid itself. Genetta: This is a dwarf cat created and named by Shannon Kiley of Pawstruk Cattery in 2006. Genettas are being registered as an experimental breed with the International Cat Association (TICA). Shannon came up with the name "Genetta" as the breed is "being modeled after the African Genet and part of the scientific name for a genet is 'genetta'. So I thought that would be very fitting and unique" (Shannon Kiley). The African Genet is catlike in appearance and habit but not a cat. It has a longish body and widely spaced black spots. It is a member of the family Viverridae, which includes mongooses. To achieve the look Shannon developed the Genetta using breeds such as munchkins, Bengals, savannahs, DSH, and Oriental Shorthairs. Skookum: This dwarf cat breed was developed by Roy Galusha through the intentional breeding of the Munchkin to the LaPerm. When I asked him how he arrived at the name for this dwarf cat breed he gave this full and interesting answer, which is reproduced here with his permission: "I can tell you the answer on the Skookum since we created the breed. When the breed was first started (our first accidental cross), we (not just us, several people in our circle who knew about them), jokingly referred to them as LaMerms (taking the M from Munchkin and replacing the P in the LaPerm. ) When we sought recognition as a breed, we wanted to find a good descriptor of the breed and considered the name "Poco Chino" which means short and curly in Spanish. However, someone in UFO who knew Spanish pointed out that that also means "Little Chinese", so we scrapped that. After doing a lot of talking and brainstorming, we decided to give it a Native American name. My wife is part Cherokee, so we researched Cherokee names; However, the descriptor names did not have a good flow. We then decided to go with a local NorthWest Native American name (since we were living in Washington State). We looked at quite a few names and researched the meanings. A local Native American word that comes from the Chinook language and was part of the Chinook Trade Language was Skookum (pronounced Skoo Kum). The word Skookum means mighty, powerful or great. It is also used to signify good health or good spirits. If someone really likes something, they might refer to it as being really skookum ("Boy that apple pie is skookum") or if you really like a horse ("that is one skookum horse). So we figured that was the perfect name for the breed. Certain TICA officials used the name to object to it being accepted as a breed claiming that the word Skookum means a scary monster such as a bigfoot. This is partially correct in the fact that the spelling Skookum is also used to describe Big Foot, the pronunciation is completely different. Below is the explanation from Tony Johnson, Cultural Committee Chair for the Chinook Tribe. "As per our conversation this morning, the Chinuk Wawa language has two words differing only by their stress that have been popularly written as" skookum. "We write these two words the same, except for their stress:" skunk "for something that is strong, tough, brave or impressive, and "skookum" for something scary or a "monster." Typically English speakers stress the first syllable of a word, and your spelling (which is typical historically) reflects that. The word "skookum" for your users both not "demonic," and is in fact appropriate. Further discussion of the word "skuku've seemed unnecessary in that it is not the term you are using. As I noted, the word you are using also can be used in a context to mean something like English "healthy." In this case, it basically means your (the body is) "strong." I hope this helps you, and I can see where this confusion would come from. The confusion is entirely based on the problematic nature of people writing Native words and then other people reading them who have never heard actual pronunciation. In our language, you could never confuse these two words or their associated meanings. " hayu masi (many thanks), Tony A. JohnsonCulture committee ChairChinook Indian Tribe / Chinook Nation The person who I believe started all the flack in TICA about the name Skookum would know the difference as her husband is one of the leading experts on bigfoots nationwide, and I understand that he has written several books and manuscripts on Big Foot, to include a passage about the use of the word Skookum in Chinook language and how it pertains to Big Foot. They would know the correct pronunciation for Big Foot as used by the local natives and would know the differences in the meanings; However, they used that to side rail the registration process. The Skookum has also been referred to as the Shirley Temple cat because it is short and curly. That was a marketing strategy when Cat Fancy first allowed us to advertise them. We came up with that slogan as the best descriptor of the cat. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. " I can't add a thing to that! Great answer. Napolean: This little dwarf cat was developed by the intentional mating of the Munchkin to the Persian or exotic shorthair, by Joe Smith. Napoleon is currently registered as Experimental with TICA but recognized as a breed with TDCA (The Dwarf Cat Association). I confess that I have yet to get an answer to my inquiries about this name. However, a bit of rational and logical thought leads me to this conclusion. This cat is a dwarf cat that is short of stature. Napolean Bonaparte (the French general during the French Revolution) was short of stature by the standards of today (5 feet 6 inches). Also, most of the napoleons that I have seen are white and Napoleon Bonaparte rode a white horse (is there a connection there?). There probably is no connection there and the name simply originated from the short stocky compact profile of this dwarf cat which mirrored Napolean Bonaparte. Kinkalow: The kinda low dwarf cat results from the mating of an American Curl to a Munchkin. Terri Harris developed this breed and says this about the name: "The Kinkalow name was decided on while I was at Kinkos getting some copies to make. The Kinkalow has kinky ears and low legs, Kink + low = Kinkalow". Although Terri doesn't mention this there is a cat-like animal called a Kinkajou (a Honey Bear or Cat Monkey) and I wonder if this name influenced her decision. Dwelf: This is simple! It is a mixture of dwarf cat and elf. Being a Cross between Munchkin, Sphynx and American Curl. This dwarf cat is short, hairless and ears that curl back at the tips. Munchkin: In 1983 music teacher Sandra Hochenedel discovered two cats hiding under a vehicle. She rescued them; both had short, stubby legs. She called them Munchkins after the little people in The Wizard of Oz. This is the founding dwarf cat. Bambino: Stephanie and Pat Osborne of the Holy Moly cattery organized this dwarf cat breed. As Pat is of Italian extraction and as the cat keeps its kitten-like appearance and character throughout its life they named it "Bambino". Lambkins: A straight dictionary definition, I think, provides the answer. Lambkins means "very young lamb". Lambkin cats are a new dwarf cat breed that comes from the cross of a Munchkin and Selkirk Rex to produce curly-haired kittens, just like a little lamb. Knook: A Knook is a type of immortal being or fairy in the work of L. Frank Baum. Knooks are the guardians over the animals. They had a crooked appearance. (source: Wikipedia). I confess I research on the name of this dwarf cat breed produced nothing. However, if a knock is a fairy that gives the clue. A fairy is delicate and small. A knock is a Kinkalow with a LaPerm / Skookam-type curled coat and that means this cat is going to be pretty delicate and small... Source by Michael Broad Read the full article

[hollywriteslightly]

