Your family is very unreasonable, not immediately jumping into the auto and driving to Kansas... or the Dakotas... or where ever. I think it's time for an intervention...of something, by someone, to explain to them why they are so lucky to have the opportunities of seeing our great but fading empire. But I'm certain they love you anyway. Thanks for sharing about the hotel. I hope they make it. The federal government pays twice the normal rate for illegals to stay in hotels here in Texas. Maybe they can get that deal. Great money maker.
I miss road trips. My hubby has RA, so longer drives are bad. There will be no Kansas or South Dakota in our future (I'm boycotting the TSA so no flying for me). Maybe Charleston, when his mother passes. We're kind of stuck at home right now.
I've grown to despise the psychology and psychiatry business, for different reasons, but the worst is the batshit experimentation. They torture humans and animals for no purpose other than "just to see." How is that "understanding" (derived from a batshit experiment) supposed to be applied? Because frankly, our own common sense achieves good results in most cases. Do we need to study children growing up in violent streets to know it's undesirable?
Would it be cynical of me to suggest that the "need to study children growing up in violent streets" is connected in some way to a need to justify grants and funding?
I type this from my backyard. Mostly clear skies and 60˚ which is absolutely GLORIOUS for us pasty-white, shriveled PNWers. I have to spray my Mac off with compressed air constantly because of all the pollen falling on my computer.
This alone makes reading the news (Iran seizing container ship in Straits of Hormuz!?!?!?--PRAY FOR PEACE!) much more palatable. It is truly amazing how much environment influences behavior, mood, cognition--just wanted to echo Chris's counsel to get out and touch grass.
I won't make it to Kansas--but nearly all of the Johnson/Nelson extended clan is in SD, ND, MN.
Minnesota joke: Wanna know why the Mississippi River runs south?
Cuz Iowa sucks!
My brother and I drove cross country back in 99. He finished sub school in Groton Connecticut, and was assigned to Bangor, WA. So I flew out and we drove here.
My dad was one of five, mom one of two. We are the only kooks who moved out West. Dad died when I was 4.5, and we've never really met the larger family. Step dad interference, and the new step-in-laws became extended family.
So brother and I drive into this small town in western Minnesota to meet one of our Aunt/Uncles we'd only seen 20+ years before when our Dad died.
We'd been driving all morning, so pulled into a small corner store to get snacked up before meeting everyone. The clerk was a woman in her 60s. She looked at us and said, "You must be the Nelson boys."
How small is a town that everyone knows when two nephews are planning to drop by?
This is a long post to say that when we went to dinner with all of our cousins/aunts/uncles in Sioux Falls, we felt like aliens. Both Alan and I had been all over the world, had advanced degrees, fancied ourselves as 'cosmopolitan'.
We may have been cosmopolitan, but we were tribe-less. No anchor. Our small town extended family members were/are, in many ways standing on much more solid ground than those of us who moved away.
I think of this often. Popular culture has disdain for the simple. The quaint. The small. Middle America.
Thank you Chris for reminding us of the places most of us or at least most of our parents actually came from. A simpler time...and yet they have an Orchestra.
That is good as well. I never lived in either place--was born in Grand Forks, ND and we moved to the southwestern tip of Washington when I was 2...so no memories of the midwest--but I absolutely love any well-played regional shit-talking!
At least 25% of all sports is in the psyops we employ--and it cracks me up to this day. I guess the boy never truly leaves the man...
Washington is the farthest West state I've ever been to. Went to Seattle to catch a cruise ship. Took Amtrak all the way across from Chicago. It was gorgeous. Even the boring flat states. America is a pretty place.
Check this out. This is the event we produce every August. The school is from the movie "10 Things I Hate About You"--looks like Hogwarts. We race up and down the stairs in this stadium--fundraiser for our animal rescue. I'm gonna delete the link shortly--but wanted to show you.
America is beautiful. Washington, especially July/Aug/Sep is simply 'stop you in your tracks beautiful'.
This place--kinda like the Golden Gate Bridge--it one of those rare places where God's Beauty/Natural World is in perfect juxtaposition with 'what man can do at his best'. I run these stairs every weekend, it is like church to me.
Thanks for your kind words--but like those bumper stickers, "who rescued who?"
I had to check out the website...wife put up new video from last year. Yes, that's me. It is just a race...and yet...
It is a meaningful event for me.
We added the Heroes Race last year--those were the people wearing weighted vests. Teams of three: mil/fire/police. It was so inspirational people were crying tears of joy.
.....
edited...inappropriately shared stuff about our event on another's blog. Got carried away in convo...
Too bad it's being controlled by assorted degenerate Seattle lunatics. Also one of the first to go mail in only cementing leftist control. Thanks to " the top elected republican on the west coast." How's your new day job at the D.C. DNC going Kim?
