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Tuesday, October 21, 2003 |
American Folk Blues
Over at my pal Mike's house last night, we watched this DVD, American Folk Blues Vol 1,
a fantastic assembly of videos made in Germany in the early and
mid-60s. It's fantastic stuff, and going on to my Amazon Wish List. We
didn't make it to volume 2.
This is really terrific video. When you're watching a documentary like
the recent Scorcese thing on Blues or the less recent American Roots
Music on PBS, the best part is always the performances. But there
usually aren't enough of them, and they often get talked over. This
stuff is pure performance, culled from a number of television shows.
It's often artificial, but the performances are just fascinating. It's
great to see on stage people like T-Bone Walker, Sonny Terry and
Brownie McGhee, Sonny Boy Williamson, Willie Dixon (oddly, the one
singing performance of his last night was very uncharacteristic of his
style, and not very satisfying), Muddy Waters, Sippie Wallace, and
more. It's always funny to see how uncomfortable everyone is when they
stop peforming and introduce the next performer. Both sound and video
are exquisite, this is one music DVD that would get repeated viewings.
Highly recommended.
1:39:40 PM Permalink
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The Twilight of Seafood. The world's fish (and the people who catch them) are in deep, deep trouble. The latest item on this subject is last week's official recommedation by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) for a total ban on cod fishing off the coast of Scotland. The Canadians (and New Englanders) were forced to implement a similar total ban on cod fishing ten years ago to no avail - after a decade, the cod there still haven't recovered into a sustainable resource. Hundreds of years ago delicious cod were so plentiful in the Atlantic you could practically scoop them up in a basket. No more; catches have catastrophically plummeted from 2,000,000 tons of Atlantic cod per year caught in the 1960s to virtually nothing today. [SciScoop]
12:55:02 PM Permalink
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Hearts and Minds in Iraq. Hearts and Minds: Post-War Civilian Deaths in Baghdad Caused by U.S. Forces. "Adil abd al Karim al Kawwaz was driving home from his in-laws' house in Baghdad one night in August with his wife and four kids. It was dark, and he couldn't see the American soldiers from the 1st Armored Division operating a checkpoint with armored vehicles and heavy-caliber guns. No signs or lights were visible, and he did not understand that he was supposed to stop. So he drove a bit too close and the soldiers opened fire, killing him along with three of his children, the youngest of whom was 8 years old.
Such accidents are no longer rare in Iraq. They occur at checkpoints, during raids or after roadside attacks as edgy U.S. soldiers resort with distressing speed to lethal force." "The precise number of Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. soldiers since the end of major military operations is unknown....'It’s a tragedy that U.S. soldiers have killed so many civilians in Baghdad, but it’s really incredible that the U.S. military does not even count these deaths.'" [MetaFilter]
10:21:15 AM Permalink
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Mother Theresa: a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud
Christopher Hitchens is not one who pulls punches. He wrote a less than flattering biography of Mother Theresa, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, and.now that the Pope has beatified her, he writes a scathing comment in Slate.
This returns us to the medieval corruption of the church, which sold indulgences to the rich while preaching hellfire and continence to the poor. MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself—and her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?
Awarding her the Nobel Peace Prize was one of the absolute low points in the prize's history, and saying that is saying very much indeed. [Secular Blasphemy]
9:44:24 AM Permalink
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Hey, hey
The text for today on Today in Literature is "Song to Woody," one of the two original songs on Bob Dylan's eponymous first album. Recorded on this date, 41 years ago:
...I'm out I'm out here a thousand miles from my home
Walkin' a road other men have gone down
I'm seein' your world of people and things
Of paupers and peasants and princes and kings.
Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song
'Bout a funny old world that's comin' along
See, it's sick and it's hungry and it's tired and it's torn
It looks like it's dyin' and it's hardly been born.
I'm a-leaving' tomorrow, but I could leave today,
Somewhere down the road someday.
The very last thing that I'd want to do
Is to say I've been hittin' some hard travelin' too.
Bob Dylan hasn't changed a bit in 40 years; so many echoes in that song of the career that was to come.
9:17:24 AM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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