A place to call home

"You can't go home again," wrote Thomas Wolfe. For most of my life I've railed against accepting this unbearable truth, stubbornly searching in vain for a way back to homes that were lost to me; those of wood and nails, those found in other people, and, maybe the most elusive, a sense of home and belonging within myself. For all that time spent searching, what I never paused to consider was that I'd always held a way home very literally in the palm of my hand. I've wanted to be a writer since I was three years old, the age when my mother taught me to read. Our family home was on the northern end of the Gold Coast, a block from a glittering, shallow estuary of the Pacific Ocean called the Broadwater. I was always outdoors, in Mum's subtropical, ever-blooming garden – full of silver-green ironbark, scarlet bottlebrush and pink flowering tea trees – or at the sea; I could smell the salty pungency through my bedroom window. I used my life savings to leave Australia for England to give my writing dreams a wholehearted crack … I’d never been to Europe before, I was alone, and I knew no one. Illustration: Simon Letch My favourite stories were ones that reflected the landscapes I lived in: May Gibbs' Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, and Pixie O'Harris's Marmaduke the Possum. Both were tales embedded in Australian flora and fauna, told from European storytelling perspectives. As soon as I learnt to write and read, I started writing stories about gumtree kingdoms, paperbark queens, soldier crab warriors and wattle witches. When Mum added Indigenous Australian books to my library, such as Dick Roughsey's The Rainbow Serpent and The Quinkins, my fascination with the relationship between stories and landscapes deepened. As I grew older and began to choose my own books, I turned to young-adult novels and fairy tales, most of which were European or American; the culture of Sweet Valley High and The Baby-Sitters Club also mirrored most of the television and films I watched. When I was nine my family moved from Australia to North America. We rented a home in Vancouver, which we used as our base while we lived and travelled in a campervan from national park to national park throughout Canada and the US. The experience was like jumping into one of Mary Poppins' chalk drawings; suddenly I was in the world I'd read about in the adventures of the Wakefield twins, seen on Sunday night Disney television, and absorbed at the movies. North American landscapes, both wild and suburban, created an exotic sense of wonder and pure escapism that my homeland surroundings couldn't compete with. A couple of years later, on the cusp of becoming a teenager, I noticed in a vague way that the stories I was drawn to writing were always set overseas, even if the setting was only implied. It didn't feel like a conscious decision to separate my storytelling from my homeland, it was a default in my imagination. In my early 20s I moved inland to live and work in Australia's dramatically beautiful Western Desert, learning and sharing culture and stories with Anangu colleagues. For the first time I noticed a sense of Australian people, weather, bodies of water, flowers, and bushland creeping onto my page. But that wasn't to last; the desert was a landscape that became a home I loved and lost. I didn't leave because I wanted to. I left the desert because I was fleeing a violent relationship. This was not a new phenomenon to me. I had lived with male-perpetrated violence before. Ongoing research shows how traumatic experience changes the brain. According to author Michele Rosenthal, for trauma survivors who go on to develop symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder – an unmitigated experience of anxiety related to the past trauma – the shift from reactive to responsive mode never occurs. Instead, the brain holds the survivor in a constant reactive state. In my case, I lived with high-functioning fear and anxiety as a result of trauma. One of the ways this manifested was in my relationship with Australia. "Memory is the fourth dimension to any landscape," wrote Janet Fitch. By my late 20s, everything about home caused me pain and fear. Accumulated memories were embedded everywhere I'd ever been, in every sense and memory: the smell of the sea, the changing hues of red dirt. The feeling of summer heat softening in dusk air, and saltwater tightening my skin as it dried. Gum leaves hushing each other in the strengthening wind and the deep growl of thunderstorms; the smell of rain hitting baked dry earth. The unholy screech of cockatoos and drunken joy of rainbow lorikeet song at sunrise, and the haunting scents of wattle and honey grevillea in bloom. I tried different cities and jobs in Australia, but lived with the unending feeling that I belonged nowhere. I understand now that it wasn't only cultural influences that caused me to crave an escape from the familiarity of home in my writing. It was also my brain's response to trauma. Writing stories set elsewhere was an act of refuge; I wrote myself away from places that weren't safe, into fictional ones that were. The tipping point came during dinner with a trusted friend, who held space for us to talk about the debilitating sickness of shame as a result of trauma, and its consequential stasis. Why don't you go? I remember her asking. Make a new home, somewhere totally different. But choose a place that takes you towards writing. Don't leave yourself completely. I remember how time slowed between us at the dinner table as I took in her words. There was a spark in my belly as I considered following my childhood dream, the one thing that trauma had not extinguished. What would become of my life if I tried to follow and honour that one constant in how I identified and understood myself? An old memory arose: sitting at my childhood desk with the window open, sea breeze blowing in while, oblivious, I hand-wrote stories full of wonder. Everything I hoped for was possible. Six months after that dinner conversation, I used my life savings to leave Australia for England to give my writing dreams a wholehearted crack: I accepted a place at university in Manchester to do my master's of creative writing. I'd never been to Europe before, I was alone, and I knew no one. The contrast of the moody, consistently grey north-west of England to the extreme weather and bright colour of central eastern Australia was a deep shock. No matter though how I struggled with the lack of sunlight, the colourless skies and a dampness I could feel in my bones, it was also – immediately – a place of deep relief. Manchester was a tabula rasa; fear and anxiety were still enormous parts of my learnt behavioural responses, but, for maybe the first time in my independent adult life, I didn't panic about what or who might be around every proverbial corner. In my first week I met the kindest man I've ever known and somehow knew enough to not turn away from the sense of safety and sun-warmth being in his company gave me. I was on different time, under a different sky, with different trees, seasons, light, wildlife, cultures and people. And I'd gotten myself there to write, something I hadn't done in a long time. There was a brief period a few years earlier when I'd tried, but it had caused too much conflict in my relationship at the time. Held liable for the wandering depth and breadth of my imagination, I had hidden away my lifelong calling to write. Every new morning in Manchester, my mind seemed to unfurl a little bit more with another day of freedom and possibility. I took to my northern life with as much zest and gusto as I could muster. I started writing and, again, vaguely noticed most of my new writing was set everywhere and anywhere but Australia. I didn't return until 2012, three years after I'd left; I shook with fear for most of the long-haul flight to Brisbane. Homecoming was painful, poignant, anxious and beautiful. My fear was mainly unfounded, like a child's fear of the dark. When I returned to England six weeks later, a question began to form that I'd not considered before. It niggled and agitated deeply in my mind, a pea under a princess's mattresses. I wouldn't turn to it, I wouldn't ask it. I didn't want to have to answer. What does it mean to exile ourselves from the places that make us? Back in Manchester, a couple of years passed. I was writing regularly and working on storytelling projects that took me to places in the UK and Europe I never expected to go. I was in a healthy, loving relationship with a kind man. I felt safe. I began to trust myself. At the same time, the longer I stayed away from Australia, the louder the country started to call to me. In my dreams, in my memories and most of all, in the gaping spaces between the lines of everything I wrote. In 2014, when I sat down and wrote the first line of my first novel, it was immediately clear that the story was set in Australia. Even more surprising and unfamiliar to me was how utterly right it felt. I wrote the entire first draft of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart in Manchester. Over 12 months my office, home, and wherever possible, wardrobe, became a trove of Australian native flora, scents, photos, art, music, poetry and objects. I was driven to embody my story's world as much as possible, insatiably hungry for the sea I grew up beside; the feeling of salt on my skin; the mystifying green sugar cane fields at the end of my grandmother's street; the peach and violet-blue sunsets I watched from my mum's verandah; the wildflowers and red dirt of my old desert home. Safe to freely remember the landscapes that meant home to me caused a hunger like first love. It was blissful, unstoppable agony to revive them to life on the page. It was blissful, unstoppable agony to realise I was writing my way back home to them and them to me; I was coming home to myself. I'm writing this at my desk in Manchester in mid-November, when the holly bushes and rowan trees have burst into red-berried bloom and night draws in at 4.30pm. People around me are buttoning up for winter. All this time of year signals to me is home: in a couple of weeks I'll pack my suitcase stuffed with togs, thongs and cotton dresses, and make what has become an annual pilgrimage south for a long slurp of summer in Mum's garden. The journey home has grown easier since 2012. With the publication this year of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, returning has become outright magical, and in all my years of travel the international arrivals gate at Brisbane Airport is still the best destination I know. The beauty of clutching my mum and stepdad, grinning with teary faces as we walk out into the sweltering humidity and I catch my first glimpse of gumtrees in their native soil, fills my heart like nothing else. Until I wrote Lost Flowers, I had thought that to escape trauma I needed to separate myself from everything that reminded me of it. But, it turns out home is deeper than pain, deeper than love. Those roots go deeper. The landscapes, flora and fauna that raised me will never be any further from me than the microsecond between my heart's beat or the unseeable dark in the blink of my eye. Those places are always there. Here. Home. Writing has been my homecoming in all senses, to places made of wood and nails, to accepting and reciprocating the love and kindness of others, and to learning that I wholly belong to myself. Maybe this is what Thomas Wolfe meant: we can never go back to what was. We can't go home again, to home as it was when we lost it. But we can find our own ways to return, anew. And in those ways, maybe everything we hope for can be possible.

© Holly Ringland 

First published in the Sydney Morning Herald's Good Weekend Summer 2018 reading issue: 10 short stories by 10 big authors. ​ With much gratitude to Editor, Katrina Strick. 

[travelguy4444]

Why You Shouldn’t Overlook the American South

Posted: 2/18/2019 | February 18th, 2019

I love the South. Before I went traveling, I always had this perception that the southern states in the US were backward. They were filled with racists, yokels, and obese, gun-loving, Jesus freaks. It was a perception born out of a quarter-century of living in New England and consuming mass media and stereotypes about a people and place I really didn’t know anything about.

Then, at the start of my grand trip in 2006, I drove across the United States. As I made my way through the South, I fell in love with the area. I loved the food, the people, the scenery, the architecture. My perception of the South was wrong.

Sure, it has a lingering history of racism and is more conservative than I personally am, but no place is perfect — and no place is like the stereotypes you see. Driving through the South was the first instance in which I really confronted the stereotypes about people and places I grew up with.

After spending months exploring the South, I realized that the Southern states — which encompass a massive section of the country — are not as culturally and politically monolithic as they once were. Every state is different, each offering the attentive traveler an eclectic mix of incredible food, foot-stomping music, and heart-warming hospitality.

Over the years, I’ve grown to love the area the more I spend time there (hidden gem: Mississippi).

Today, I want to introduce you to Caroline Eubanks. She’s a friend and fellow travel writer whose work primarily focuses on the American South. Caroline has called the South home for her entire life, and in her new guidebook, This Is My South, she shatters all the stereotypes about the Southern United States while sharing her expert tips and suggestions to help you make the most of your next visit.

In this interview, we discuss all things Southern, why this book needed to be written, and why you shouldn’t overlook this region of the country!

Nomadic Matt: Tell everyone a bit about yourself! How did you get into what it is you do? Caroline Eubanks: I’m Caroline Eubanks, a native of Atlanta, Georgia. I went to college in Charleston, South Carolina and it was there I really fell in love with the American South, especially driving back and forth from my hometown past small towns on country roads. I started working for a newspaper when I lived there and started reading travel blogs (including Matt’s!) so I was inspired to create my own. I leveraged guest posts into paid work and one job led to another. I’ve since been published by BBC Travel, Lonely Planet, Thrillist, Roads & Kingdoms, and Fodor’s. I also started my own blog, Caroline in the City, in 2009, and later This Is My South in 2012. This is basically the only job I’ve ever had and the only one I wanted!

How did you start writing about the Southern USA? I grew up taking road trips around the region with my family, whether that was to the Outer Banks or the Panhandle of Florida. After graduating from college, I went on a working holiday in Australia where I worked with a lot of people from all over the world. I would try to explain to them where I came from but most of the time they were only familiar with places like Miami and New York. And most travelers went to a few well-known destinations but nothing in between. So I started my website, This Is My South, to tell people about the lesser-known destinations that I love from my corner of the world. I also started focusing on the region in my freelance writing since the market wasn’t quite so saturated.

Why do you think the south gets such a bad wrap? A lot of it comes from the news. Of course, bad things happen here, but it’s a large region so that’s bound to happen. It becomes polarizing with elections but there are lots of different opinions, not just the ones that are the loudest.

I also think people assume that the movies and television shows about it are accurate. Gone with the Wind and Deliverance are not accurate representations at all. These remain what people most associate the region with, but there are large cities like Atlanta, Charlotte, and Nashville as well as the small towns. You wouldn’t assume every Australian is like Crocodile Dundee or that every person from New Jersey was Tony Soprano, right?

What about the stereotypes about the South? When I lived in Australia, I went to an expat July 4 party and I was talking to a guy from Ohio. When I said I was from Georgia, he joked that he was surprised to see I had all my teeth. When my parents were traveling in New York, someone asked about their crops. I realized how little people know about this part of the world. I started thinking about these perceptions of the South from both Americans and the world as a whole.

I wouldn’t say that some of the stereotypes aren’t true. There are obviously political divides, but I think there’s a lot more to the South than what you read in the news. The people are overall welcoming and friendly. The region is home to some of the nation’s top universities like Duke and Emory. There are young people creating murals in their small towns (like Kristin!) to drive tourism as well as immigrants from everywhere to Korea to India to Syria bringing their cuisines to meld with traditional regional dishes. And I think there’s something just about everyone can come together on, especially in the South, like food.

What are some of your favorite things about the south? I always say the food, which is certainly one element. You’ll find both comfort food like fried chicken and collard greens and “healthy” food as well as the cuisines of dozens of cultures. For example, there’s a large Korean community near where I live in Atlanta so I can have authentic Korean barbecue before relaxing at a Korean spa. I love how food is a way that people show their affection.

I also love the general attitude and friendliness. People tend to know their neighbors and offer help when needed. And the music is unmatched by anywhere else in the country. Every genre can be found here. You don’t have to go to a stadium to see impressive artists since there’s usually someone playing at the local dive bar or coffee shop.

