The heat outside wouldn’t let you know it but Fall is coming. The trees know. I see yellow and orange leaves popping up on the trees outside my window. Chipmunks and squirrels hurry about each morning to fill their larders for the long winter. Flocks of birds wing overhead headed to all points south. The wheel turns and the sun’s rays hit us at different angles.
We are a part of this cycle. We can change our clocks. We can turn on our electric lights. Our hearts know that this is a time to slow down. Pull family close. Turn our pursuits and our thoughts inward. Many of us fill the winter season with stressful holidays and family get togethers.
Maybe this year, we can acknowledge the wisdom of the plants and animals around us and take a little better care of ourselves.
Thanks for joining me. I hope you enjoy this week’s issue.
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Blowing Smoke
By Russell Lee - U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain
If you work for someone, there is both an explicit contract and an implicit agreement that they will pay you for that work. This social contract is as old as dirt. It is the trust on which societies and cultures have rested. Exchanging one’s labor for pay is almost instinctual. However, this story from Kentucky shows an example of what happens when that contract is broken. It’s not clear how this story ends but one of the interesting nuggets within is that the coal industry, nationwide, is only 53,000-plus jobs. For the people working in them, they are of vital importance just like any one of our jobs is important to us. But think about the political wrangling and cultural identification that’s happening around just 53,000 jobs. Walmart employs 1.5 million people in the US. The fight for their labor rights is ongoing but is dwarfed by this romantic association with the coal worker. For the people I know who’ve worked in coal or had family members working in coal, the only answer is always, “It’s the only thing we know.” They could come to know something else if we invested in those programs.
Family Definition
This song from Benjamin Tod works through the complexities of family that isn’t quite family. Many of us have those people in our lives. The family we chose instead of the family we were born to. Sometimes, those bonds are stronger than blood. Tod is a member of the Lost Dog Street Band but has a solo album from 2017 that’s quite good. The songs are confessional and sometimes uncomfortable in their rawness. His voice is at times clear and strong like a creek tumbling down a holler. At other times, there’s a gravel strain that belies the tough times Tod’s lived in the past.
The Obvious Hypocrisy
By Shealah Craighead - Public Domain
My friend pointed out that the new HBO show “The Righteous Gemstones” seems like a fictional punchup of what Politico says is happening within the Falwell Ministry. Some of us are old enough to remember Jerry Falwell crying on TV when he caught stealing money, fornicating, or lying or whatever it was he did while telling all of us not to do it. It’s the easiest joke to make. But, what’s happening with Falwell’s son at Liberty University is no joke. I’ve driven by the school many times in recent years. It’s growing at a breakneck pace. Millions and millions of dollars are going into the campus and presumably the pockets of those involved. Now, Jerry Falwell, Sr. is seeing cracks in the walls of silence and obfuscation he and his family have built. Insiders are either tired of the deception or tired of not getting a big enough slice of the pie. This is the story anyone could see coming and Politico covers it in crushing detail.
Power and Presence
Shamefully stolen from eBay
In 1987, Tina Turner visited Albany, GA on the “Break Every Rule” tour. It was the first concert I ever went to. It was the first time a girl ever kissed me. I’m not sure it’s fair to say that I kissed her back. I mostly just stood there stunned. I don’t remember anything in particular about the show except for Tina herself. A shimmery, shaking gold minidress and those legs. She owned the stage, then the people on the floor, and then the entire arena. It took thirty seconds before we were all in thrall. I loved every minute of it. It still stands in my mind as the best concert I’ve ever seen. So, I’m happy to hear that Tina is living exactly how she wants on the shores of Lake Zurich. She still seems to have the sense of humor, the poise, and the power that has been admired and copied for decades. That we should all have the chance to be exactly who we want to be.