Why did you write this book?

I wanted to show people the South that I know and love. I had thought about the idea of writing a guidebook but it actually came to life when I was contacted by a publisher after six years of running my website. They saw my work and wanted to create a guidebook in a similar format. Ever since I started writing, I’ve wanted to write a guidebook, so it was definitely a dream come true.

It was important to me that I have the flexibility to include the places I had fallen in love with in my travels, not just the popular ones. I have a section on the must-eat dishes from every state, quirky roadside attractions, unique accommodations like historic hotels and treehouses, and tours. I tried to emphasize responsible travel and small businesses, so you won’t find those double decker bus tours or your big chain hotels.

I also wanted to include elements that I find lacking in other books, namely the history and odd pieces of trivia. For example, I have sections on the title of “Kentucky Colonel” and the legal loopholes that allow for casinos on and near the Mississippi River.

What do you hope travelers will walk away knowing from your book? That it’s more than one story. I hope that travelers will be inspired to visit some of the places they’ve heard about as well as ones not previously on their radar. I hope they’ll challenge some of their preconceived notions about the region and give it a chance. I hope they’ll come back for more since there’s no way to see it all at once. And, of course, I hope that travelers will visit the places I write about and tell others about them!

What makes the south special? So many things. There is unmatched biodiversity including the barrier islands on the North Carolina coast to the swamps of Louisiana to the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. The Appalachian Trail runs through much of the region, starting in Georgia at Springer Mountain. It’s a region where connecting with nature is a part of everyday life.

Food is also affordable and you can find it in unique places. Similar to the bodega eats in New York, the South sells surprisingly good food at gas stations, including fried chicken, Cajun meats, and Delta hot tamales. Dining is a major part of visiting the region as it’s home to many different styles of cuisine that have influenced American food. You can find “Southern food” in both award-winning restaurants and mom-and-pop casual spots, so there’s something for everyone.

The region is also important when it comes to history. It’s where European travelers first arrived in America, specifically South Carolina and Virginia, and where they were met with Native American tribes. Much of the Civil Rights Movement took place here like the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, and the Woolworth’s counter in Greensboro. A number of notable politicians, including presidents Jimmy Carter and Woodrow Wilson, hailed from these states.

There’s also a lot to offer music lovers since nearly every type of American music has roots in the blues of Mississippi. Icons like Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash were influenced by these musicians and infused their styles into their own music. In addition to rock and blues, the mountains of the South were where bluegrass and “old time” music started, eventually becoming modern country music. And, of course, Atlanta is known for its music industry, especially when it comes to hip hop and R&B. Artists like TLC, Usher, Goodie Mob, and Outkast rose to fame there.

What are some budget travel tips for the area? The South is generally a fairly cheap place to travel. The main expenditures are transportation and accommodation. Flights into major airports like Atlanta, Charlotte, Orlando, and New Orleans will be cheaper than smaller ones. The same goes for car rentals. Once in the South, it is possible to get around without a car by taking Amtrak and Megabus, but by car is certainly the preferred method of travel.

Certain cities will be more expensive for accommodations, especially Charleston. But you can look for alternative options like small bed and breakfasts, campgrounds with cabins, hostels, and Airbnb rentals. Keep in mind that rentals are limited in cities like New Orleans because of how it affects the local housing market. New Orleans is also great because you can stay at a trendy boutique hotel for under $100 per night.

Meals are cheap at most places unless you’re visiting a fine dining restaurant. If you’re looking for a meal on the go, visit a grocery store to save money. Most have deli counters and prepared foods. Lunch is a good time of day to try the more expensive restaurants, especially those award-winners that can be tough to get a reservation at.

What are some of your favorite off the beaten path destinations? You don’t have to go far from the well-known destinations like Charleston, New Orleans, and Nashville to see places not in most of the guidebooks. One of the places I always say is a favorite of mine is the Mississippi Delta, which is a number of towns that follow the river south of Memphis. This part of the country is highly important when it comes to music. It was here that artists like BB King and Robert Johnson found their sound and where the blues was developed. There are some funky accommodations like the Shack Up Inn, a collection of sharecropper cabins transformed into guest suites.

I was also surprised by Northwest Arkansas. This region is known for mountain biking, with trails connecting the towns, but also has an incredible craft brewery scene. Crystal Bridges Museum of Art has one of the best collections in the nation, if not the world, focusing on American works like those by Andy Warhol and Frank Lloyd Wright. Eureka Springs is a funky mountain town that looks straight out of a postcard from the 1800s.

I’ve also found some off-the-beaten-path areas within well-known destinations. In my hometown of Atlanta, I always recommend that visitors check out Buford Highway, the city’s international dining corridor. When I lived in Charleston, I spent most of my time downtown, but on subsequent visits, I end up in the Park Circle area of North Charleston, an underrated part of the city. Just outside of Nashville is Franklin, a town with deep ties to the Civil War. It’s just off the Natchez Trace Parkway and hosts musicians nearly every night of the week at Puckett’s Grocery. They also host Pilgrimage, an annual music festival that has hosted the likes of Justin Timberlake and Jack White.

In every small town in between, there are quirky museums and landmarks you might miss if you limit your trip to the “big” destinations, like a museum devoted to ventriloquism in Kentucky and a memorial to the victims of the Trail of Tears in Alabama. You never know what you might find!

***

Caroline Eubanks is a travel writer and the author of This Is My South: The Essential Travel Guide to the Southern States. She writes about all things Southern at This is My South.com. You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Book Your Trip: Logistical Tips and Tricks

Book Your Flight Find a cheap flight by using Skyscanner or Momondo. They are my two favorite search engines because they search websites and airlines around the globe so you always know no stone is left unturned.

Book Your Accommodation You can book your hostel with Hostelworld as they have the largest inventory. If you want to stay somewhere other than a hotel, use Booking.com as they consistently return the cheapest rates for guesthouses and cheap hotels. I use them all the time.

Don’t Forget Travel Insurance Travel insurance will protect you against illness, injury, theft, and cancellations. It’s comprehensive protection in case anything goes wrong. I never go on a trip without it as I’ve had to use it many times in the past. I’ve been using World Nomads for ten years. My favorite companies that offer the best service and value are:

World Nomads (for everyone below 70)

Insure My Trip (for those over 70)

Looking for the best companies to save money with? Check out my resource page for the best companies to use when you travel! I list all the ones I use to save money when I travel – and I think will help you too!

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source https://www.nomadicmatt.com/travel-blogs/traveling-american-south/

[cutsliceddiced]

New top story from Time: Welcome to the Golden Age of Live-Streaming

On Saturday night, hip-hop eminence Derrick “D-Nice” Jones threw a dance party for 100,000 with attendees including Michelle Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, Drake, J. Lo, Rihanna and both finalists for the Democratic Presidential nomination. The crowd was even bigger on Sunday. In an interview with CBS This Morning’s Gayle King on Monday, D-Nice confirmed his plans to keep the party going daily for as long as possible. But before you cancel the DJ, rapper and producer for creating the world’s most distinguished COVID-19 cluster, I should mention that the gatherings—dubbed Homeschool at Club Quarantine—have taken place exclusively on Instagram Live. The host, ensconced in his kitchen alone, is practicing social distancing.

This is live entertainment in the coronavirus era, when theaters, concert halls, museums, sports stadiums and nightclubs are closed; music, comedy and book tours are canceled; and non-news TV production has ground to a halt. Within the space of two weeks, Americans have seen so many of the institutions that kept us amused, informed and intellectually stimulated during national crises past shut down. It may be negligible in comparison with the plight of those who are feeling the effects of COVID-19 firsthand, or even the sadness the healthy among us feel at being separated from loved ones, but the loss of both the physical public square and platforms like daily talk shows are also tragic. Which is why it’s been so encouraging to see artists and entertainers from across the culture use DIY methods of communication to fill that void. After years of puzzling over Generation Z’s love of YouTube stars and live streamers, the over-30 set isn’t just starting to understand the appeal of these platforms—we’re relying on them to stay sane.

In the week or so since late-night hosts sent their staffers home to self-isolate, Stephen Colbert has brought us such welcome distractions as the abbreviated, solo “Lather Show” (from his bathtub) and “The Flame Show With Stephen Col-burn” (at the fire pit on his patio) featuring a video-chat performance from Late Show bandleader Jon Batiste. In mini-episodes filmed at home with his wife behind the camera, Jimmy Fallon has been leading split-screen conversations with stars like Jennifer Garner and Lin-Manuel Miranda; Fallon’s two young, joyfully disruptive daughters have become America’s sweethearts. Trevor Noah has The Daily Social Distancing Show, while Samantha Bee has enlisted her husband and kids to shoot Full Frontal from their rural backyard, with plans to air a new episode on Wednesday. A Little Late host and YouTube native Lilly Singh is off the air but back to her 15 million subscribers with pandemic-related comedy skits. And so on.

Daytime talk-show hosts have followed suit: Ellen DeGeneres has been posting phone calls with friends such as Jennifer Aniston and Tiffany Haddish on her Twitter account. The View often looks like The Brady Bunch intro now, a grid of faces with Whoopi and Joy logging on live from their respective homes. One of that show’s alumnae, Rosie O’Donnell, raised $600,000 for The Actors’ Fund with Sunday’s one-night-only revival of The Rosie O’Donnell Show—a special that had her video-chatting with Billy Porter, Patti LuPone and other Broadway-adjacent celebs “from the comfort of my garage-slash-art-studio.” (Parents who’ve been entertaining young kids at home for the past few weeks must have felt a pang of recognition upon spotting the signs of family craft projects in the background.) The crisis has even brought Oprah back on a daily basis, from her home, in a free Apple TV series called Oprah Talks COVID-19; the first episode consisted of a FaceTime chat with Idris Elba and his wife Sabrina Dhowre, who both tested positive for coronavirus, her laptop propped up on a stack of books. Never mind that her sectional is approximately the size of my apartment; when was the last time a billionaire media mogul looked so relatable?

Which is why I FaceTimed @idriselba & his wife Sabrina who are safely quarantined together after he tested positive for COVID-19. Idris fills me in on his journey and Sabrina reveals the result of her test after they decided to quarantine together. pic.twitter.com/HETVZeqCPE

— Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah) March 22, 2020

It’s been especially heartening to see artists who, like D-Nice, have scrambled to create something entirely new. As book clubs spring up with the help of video conferencing technology, publishing site Literary Hub has launched the Virtual Book Channel, whose Vimeo-based shows offer the kind of readings and author interviews bookstores across the country have had to cancel. Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard has been live-streaming daily performances on YouTube to benefit various medical charities. NPR has made a schedule of “live virtual concerts”—most of them on social media or video platforms—that have been announced, ranging from the Vienna State Opera to events organized by indie labels Don Giovanni and Third Man.

From Bernie Sanders hosting a YouTube live stream on the coronavirus response with AOC, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar to Padma Lakshmi leading pantry-cooking tutorials on Instagram, there’s a DIY COVID-19 video for every political alignment and cultural niche. A homespun microgenre of coronavirus-themed parody song has emerged, with the reliably profane Liam Gallagher transforming his old Oasis hits into “Wonderwash” and “Champagne Soapernova”; if there’s a boomer in your life who can’t wrap their mind around social distancing, send them this Twitter video of Neil Diamond tweaking “Sweet Caroline” so that the chorus begins, “Hands, washing hands/Don’t touch me/I won’t touch you.” We’re seeing artists’ and celebrities’ living rooms, meeting their spouses and kids, cooing over their pets. Though these videos can’t replace communication with friends and family—or, obviously, satisfy our moral obligation to help coronavirus patients, healthcare workers and those in our communities who’ve lost their jobs—there’s a sense that if we’re all self-quarantining at home, then we’re all in this together.

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We made black-eyed peas over polenta! Recipe in bio.

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Whether we’ve realized it or not, I think a lot of us are finding the same sustenance in these rough dispatches that teens get from YouTube vloggers, TikTok dancers (whose acolytes now include LeBron James and his adorable family) and social media influencers of all stripes. Why, we’ve spent years asking ourselves and each other, would you watch a spoiled 15-year-old with no discernible talent try on every item of clothing she’s ever ordered on the internet when you could be bingeing The Sopranos, or at least Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Why listen to some weirdo warble over canned beats when practically the entire history of recorded music is available to stream? What we forget is that young people are often looking for something the professional, adult-dominated entertainment industry can’t offer—something past generations found in the crude mediums of punk music or zines or early internet message boards: a sense of intimacy. Even for kids with vibrant social lives and supportive families, adolescence can be horribly lonely. Maybe it’s not the content of haul videos or live gaming streams that has them hooked; maybe it’s the sense of community and personal connection these lo-fi videos create.

After 13 days away from almost everyone I care about, I’ve begun to remember what profound isolation—whether physical or psychological—can feel like. That certainly explains why, though I used to hate using video chat apps, I recently spent 90 minutes on Zoom with friends self-quarantining in Australia and “met” an old pal’s newborn baby on FaceTime. But it’s also why, on Sunday, I tuned in to an impromptu Instagram Live performance by rock icon Patti Smith and her musician daughter Jesse Paris Smith. Amid songs, poetry and pep talks, they revealed that they were broadcasting from a smartphone propped up on containers of instant oatmeal and aloe vera juice. As cool as it was to see one of my favorite artists play a live show at a time when in-person concerts are impossible, what really brought me comfort was the sight of a woman I so deeply respect hunkering down with family and taking time to check in with fans. In sharp contrast to Gal Gadot’s smug video of celebrities singing “Imagine,” Smith’s gesture seemed to come out of humility, generosity and respect for her fellow citizens.

Millions of us are suddenly becoming immersed in this social-video ecosystem to an extent that we’ve never been before. We’re not just occasionally posting a viral clip on our platform of choice; we’re getting emotionally invested in this stuff, because it’s the closest thing we have to live or even daily entertainment. And we need those things—those culture-wide conversations, songs and jokes, that shared mourning for those we’ve lost—so that we never forget we’re living in a society, especially at a time when it’s crucial that we all do our part to keep each other safe.

There’s no guarantee that mainstream pop culture’s new DIY spirit will endure after Elba recovers, Bee is out of the woods and coronavirus has gone the way of H1N1. But, either way, it won’t be long before a critical mass of Gen Z reaches an age when their sensibilities start shaping the entertainment industry proper. For them, YouTube, Twitch and TikTok will always be part of a standard creative toolbox. The inevitability of this generational shift used to terrify me (a luxurious fear compared to what’s weighing on our minds these days, I know). Now that I finally get it, I’m curious to like, subscribe and see what happens.

via https://cutslicedanddiced.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/how-to-prevent-food-from-going-to-waste

[lodelss]

Danielle A. Jackson | Longreads | September 2019 | 16 minutes (4,184 words)

The late summer night Tupac died, I listened to All Eyez on Me at a record store in an East Memphis strip mall. The evening felt eerie and laden with meaning. It was early in the school year, 1996, and through the end of the decade, Adrienne, Jessica, Karida and I were a crew of girlfriends at our high school. We spent that night, and many weekend nights, at Adrienne’s house.

Our public school had been all white until a trickle of black students enrolled during the 1966–67 school year. That was 12 years after Brown v. Board of Education and six years after the local NAACP sued the school board for maintaining dual systems in spite of the ruling. In 1972, a federal district court ordered busing; more than 40,000 white students abandoned the school system by 1980. The board created specialized and accelerated courses in some of its schools, an “optional program,” in response. Students could enter the programs regardless of district lines if they met certain academic requirements. This kind of competition helped retain some white students, but also created two separate tracks within those institutions — a tenuous, half-won integration. It meant for me, two decades later, a “high-performing school” with a world of resources I knew to be grateful for, but at a cost. There were few black teachers. Black students in the accelerated program were scattered about, small groups of “onlies” in all their classes. Black students who weren’t in the accelerated program got rougher treatment from teachers and administrators. An acrid grimness hung in the air. It felt like being tolerated rather than embraced. 

My friends and I did share a lunch period. At our table, we traded CDs we’d gotten in the mail: Digable Planets’s Blowout Comb, D’Angelo’s Brown Sugar, the Fugees’ The Score. An era of highly visible black innovation was happening alongside a growing awareness of my own social position. I didn’t have those words then, but I had my enthusiasms. At Maxwell’s concert one sweaty night on the Mississippi, we saw how ecstasy, freedom, and black music commingle and coalesce into a balm. We watched the films of the ’90s wave together, and while most had constraining gender politics, Love Jones, the Theodore Witcher–directed feature about a group of brainy young artists in Chicago, made us wish for a utopic city that could make room for all we would become. 

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We also loved to read the glossies — what ’90s girl didn’t? We especially salivated over every cover of Vibe. Adrienne and I were fledgling writers who experimented a lot and adored English class. In the ’90s, the canon was freshly expanding: We read T.S. Eliot alongside Kate Chopin and Chinua Achebe. Something similar was happening in magazines. Vibe’s mastheads and ad pages were full of black and brown people living, working, and loving together and out front — a multicultural ideal hip-hop had made possible. Its “new black aesthetic” meant articles were fresh and insightful but also hyper-literary art historical objects in their own rights. Writers were fluent in Toni Morrison and Ralph Ellison as well as Biggie Smalls. By the time Tupac died, Kevin Powell had spent years contextualizing his life within the global struggle for black freedom. “There is a direct line from Tupac in a straitjacket [on the popular February 1994 cover] to ‘It’s Obama Time’ [the September 2007 cover, one of the then senator’s earliest],” former editor Rob Kenner told Billboard in a Vibe oral history. He’s saying Vibe helped create Obama’s “coalition of the ascendent” — the black, Latinx, and young white voters who gave the Hawaii native two terms. For me, the pages reclaimed and retold the American story with fewer redactions than my history books. They created a vision of what a multiethnic nation could be.

* * *

“There was a time when journalism was flush,” Danyel Smith told me on a phone call from a summer retreat in Massachusetts. She became music editor at Vibe in 1994, and was editor in chief during the late ’90s and again from 2006 to 2008. The magazine, founded by Quincy Jones and Time, Inc. executives in 1992, was the “first true home of the culture we inhabit today,” according to Billboard. During Smith’s first stint as editor in chief, its circulation more than doubled. She wrote the story revealing R. Kelly’s marriage to then 15-year-old Aaliyah, as well as cover features on Janet Jackson, Wesley Snipes, and Whitney Houston. Smith was at the helm when the magazine debuted its Obama covers in 2007 — Vibe was the first major publication to endorse the freshman senator. When she described journalism as “flush,” Smith was talking about the late ’80s, when she started out in the San Francisco Bay. “Large cities could support with advertising two, sometimes three, alternative news weeklies and dailies,” she said.

‘There is a direct line from Tupac in a straitjacket [on the popular February 1994 cover] to ‘It’s Obama Time’ [the September 2007 cover, one of the then senator’s earliest].’

The industry has collapsed and remade itself many times since then. Pew reports that between 2008 and 2018, journalism jobs declined 25 percent, a net loss of about 28,000 positions. Business Insider reports losses at 3,200 jobs this year alone. Most reductions have been in newspapers. A swell in digital journalism has not offset the losses in print, and it’s also been volatile, with layoffs several times over the past few years, as outlets “pivot to video” or fail to sustain venture-backed growth. Many remaining outlets have contracted, converting staff positions into precarious freelance or “permalance” roles. In a May piece for The New Republic, Jacob Silverman wrote about the “yawning earnings gap between the top and bottom echelons” of journalism reflected in the stops and starts of his own career. After a decade of prestigious headlines and publishing a book, Silverman called his private education a “sunken cost” because he hadn’t yet won a coveted staff role. If he couldn’t make it with his advantageous beginnings, he seemed to say, the industry must be truly troubled. The prospect of “selling out” — of taking a corporate job or work in branded content — seemed more concerning to him than a loss of the ability to survive at all. For the freelance collective Study Hall, Kaila Philo wrote how the instability in journalism has made it particularly difficult for black women to break into the industry, or to continue working and developing if they do. The overall unemployment rate for African Americans has been twice that of whites since at least 1972, when the government started collecting the data by race. According to Pew, newsroom employees are more likely to be white and male than U.S. workers overall. Philo’s report mentions the Women’s Media Center’s 2018 survey on women of color in U.S. news, which states that just 2.62 percent of all journalists are black women. In a write-up of the data, the WMC noted that fewer than half of newspapers and online-only newsrooms had even responded to the original questionnaire. 