There’s Fast, There’s Fearless
By Sérgio Valle Duarte - Own work, CC BY 3.0
I have been known to run long distances. It may be behind me now but I once ran over 40 miles in a single day. For me, it was a slow jog, a slightly faster, jog, and then a death march. But, for someone like Zach Bitter, that 40 miles is just getting warmed up. Bitter recently broke the record for the fastest 100 mile run. He covered that 100 miles in 11 hours, 19 minutes, and 13 seconds. That’s an average of 6 minutes and 47 seconds per mile. I probably can’t run a single mile that fast. Most of us probably can’t run a single mile that fast. But, Bitter did it for 100 miles. Given that’s the average, many of those miles were a good deal faster than that. While the elite marathoners try to break the two hour mark, records for the longer distances keep falling dramatically. Bitter’s team beat the old record by over 10 minutes. I’m excited to see how close humans can get to the limit for long distances like this.
The Skull
Saint Cecilia is the patron saint of musicians. Music festivals have been held in her honor since at least 1570. It makes sense then that a woman-fronted band from Los Angeles which blends many types of latin and western music would name themselves La Santa Cecilia. While the song “Calaverita” is a fun and romantic tune, other songs of theirs bend to the political and social commentary. Throughout it all, lead singer Marisol Hernandez’s voice is strong, supple, and has an emotional depth that pulls you in even if you don’t understand the Spanish words.
Only 999 Stories in the City
By ynes95 - originally posted to Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0
U.S. cities have long been a draw for people not just within the country but from all over the world. It is how we have multicultural melting pots of humanity. In many ways, those cities like New York have defined both our American ideals and our American anxieties. Now, the Atlantic tells us that the shape of those cities is changing. On the whole, people are leaving those cities. It’s more complicated than that so it might be more fair to say that the growth of those cities is plateauing or perhaps just changing, swapping out one group of people for another. To be sure, the cities are always in flux. These trends move in cycles like most other. It is curious to contemplate though a rise of the mid-tier city. Some place like Nashville or Austin or Dallas or Charlotte or Atlanta. Those kind of cities might be catching whatever outflux is happening from the large metro areas. How will the cultures shift in all of these places as new people arrive and others leave?
The Gentleman Dissenter
By Guy Mendes - Guy Mendes, CC BY-SA 3.0
I’ve written about Wendell Berry before. He’s a poet, essayist, novelist, and farmer. He has a peculiar brand of agrarian dissent. The Nation lays out a perspective on his stances across a variety of subjects. Some of Berry’s views are paradoxical to others that he’s written at length about. Sometimes, Berry has changed his mind or buried in nuance a topic on which he’d previously been clear-eyed. In short, Berry is human and he is at his best when responding to events in the moment. While much of his writing and thinking is on a long timeline that a farmer needs to think about, he also was an activist in and of the moment. This article does a good job of being honest about Berry’s views in their human complexity. It does away with the open-mouthed, nodding head, back to the farm apologists and looks at how his views, taken as a whole, might be summarized.
The Stories We Tell
By Hrald - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
Martin Shaw is a writer, philosopher, and naturalist, among other things. In this interview, he digs deep into how the myths that we tell ourselves contain the intelligence we’ve collected over centuries on this planet. It’s in some way an evocation of the power of oral history. It’s also a recognition of an idea I’ve been circling around for years, which is the possibility that narrative, simply stories, are the defining construct of our human existence. Stories are the way we make sense of, categorize, remember, structure, connect, and share all that we know and experience. I think Martin would agree with that and this interview is a novel way to get at the idea
R.E.M. Song of the Week
By Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater, Public Domain
Hurricane Dorian recently devastated the Bahamas. R.E.M. have released the song “Fascinating” to help raise funds for relief efforts. The song was originally recorded for the 2001 Reveal album. It has never been officially released. The song does some of my favorite things that R.E.M. was getting into in the later years like combining digital production tricks with simple piano melodies and even string and woodwind parts. Michael Stipe is in his sweetly vulnerable state here. At any rate, all the proceeds go to support Mercy Corps’ work helping support the people of the Bahamas. I also excited to see R.E.M. embracing Bandcamp. We need more bands on that platform.
Try to create something this weekend. Write a poem or a song. Paint a picture. Build a fence. Re-arrange a room. Put something new into the world.
Your guide,
Alex
Excellent !