* * *

According to the WMC, about 2.16 percent of newsroom leaders are black women. If writers are instrumental in cultivating our collective conceptions of history, editors are arguably more so. Their sensibilities influence which stories are accepted and produced. They shape and nurture the voices and careers of writers they work with. It means who isn’t there is noteworthy. “I think it’s part of the reason why journalism is dying,” Smith said. “It’s not serving the actual communities that exist.” In a July piece for The New Republic, Clio Chang called the push for organized labor among freelancers and staff writers at digital outlets like Vox and Buzzfeed, as well as at legacy print publications like The New Yorker, a sign of hope for the industry.  “In the most basic sense, that’s the first norm that organizing shatters — the isolation of workers from one another,” Chang wrote. Notably, Vox’s union negotiated a diversity initiative in their bargaining agreement, mandating 40 to 50 percent of applicants interviewed come from underrepresented backgrounds.

“Journalism is very busy trying to serve a monolithic imaginary white audience. And that just doesn’t exist anymore,” Smith told me. U.S. audiences haven’t ever been truly homogeneous. But the media institutions that serve us, like most facets of American life, have been deliberately segregated and reluctant to change. In this reality, alternatives sprouted. Before Vibe’s launch, Time, Inc. executives wondered whether a magazine focused on black and brown youth culture would have any audience at all. Greg Sandow, an editor at Entertainment Weekly at the time, told Billboard, “I’m summoned to this meeting on the 34th floor [at the Time, Inc. executive offices]. And here came some serious concerns. This dapper guy in a suit and beautifully polished shoes says, ‘We’re publishing this. Does that mean we have to put black people on the cover?’” Throughout the next two decades, many publications serving nonwhite audiences thrived. Vibe spun off, creating Vibe Vixen in 2004. The circulations of Ebony, JET, and Essence, legacy institutions founded in 1945, 1951, and 1970, remained robust — the New York Times reported in 2000 that the number of Essence subscribers “sits just below Vogue magazine’s 1.1 million and well above the 750,000 of Harper’s Bazaar.” One World and Giant Robot launched in 1994, Latina and TRACE in 1996. Honey’s preview issue, with Lauryn Hill on the cover, hit newsstands in 1999. Essence spun off to create Suede, a fashion and culture magazine aimed at a “polyglot audience,” in 2004. A Magazine ran from 1989 to 2001; Hyphen launched with two young reporters at the helm the following year. In a piece for Columbia Journalism Review, Camille Bromley called Hyphen a celebration of “Asian culture without cheerleading” invested in humor, complication, and complexity, destroying the model minority myth. Between 1956 and 2008, the Chicago Defender, founded in 1905 and a noted, major catalyst for the Great Migration, published a daily print edition. During its flush years, the Baltimore Afro-American, founded in 1892, published separate editions in Philadelphia, Richmond, and Newark.

Before Vibe’s launch, Time, Inc. executives wondered whether a magazine focused on black and brown youth culture would have any audience at all.

The recent instability in journalism has been devastating for the black press. The Chicago Defender discontinued its print editions in July. Johnson Publications, Ebony and JET’s parent company, filed bankruptcy earlier this year after selling the magazines to a private equity firm in 2016. Then it put up for sale its photo archive — more than 4 million prints and negatives. Its record of black life throughout the 20th century includes images of Emmett Till’s funeral, in which the 14-year-old’s mutilated body lay in state, and Moneta Sleet Jr.’s Pulitzer Prize–winning image of Coretta Scott King mourning with her daughter, Bernice King. It includes casually elegant images of black celebrities at home and shots of everyday street scenes and citizens — the dentists and mid-level diplomats who made up the rank and file of the ascendant. John H. Johnson based Ebony and JET on LIFE, a large glossy heavy on photojournalism with a white, Norman Rockwell aesthetic and occasional dehumanizing renderings of black people. Johnson’s publications, like the elegantly attired stars of Motown, were meant as proof of black dignity and humanity. In late July, four large foundations formed an historic collective to buy the archive, shepherd its preservation, and make it available for public access.

The publications’ written stories are also important. Celebrity profiles offered candid, intimate views of famous, influential black figures and detailed accounts of everyday black accomplishment. Scores of skilled professionals ushered these pieces into being: Era Bell Thompson started out at the Chicago Defender and spent most of her career in Ebony’s editorial leadership. Tennessee native Lynn Norment worked for three decades as a writer and editor at the publication. André Leon Talley and Elaine Welteroth passed through Ebony for other jobs in the industry. Taken together, their labor was a massive scholarly project, a written history of a people deemed outside of it.

Black, Latinx, and Asian American media are not included in the counts on race and gender WMC reports. They get their data from the American Society of News Editors (ASNE), and Cristal Williams Chancellor, WMC’s director of communications, told me she hopes news organizations will be more “aggressive” in helping them “accurately indicate where women are in the newsroom.” While men dominate leadership roles in mainstream newsrooms, news wires, TV, and audio journalism, publications targeting multicultural audiences have also had a reputation for gender trouble, with a preponderance of male cover subjects, editorial leaders, and features writers. Kim Osorio, the first woman editor in chief at The Source, was fired from the magazine after filing a complaint about sexual harassment. Osorio won a settlement for wrongful termination in 2006 and went on to help launch BET.com and write a memoir before returning to The Source in 2012. Since then, she’s made a career writing for TV.  

* * *

This past June, Nieman Lab published an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic since 2016, and Adrienne LaFrance, the magazine’s executive editor. The venerable American magazine was founded in Boston in 1857. Among its early supporters were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. It sought to promote an “American ideal,” a unified yet pluralistic theory of American aesthetics and politics. After more than a century and a half of existence, women writers are not yet published in proportion to women’s share of the country’s population. The Nieman piece focused on progress the magazine has made in recent years toward equitable hiring and promoting: “In 2016, women made up just 17 percent of editorial leadership at The Atlantic. Today, women account for 63 percent of newsroom leaders.” A few days after the piece’s publication, a Twitter user screen-capped a portion of the interview where Goldberg was candid about areas in which the magazine continues to struggle:

  GOLDBERG: We continue to have a problem with the print magazine cover stories — with the gender and race issues when it comes to cover story writing. [Of the 15 print issues The Atlantic has published since January 2018, 11 had cover stories written by men. — Ed.]

 It’s really, really hard to write a 10,000-word cover story. There are not a lot of journalists in America who can do it. The journalists in America who do it are almost exclusively white males. What I have to do — and I haven’t done this enough yet — is again about experience versus potential. You can look at people and be like, well, your experience is writing 1,200-word pieces for the web and you’re great at it, so good going!

That’s one way to approach it, but the other way to approach it is, huh, you’re really good at this and you have a lot of potential and you’re 33 and you’re burning with ambition, and that’s great, so let us put you on a deliberate pathway toward writing 10,000-word cover stories. It might not work. It often doesn’t. But we have to be very deliberate and efficient about creating the space for more women to develop that particular journalistic muscle.

My Twitter feed of writers, editors, and book publicists erupted, mostly at the excerpt’s thinly veiled statement on ability. Women in my timeline responded with lists of writers of longform — books, articles, and chapters — who happened to be women, or people of color, or some intersection therein. Goldberg initially said he’d been misquoted. When Laura Hazard Owen, the deputy editor at Nieman who’d conducted the interview, offered proof that Goldberg’s statements had been delivered as printed, he claimed he had misspoken. Hazard Owen told the L.A. Times she believes that The Atlantic is, overall, “doing good work in diversifying the staff there.”

Taken together, their labor was a massive scholarly project, a written history of a people deemed outside of it.

Still, it’s a difficult statement for a woman writer of color to hear. “You literally are looking at me and all my colleagues, all my women colleagues and all my black colleagues, all my colleagues of color and saying, ‘You’re not really worthy of what we do over here.’ It’s mortifying,” Smith told me. Goldberg’s admission may have been a misstatement, but it mirrors the continued whiteness of mainstream mastheads. It checks out with the Women’s Media Center’s reports and the revealing fact of how much data is missing from even those important studies. It echoes the stories of black women who work or worked in journalism, who have difficulty finding mentors, or who burn out from the weight of wanting to serve the chronically underserved. It reflects my own experiences, in which I have been told multiple times in a single year that I am the only black woman editor that a writer has ever had. But it doesn’t corroborate my long experience as a reader. What happened to the writers and editors and multihyphenates from the era of the multicultural magazine, that brief flash in the 90’s and early aughts when storytellers seemed to reflect just how much people of color lead in creating American culture? Who should have formed a pipeline of leaders for mainstream publications when the industry began to contract?

* * *

In addition to her stints at Vibe, Smith also edited for Billboard, Time, Inc. publications, and published two novels. She was culture editor for ESPN’s digital magazine The Undefeated before going on book leave. Akiba Solomon is an author, editor of two books, and is currently senior editorial director at Colorlines, a digital news daily published by Race Forward. She started an internship at YSB in 1995 before going on to write and edit for Jane, Glamour, Essence, Vibe Vixen, and The Source. She told me that even at magazines without predominantly black staff, she’d worked with other black people, though not often directly. At black magazines, she was frequently edited by black women. “I’ve been edited by Robin Stone, Vanessa DeLuca [formerly editor-in-chief of Essence, currently running the Medium vertical ZORA], Ayana Byrd, Kierna Mayo, Cori Murray, and Michaela Angela Davis.” Solomon’s last magazine byline was last year, an Essence story on black women activists who organize in culturally relevant ways to fight and prevent sexual assault.

Solomon writes infrequently for publications now, worn down by conditions in journalism she believes are untenable. At the hip-hop magazines, the sexism was a deterrent, and later, “I was seeing a turn in who was getting the jobs writing about black music” when it became mainstream. “Once folks could divorce black music from black culture it was a wrap,” she said. At women’s magazines, Solomon felt stifled by “extremely narrow” storytelling. Publishing, in general, Solomon believes, places unsustainable demands on its workers. 

When we talk about the death of print, it is infrequent that we also talk about the conditions that make it ripe for obsolescence. The reluctant slowness with which mainstream media has integrated its mastheads (or kept them integrated) has meant the industry’s content has suffered. And the work environments have placed exorbitant burdens on the people of color who do break through. In Smith’s words:

You feel that you want to serve these people with good and quality content, with good and quality graphics, with good and quality leadership. And as a black person, as a black woman, regardless of whether you’re serving a mainstream audience, which I have at a Billboard and at Time, Inc., or a multicultural audience, which I have at Vibe, it is difficult. And it’s actually taken me a long time to admit that to myself. It does wear you down. And I ask myself why have I always, always stayed in a job two and a half to three years, especially when I’m editing? It’s because I’m tired by that time.

In a July story for Politico, black journalists from The New York Times and the Associated Press talked about how a sophisticated understanding of race is critical to ethically and thoroughly covering the current political moment. After the August 3 massacre in El Paso, Lulu Garcia-Navarro wrote how the absence of Latinx journalists in newsrooms has created a vacuum that allows hateful words from the president to ring unchallenged. Lacking the necessary capacity, many organizations cover race related topics, often matters of life and death, without context or depth. As outlets miss the mark, journalists of color may take on the added work of acting as the “the black public editor of our newsrooms,” Astead Herndon from the Times said on a Buzzfeed panel. Elaine Welteroth wrote about the physical exhaustion she experienced during her tenure as editor in chief at Teen Vogue in her memoir More Than Enough. She was the second African American editor in chief in parent company Condé Nast’s 110 year history:

I was too busy to sleep, too frazzled to eat, and TMI: I had developed a bizarre condition where I felt the urge to pee — all the time. It was so disruptive that I went to see a doctor, thinking it may have been a bladder infection.

Instead, I found myself standing on a scale in my doctor’s office being chastised for accidentally dropping nine more pounds. These were precious pounds that my naturally thin frame could not afford to lose without leaving me with the kind of bony body only fashion people complimented.

Condé Nast shuttered Teen Vogue’s print edition in 2017, despite record-breaking circulation, increased political coverage, and an expanded presence on the internet during Welteroth’s tenure. Welteroth left the company to write her book and pursue other ventures.

Mitzi Miller was editor in chief of JET when it ran the 2012 cover story on Jordan Davis, a Florida teenager shot and killed by a white vigilante over his loud music. “At the time, very few news outlets were covering the story because it occurred over a holiday weekend,” she said. To write the story, Miller hired Denene Millner, an author of more than 20 books. With interviews from Jordan’s parents, Ron Davis and Lucy McBath, the piece went viral and was one of many stories that galvanized the contemporary American movement against police brutality.

Miller started working in magazines in 2000, and came up through Honey and Jane before taking the helm at JET then Ebony in 2014. She edits for the black website theGrio when she can and writes an occasional piece for a print magazine roughly once a year. Shrinking wages have made it increasingly difficult to make a life in journalism, she told me. After working at a number of dream publications, Miller moved on to film and TV development. 

Both Miller and Solomon noted how print publications have been slow to evolve. “It’s hard to imagine now, particularly to digital native folks, but print was all about a particular format. It was about putting the same ideas into slightly different buckets,” Solomon said. On the podcast Hear to Slay, Vanessa DeLuca spoke about how reluctant evolution may have imperiled black media. “Black media have not always … looked forward in terms of how to build a brand across multiple platforms.” Some at legacy print institutions still seem to hold internet writing in lower esteem (“You can look at people and be like, well, your experience is writing 1,200-word pieces for the web and you’re great at it, so good going!” were Goldberg’s words to Nieman Lab). Often, pay structures reflect this hierarchy. Certainly, the internet’s speed and accessibility have lowered barriers to entry and made it such that rigor is not always a requirement for publication. But it’s also changed information consumption patterns and exploded the possibilities of storytelling.

Michael Gonzales, a frequent contributor to this site and a writer I’ve worked with as an editor, started in magazines in the 1980s as a freelancer. He wrote for The Source and Vibe during a time that overlapped with Smith’s and Solomon’s tenures, the years now called “the golden era of rap writing.” The years correspond to those moments I spent reading magazines with my high school friends. At black publications, he worked with black women editors all the time, but “with the exception of the Village Voice, none of the mainstream magazines employed black editors.” Despite the upheaval of the past several years (“the money is less than back in the day,” he said), Gonzales seems pleased with where his career has landed, “I’ve transformed from music critic/journalist to an essayist.” He went on to talk about how now, with the proliferation of digital magazines:

I feel like we’re living in an interesting writer time where there are a number of quality sites looking for quality writing, especially in essay form. There are a few that sometimes get too self-indulgent, but for the most part, especially in the cultural space (books, movies, theater, music, etc.), there is a lot of wonderful writing happening. Unfortunately you are the only black woman editor I have, although a few years back I did work with Kierna Mayo at Ebony.

  * * *

Danielle A. Jackson is a contributing editor at Longreads.

Editor: Sari Botton

Fact checker: Steven Cohen

Copy editor: Jacob Z. Gross

[cutkatty]

Dwarf Cats - The Origin Of The Names Of The Breeds

The dwarf cat has some interesting breed names. Dwarf cats are unusual and popular. People are interested in them. What is equally unusual and fascinating are the names of the various dwarf breeds and, more particularly, how these interesting names came about. Here are the stories about how they were created.

The stories about the creation of the name come from the person who created the breed and invented the name. Fittingly, sometimes the name, just like the dwarf cat, is a hybrid itself. Genetta: This is a dwarf cat created and named by Shannon Kiley of Pawstruk Cattery in 2006. Genettas are being registered as an experimental breed with the International Cat Association (TICA). Shannon came up with the name "Genetta" as the breed is "being modeled after the African Genet and part of the scientific name for a genet is 'genetta'. So I thought that would be very fitting and unique" (Shannon Kiley). The African Genet is catlike in appearance and habit but not a cat. It has a longish body and widely spaced black spots. It is a member of the family Viverridae, which includes mongooses. To achieve the look Shannon developed the Genetta using breeds such as munchkins, Bengals, savannahs, DSH, and Oriental Shorthairs. Skookum: This dwarf cat breed was developed by Roy Galusha through the intentional breeding of the Munchkin to the LaPerm. When I asked him how he arrived at the name for this dwarf cat breed he gave this full and interesting answer, which is reproduced here with his permission: "I can tell you the answer on the Skookum since we created the breed. When the breed was first started (our first accidental cross), we (not just us, several people in our circle who knew about them), jokingly referred to them as LaMerms (taking the M from Munchkin and replacing the P in the LaPerm. ) When we sought recognition as a breed, we wanted to find a good descriptor of the breed and considered the name "Poco Chino" which means short and curly in Spanish. However, someone in UFO who knew Spanish pointed out that that also means "Little Chinese", so we scrapped that. After doing a lot of talking and brainstorming, we decided to give it a Native American name. My wife is part Cherokee, so we researched Cherokee names; However, the descriptor names did not have a good flow. We then decided to go with a local NorthWest Native American name (since we were living in Washington State). We looked at quite a few names and researched the meanings. A local Native American word that comes from the Chinook language and was part of the Chinook Trade Language was Skookum (pronounced Skoo Kum). The word Skookum means mighty, powerful or great. It is also used to signify good health or good spirits. If someone really likes something, they might refer to it as being really skookum ("Boy that apple pie is skookum") or if you really like a horse ("that is one skookum horse). So we figured that was the perfect name for the breed. Certain TICA officials used the name to object to it being accepted as a breed claiming that the word Skookum means a scary monster such as a bigfoot. This is partially correct in the fact that the spelling Skookum is also used to describe Big Foot, the pronunciation is completely different. Below is the explanation from Tony Johnson, Cultural Committee Chair for the Chinook Tribe. "As per our conversation this morning, the Chinuk Wawa language has two words differing only by their stress that have been popularly written as" skookum. "We write these two words the same, except for their stress:" skunk "for something that is strong, tough, brave or impressive, and "skookum" for something scary or a "monster." Typically English speakers stress the first syllable of a word, and your spelling (which is typical historically) reflects that. The word "skookum" for your users both not "demonic," and is in fact appropriate. Further discussion of the word "skuku've seemed unnecessary in that it is not the term you are using. As I noted, the word you are using also can be used in a context to mean something like English "healthy." In this case, it basically means your (the body is) "strong." I hope this helps you, and I can see where this confusion would come from. The confusion is entirely based on the problematic nature of people writing Native words and then other people reading them who have never heard actual pronunciation. In our language, you could never confuse these two words or their associated meanings. " hayu masi (many thanks), Tony A. JohnsonCulture committee ChairChinook Indian Tribe / Chinook Nation The person who I believe started all the flack in TICA about the name Skookum would know the difference as her husband is one of the leading experts on bigfoots nationwide, and I understand that he has written several books and manuscripts on Big Foot, to include a passage about the use of the word Skookum in Chinook language and how it pertains to Big Foot. They would know the correct pronunciation for Big Foot as used by the local natives and would know the differences in the meanings; However, they used that to side rail the registration process. The Skookum has also been referred to as the Shirley Temple cat because it is short and curly. That was a marketing strategy when Cat Fancy first allowed us to advertise them. We came up with that slogan as the best descriptor of the cat. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. " I can't add a thing to that! Great answer. Napolean: This little dwarf cat was developed by the intentional mating of the Munchkin to the Persian or exotic shorthair, by Joe Smith. Napoleon is currently registered as Experimental with TICA but recognized as a breed with TDCA (The Dwarf Cat Association). I confess that I have yet to get an answer to my inquiries about this name. However, a bit of rational and logical thought leads me to this conclusion. This cat is a dwarf cat that is short of stature. Napolean Bonaparte (the French general during the French Revolution) was short of stature by the standards of today (5 feet 6 inches). Also, most of the napoleons that I have seen are white and Napoleon Bonaparte rode a white horse (is there a connection there?). There probably is no connection there and the name simply originated from the short stocky compact profile of this dwarf cat which mirrored Napolean Bonaparte. Kinkalow: The kinda low dwarf cat results from the mating of an American Curl to a Munchkin. Terri Harris developed this breed and says this about the name: "The Kinkalow name was decided on while I was at Kinkos getting some copies to make. The Kinkalow has kinky ears and low legs, Kink + low = Kinkalow". Although Terri doesn't mention this there is a cat-like animal called a Kinkajou (a Honey Bear or Cat Monkey) and I wonder if this name influenced her decision. Dwelf: This is simple! It is a mixture of dwarf cat and elf. Being a Cross between Munchkin, Sphynx and American Curl. This dwarf cat is short, hairless and ears that curl back at the tips. Munchkin: In 1983 music teacher Sandra Hochenedel discovered two cats hiding under a vehicle. She rescued them; both had short, stubby legs. She called them Munchkins after the little people in The Wizard of Oz. This is the founding dwarf cat. Bambino: Stephanie and Pat Osborne of the Holy Moly cattery organized this dwarf cat breed. As Pat is of Italian extraction and as the cat keeps its kitten-like appearance and character throughout its life they named it "Bambino". Lambkins: A straight dictionary definition, I think, provides the answer. Lambkins means "very young lamb". Lambkin cats are a new dwarf cat breed that comes from the cross of a Munchkin and Selkirk Rex to produce curly-haired kittens, just like a little lamb. Knook: A Knook is a type of immortal being or fairy in the work of L. Frank Baum. Knooks are the guardians over the animals. They had a crooked appearance. (source: Wikipedia). I confess I research on the name of this dwarf cat breed produced nothing. However, if a knock is a fairy that gives the clue. A fairy is delicate and small. A knock is a Kinkalow with a LaPerm / Skookam-type curled coat and that means this cat is going to be pretty delicate and small... Source by Michael Broad Read the full article

[clubofinfo]

Expert: A missing piece from most critiques of modern capitalism revolves around the misunderstanding of ecology. To put it bluntly, there will be no squaring the circle of mass industrial civilization and an inhabitable Earth. There is no way for energy and resource use, along with all the strife, warfare, and poverty that comes along with it, to continue under the business as usual model that contemporary Western nations operate under. There is also the problem of constructing millions of solar panels and gigantic wind farms to attempt to bring the entire world’s population to a middle class existence based on a North American or even European levels of energy use. All of the hypothetical robots and artificial intelligence to be constructed for such a mega-endeavor needed to enact such a project would at least initially rely on fossil fuels and metals plundered from the planet, and only lead to more rapacious destruction of the world. The dominant technological model is utterly delusional. Here I would urge each of us to consider our “human nature” (a problematic term, no doubt) and the costs and the manner of the work involved: if each of us had to kill a cow for food, would we? If each of us had to mine or blast a mountain for coal or iron, or even for a wind turbine, would we do it? If each of us had to drill an oil well or bulldoze land for a gigantic solar array next to many endangered species or a threatened coral reef, would we? My guess would be no, for the vast majority of the population. Instead, we employ corporations and specialists to carry out the dirty work in the fossil fuel industries and animal slaughtering, to name just a few. Most of us in the West have reaped the benefits of such atrocities for the past few centuries of the industrial revolution. That era is coming to a close, and there’s no turning back. The gravy train is running out of steam, and our age of comfort and the enslavement of a global proletariat to produce and gift-wrap our extravagances will hopefully be ending shortly, too. Some may romanticize loggers, factory workers, oil drillers, coal miners, or steel foundries but the chance is less than a needle through a camel’s eye that those jobs are coming back in a significant way. Overpopulation in much of the world continues to put strain upon habitat and farmlands to provide for the Earth’s 7.5 billion — and growing — humans. Tragically, many with the most influence on the Left today, such as Sanders, Corbyn, and Melenchon want to preserve industrial civilization. Theirs is an over-sentimental outlook which warps their thinking to want to prop up a dying model in order to redistribute wealth to the poor and working classes. Empathy for the less fortunate is no doubt a good thing, but the fact remains that the real wealth lies in our planet’s natural resources, not an artificial economy, and its ability to regenerate and provide the fertile ground upon which we all rely. If we follow their narrow path, we are doomed. Theirs is a sort of one-dimensional, infantile distortion of Vishnu-consciousness (preservation, in their minds at all costs), an unadulterated cogito, which does not let in the wisdom of his partner Lakshmi (true prosperity) or the harbinger of change and the symbol of death and rebirth, Shiva. Industrial life must be dismantled from the core for a new order to arise. Instead of clinging to this techno-dystopian model of the elites, we must replace it with what I call a Planetary Vision. The Stone that the Builders Refuse Only a serious education in ecology for a significant minority of the globe’s workforce can allow for a return to naturally abundant and life-enhancing complex habitats for humanity and all species to thrive. Understandably, fields such as botany, zoology, and conservationism are not for everyone, as much of humanity has been and continues to be more interested in technological fields, the arts, music, sports, religion, etc. It would only take perhaps 10% of the globe to be critically informed, and to be able to act, deliberatively and democratically, about subjects relating to ecosystem preservation and all the attendant sub-fields for a functional, ecocentric culture to flourish. Thankfully, the foundation of such an ecological vision has been laid by millennia of indigenous cultures, as well as modern prophets and science whizzes such as Rachel Carson, Fritjof Capra, James Lovelock, Lynn Margulis, Barry Commoner, Donella Meadows, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, Masanobu Fukuoka, and many others. Even Marx and Engels observed the basic deteriorating nature of advanced agriculture in what they termed “metabolic rift”, where they learned from European scientists of the overwhelming degradation of soil fertility on the continent due to poor farming techniques, razing of forests, and heavy industry. Despite its current limitations, the United Nations offers a model of supra-national regulation and governance, especially the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and the almost totally forgotten Brundtland report of 1987. The Deep Wisdom of Ecology Modern nations, corporations, vertical hierarchies, and industrial civilization do not serve human health or well-being. It excludes the majority, cuts them from a connection to their neighbors and the land, and privileges an elite rentier class who sponges and sucks the marrow out of the bowels of the Earth and those born money, property, privilege, without a silver spoon in hand. Ecological thinking, on the other hand, imparts us with the deep truth that we are all connected to each other, and the planet. Permaculture farming has managed to match and even outpace productivity on giant agribusiness farms using low-impact or even no-till methods. Food forests can be created around the globe using layers of edible plants at high densities to allow for the growth fruit and nut trees, vines, and perennial shrubs, groundcover, and herbs. This is the real meaning of the Garden of Eden, an agroforestry model which ancient people lived off of for millennia alongside responsible crop rotation, seasonal burns, biochar, animal herding, hunting and foraging, and obtaining protein from fish and shellfish. Arid, barren lands have been reforested by planting native trees: in Assam, India, one man recovered over 1300 acres by planting just one sapling a day for 30 years. In the Chesapeake Bay, oyster restoration has been ongoing for years to help improve water quality. Just one adult oyster can filter 50 gallons of water in a single day. An average acre of boreal forest can hold over 100 tons of carbon above and below ground in soil and biomass. As more forests burn carbon is instantly released, and as temperatures rise soils thaw out, leading to increased soil respiration and thus increasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. With 1,400 gigatons of methane stored in the Earth’s permafrost, any significant release into the atmosphere could ramp up warming even faster. Wildlife corridors must be funded at multiples of current levels and substantially increased in size to allow for keystone, threatened, and endangered species to maintain population sizes and spread over increasingly patchy and unsustainable habitat due to urban growth, roads, and industry. Millions of acres of land should be reforested (some say 500 million total) to provide carbon sinks to offset the coming effects of global warming. Currently 18 million acres of forest are lost per year due to deforestation for grazing and corporate agriculture. National parks, forests, monuments, as well as coastal, marine, and wildlife refuges as well as state-run areas should be coordinated at the highest levels of national and international regulation. I say coordinated, but I do not mean controlled by in a vertical hierarchy. Responsibility should “telescope” (borrowing a term from political scientist Robyn Eckersley) according to the size of the problem at hand: local deliberative councils may work best for bioregional approaches, whereas some framework of a supra-national structure will be needed for the mega-problems of climate change, plastic pollution, and GMO proliferation, just to name a few. We have all heard terms such as “apex predator” or “top of the food chain” which capitalists and social Darwinists have misconstrued and adopted to fit their own hierarchical, fascistic beliefs. Yet anyone who has examined a food web knows there are interrelationships and mutualistic interdependencies between myriad species which dwarf and blow away any notion of rigid, calcified structures of permanent dominance of any species or eco-biome. A systemic examination of global trade would teach the same lesson. There is no way to make any one country “great again” at the expense of other nations. This is a false binary embedded in Western culture that goes by the name of the “Either/Or”.  Rather, we must adopt the “And/Both” model of cultures synergistically and mutually thriving. (Trickster/Provocateur homework for US citizens: Welcome or respond to someone on our upcoming 4th of July with a cheery greeting of “Happy Interdependence Day!”) This false dichotomy has insidiously found its way into the Earth sciences, with the categorization and response to “invasive species”. Human disturbance accounts for upwards of 95% of invasives causing harm to new ecosystems, yet even within the academy, detailed plans for shifting our lifestyles are few and far between, and predictably ignored by mainstream society. Nowhere has this sort of milquetoast-iness been more visceral for me than in listening to a guest lecturer years ago in a conservation biology class, when, at the outset of the lecture and without prompting, she announced that she would not tolerate any questions about humans as “invasive species”. This was perhaps understandable given the narrow definition of the term by some, or the aim and scope of her forthcoming talk, yet still, the rigid reactionary nature and tone of her dictum managed to produce a chill. Further, the steps involved in combating invasive, non-woody plants do not usually involve more than a tractor mower or a backpack sprayer and Round-up, in public and private operations. Little is done to thwart the habitat systemically disturbed by human activity, the nutrient-depleted soil, over-salinization, etc. No thought given to the notion that the invasives in many cases are the only plants able to germinate and tolerate nutrient-starved soil and edge habitat which falls outside the purview of agricultural land, or the delusional urge within forestry management to preserve wooded or grassland areas in some pre-colonial or pre-industrial chrysalis. We all observed this duplicitous portrayal of those evil invasives for many years following the media-driven and pseudo-scientific outrage and mania of the kudzu vine in the South. Covering roadsides and disturbed, recently deforested areas, the vine was portrayed with puritanical hatred. The loathed vine cannot penetrate into shaded forest and acted as a projection of our own fears, malicious intent, and ignorance. The Revolution as Poetic Enchantment There is also the problem of revolutionary activity where organization and specific roles are needed. We’ve been told that any and all organizing inevitably leads to corruption, hierarchy, greed, and ego inflation. Yet nature has managed to organize and spontaneously birth everything we depend on for sustenance and pleasure. The works of Mauss, Sahlins, and others have shown human behavior to be mostly peaceful, based on reciprocity, lived in balance with a naturally abundant environment. The succession of a habitat, from the first pioneer species advancing to a climax community in dynamic equilibrium, is poetry in motion, an endless cycle of community relations where the dead provide for the living, just as the winds of history continue to shape our present, the lessons of our ancestors provide the courage to persevere, and the very real trauma and torment of past generations continues to stalk humanity, perhaps even epigenetically in our cells. Nature’s ability to play freely and its tendency for creative, regenerative self-discovery offers a model attractive to the public where traditional approaches to ideology, mainstream politics, and moral exhortation have failed. Ecology uniquely offers an approach to our self-interest, with pragmatic and deep ethical implications, and in our nuclear and fossil fuel age, to our very survival. Recent uprisings in Zucotti Park, South Dakota, Tahrir and Taksim Squares, Tunisia, and many other places demonstrate the organic, spontaneous nature of our ability to resist the systemic oppression endemic to our neoliberal, colonial, imperial world order. The question of what comes after a successful revolt undoubtedly plagues many people, considering the bloody sectarianism that followed in many historical instances. Yet one of the root causes of such post-revolutionary failings necessarily includes the loss of jouissance, the senses of optimism, exuberance, and mutual aid which erupted throughout history in Paris communes, military barracks and factories in Petrograd, communes in Catalonia, etc. Many progressives and so-called radicals in the US today seem more interested in internecine bickering and petty squabbling over turf than in implementing an authentic plan to re-enchant a comatose public. A citizenry, mind you, which has become exhausted and disillusioned from politics and any notion of defending the public sphere and commons due to relentless propaganda, neoliberal economics, structural racism, and a perverse imperial edict of global warfare which knows no bounds and sees no end. Such small-mindedness and insularity is only compounded by a geographically isolated, narcissistic, spectacle craving media, celebrity-worshiping culture, and chattering class smugness which has robotized, dehumanized, and intoxicated a public which no longer seems to have the psychic or physiological energy and stamina to resist. This can be countered by providing material and intellectual nourishment, especially to our youth, through wholesome organic farming, natural medicines, and alternative education systems which promote and instill environmentalism, forms of direct democracy, and critical thinking skills, as well as continuing education for adults and seniors. Much of our culture’s confusion is reinforced by a digital, social media driven, an ahistorical narrative, and a dematerialized market in the West where information and leisure is metered out to the poor, elderly, disabled, and working classes in a slow drip of bandwidth, bytes, pixels: poisonous cups of soma which we believe must all imbibe to partake in our “culture”. Yet so many are now beginning to rattle their cages. Part of the reason being that savings and material wealth for the majority has declined, life expectancy dropping in neglected areas, suicide and addictive behaviors are increasing, inequality and gentrification skyrocketing. Yet also partly because creativity has been stifled, free time is eaten up by a gig economy relentlessly eating up our leisure, wild open spaces are diminishing, and the effects of a polluted, over-crowded world where alienation appears to reign and many see No Exit. Digital technology, trickle-down finance, and media narratives are pushed so hard by the powers-that-be, in a pyramid scheme Ponzi economy bound to collapse. And data-driven, quantifiable, “objective” information doused on the public is losing its effect. Masses can now see through the high priests of officialdom, because their policies do not relate to any place or time, it is not embodied in the commons. The deluge of “empirical” statistics and innovation spouting out of mainstream media, government bureaucracies, and non-profit policy centers borders on absurd, and one could summarize their work as Informationism, for it truly represents an ideology. These are the apologists and court historians for the grand viziers of capital. They have created their own veritable echo-chamber ecology within the former swamplands of the Potomac basin. How can the hegemony of corporate and state rule be further undermined? By acknowledging how they employ words, propaganda, ideology, and a false version of history as weapons to create a habitat of hate and fear. As the Situationists wrote: “Words work — on behalf of the dominant organizations of life…Power presents only the falsified, official sense of words.” As the SI further noted: Every revolution has been born in poetry, has first of all been made with the force of poetry. This phenomenon continues to escape theorists of revolution — indeed, it cannot be understood if one still clings to the old conception of revolution or of poetry — but it has generally been sensed by counterrevolutionaries. Poetry terrifies them. Whenever it appears they do their best to get rid of it by every kind of exorcism, from auto-da-fé to pure stylistic research. Real poetry, which has “world enough and time,” seeks to reorient the entire world and the entire future to its own ends. As long as it lasts, its demands admit of no compromise. It brings back into play all the unsettled debts of history. Part of poetic resistance simply is awareness. We are not going to save the world without learning how to actually live in the world. Here words fall far short, they “float”, are too abstract. At the level of ontological awareness helpful concepts like “Dasein” and “existence precedes essence” can only show the doorway, yet the point is to walk through it. This is why I don’t consider, for example, Leary’s words of “Find the others” to be an escapist fantasy: they are a call to mytho-poetic revolution, for only in collective struggle can one transcend a selfish ego and a sick, dying culture. Communal living will be a big part of this, especially as the world economy seems very likely to fall into depression or outright collapse within a couple decades at most. Initiation into adulthood, a model of dying and rebirth, is of utmost importance, as Barry Spector and Martin Prechtel, among others, have shown. Without this, the modern world is stuck in an infantile state, forever craving more, never satisfied. The domination of man by man and nature by man now reaches global proportions. In our Anthropocene Age all boundaries between human and nature collapse, as we come to understand the web we are enmeshed in. Studies in modern psychics prove on the cosmological scale (relativity) and sub-atomic scales (quantum entanglement, superposition, double-slit experiment) have all proven definitely what ancient traditions have understood for millennia. Andre Malraux was correct when he prophesized that: “The 21st century will be spiritual or will not be.” All major religions hold ecological balance, love of your neighbor, and conservation as a core truth. Teachings from the Sermon on the Mount, Hindu concepts of ahimsa and karma, Buddhist right livelihood, Islam’s tawhid, khilafa, and akhirah all have shown this, as well as indigenous mythology. Sadly, most of the dissenters in our culture have been totally marginalized. The best minds of our generation have no longer fallen to madness; they are ignored, imprisoned, killed, or shipped off to a permanent “Desolation Row”. Consider the great works of Gary Snyder, Arne Naess, Robinson Jeffers, Wendell Barry, as well as environmentalists such as Wangari Maathai, Vandana Shiva, Sylvia Earle: the collective brilliance is astounding, yet industrialism allows no avenues for a praxis, for their ideas to be put to work or play. Only an understanding of relationship and interdependencies can account for how our policy at the border, for instance, is connected to environmental destruction, factory farming, resource extraction, habitat destruction, the killings overseas in Yemen, Gaza, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the list goes on. It goes on for so long that the mind grows numb. Yet, we must counter this. Our government is the primary driver of the perpetual crimes of total warfare, planetary destruction, neo-feudal debt-based serfdom and global immiseration, and most of us have been complicit in varying degrees. Have no doubt, many in power around the world, consciously or not, are waiting to start a new Kristallnacht against minorities and the poor which they will use to further the next stage of their privatized, totalitarian, surveillance-laden brave new world. It’s already started here in the US and in Italy against the Roma among other places. Theirs is an aesthetic of terror and brainwashing which knows no bounds. Yet their individual pathologies only tell us part of the story: it is the system of alienation which breeds hate and must be dismantled, not replacing one figurehead leader with another seemingly benign one, as we did with Obama. Only a culture which understands the connections of how capitalism ultimately leads to fascism, one which comprehends the Earth’s limits, our own psycho-somatic frailties, and our bio-social relationships with each other and with flora and fauna can provide the resistance needed in this perilous age. http://clubof.info/

[desertislandcloud]

Zoey Lily’s latest single “Last Goodbye” was only released in mid April 2018 but has already gathered over 40,000 streams on Spotify within the first few weeks after release. And yet she can’t wait and offers another pop stunner in the shape of ‘Not There’. The track will be released on May 25th 2018. Supported by the likes of BBC Introducing London, TMRW magazine, The Line Of Best Fit and BuzzFeed in the past, Zoey Lily embarks on a virtual trip to Brooklyn, New York (USA), introducing the American rapper Indigo Svn as a featured artist on her latest record. The two were first brought together when Zoey Lily attended Indigo SVN’s live show at North London’s Nambucca venue earlier this year. Being located in separate parts of the world and without physically meeting again, the track was recorded within a day with Indigo SVN’s contributions being sent from his Brooklyn bedroom studio to Leeds, England. Speaking about the collaboration, Indigo Svn states: ‘In my eyes the project was the dominos falling in the most seamless way. I was in a great reflective mode when the song was brought to my ears and it was the therapy I needed, she helped me step out of my box a bit more too which is alway great when bringing new music to the people.’ says Brooklyn native Indigo SVN when talking about the collaboration with East London writer Zoey Lily. About Zoey... Zoey Lily (née Zoe Lily Lewis) may be a relative newcomer to the world of left-field pop, but for this 20-year-old talent, musicianship is no passing fancy. The Hackney-based artist first delved into creative expression at age 13 when she began playing piano and her first wide-eyed forays into songwriting. Later, at age 17, Zoey found herself drawn to her father’s acoustic Martin guitar, the instrument which she still writes most of her songs with today. Raised between the hectic metropolis of London and the rural serenity of southern French village, Les Mayons, Zoey can denote her creative instinct to a multicultural and multilingual upbringing. It’s one that also included international tours with her live music agent father (Joss Stone, Van Morrison) and the artistic influence of her mother, a former Parisian fashion designer. Zoey Lily has set out to become a highly independent and original songwriter, singer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, co-producer and dancer, as we will see in future music videos and live shows. Taking cues from a wide-range of essential artists, including Lana del Rey, Kendrick Lamar, Frank Ocean and Vince Staples. Zoey Lily https://www.instagram.com/mezoeylily https://twitter.com/mezoeylily https://facebook.com/mezoeylily www.mezoeylily.com Indigo Svn https://www.instagram.com/indigosvn https://twitter.com/indigosvn https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaxbRI7eUleO6S1-Lehmrdw https://www.facebook.com/IndigoSvn7/