It has gotten crazier over time. My legislative district was 2 republican reps and 1 republican senator--all dem now. Small glimmer of hope--referendums pushing back on some of the nonsense are finding traction, and there is a local conservative billionaire funding it.
I bet that lady in the shop thought you & your brother looked just like your Dad did when he was 25yo (or one of your uncles or cousins). I love this story and thank you for sharing it.
Wow, had never thought of that. I was chalking it up to small town gossip. Pretty sure this was 99/maybe 2000--but we sw a home for sale for $40K. Nearly crapped my pants! We paid more for our Jeep SUV!
Thanks for this thought Belling--I'm going to share it with my brother. He'll also appreciate it. He was 18 months when we lost our dad--basically zero memories of him.
After my dad passed, I found young pictures of him that I regretted not having seen when I could have asked him for the stories behind them.
Sounds to me, though, like you do have a tribe, if you want. Who we are isn't just having gone places and done things; human beings are built for connected stories and characters -- heroes, goofballs, saints, and black sheep. I hope you & your brother go back to hear more of the family lore. Somebody thereabouts probably has a stack of old photo albums with all the pictures, your dad and the rest of your kin, from way back when. And the stories. Good luck!
Thanks Belling. You're right. And there is also the 'build my own tribe' thought as well which is essentially what I'm trying to do with our race up and down stairs. Our race mission (fiscal goal is to fund our animal rescue) is to build character, connection, and community through shared struggle.
Oh, I meant to tell you. We have this 'cat-fence-in' surrounding our back yard fence. Keeps 99% of our cats inside our backyard...except for one. He's figured out how to jump it--so we put him in a dog harness with an Apple AirTag. I always think of this when I read your name.
Years ago I took a teaching job in a very small rural town. I had never been there before. On the 2nd day I went to the paint store to buy paint for the new apartment. The phone rang and the clerk excused herself to answer it. She then turned and handed the phone to me and said, "It's for you."
Ah, I love your optimism..."I immediately ran around the house and announced that....." it put a grin on my face. We will be heading to the Minack Theatre in Cornwall in the summer, to see whatever is playing. It's an unusual and iconic venue, carved out of a sheer cliff face with views out over the Atlantic ocean. I can't wait.
It's great to hear the regeneration of Humboldt is going well, that certainly makes a welcome change.
Ah, I have some gorgeous nighttime shots I could have shared though 😪 it looks incredible when it drops dark. Props to you for taking the trouble to search one out though, that's a lovely image.
Thank you! Maybe you could immediately run around the house announcing a trip to the UK and experience it in person? 😉 Despite the rumours, we have some gorgeous countryside (still, just), incredible history and a thriving craft beer/gin/vodka/whiskey industry! 😅
I love this post. Thank you, Chris. You brought value to my day.
I have been drawn into thinking more and more about the fundamental importance of the Arts in terms of the health and well-being of culture within a society. And I think about what is considered to be artful, and what is not; although there will and should always be varying opinions in that regard.
Iain McGilchrist speaks beautifully and passionately about the sacred nature of art and science, and life in-general. He has a lot of videos out on YouTube now if anyone prefers watching him and hearing him instead of trying to make it through his epic two-volume work of genius entitled The Matter With Things.
The ancient Greeks had it right in so many ways. Pythagoras had another big theory besides his mathematical equations; he had a theory regarding the sacredness of harmony in music and how it represents a fundamental civilizational truth beyond the music, yet it is contained within the music. We need a little Pythagorean wisdom to resurface right about now. I will keep striving to trust for good things ahead while appreciating the simple glories of each day.
First of all, Chris, thanks for reporting good news. It's great that people are trying to do human (not digital) things. But I am surprised that liberal arts, even in South Dakota, are not full of diversity. Cf. "Rethinking Blind Auditions" (https://symphony.org/features/rethinking-blind-auditions/). Whenever we bend over backward to be fair, it's never enough. Remember: IT's NEVER ENOUGH, and it never will be.
p.s. From a "10 best list":
RZA, known primarily for his influential role in hip hop as a founding member and the de facto leader of the Wu-Tang Clan, extends his artistic prowess into classical music with the composition A Ballet Through Mud.
as a longtime nyc music snob, i highly recommend both the sd symphony and rza. my favorite sd symphony recording is their string quartet doing arthur farwell's ultra-rare repertoire. hard to find, here's a tantalizing snippet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXGMIfEmVqw
farwell was an american composer, decades ahead of his time, with an otherworldly sound world i've not heard anywhere else. some call him the american bartok, and that comparison works in the sense that he drew on sioux melodies just as bartok repurposed north african sounds.
why is farwell not as well known as bartok, which he most definitely deserves to be? because some dork condemned him for "cultural appropriation"
as if j.s. bach didn't steal every peasant dance he heard
let's be fair to rza while we're at it. having seen him live i can attest to his piano chops. as a youthful rap fan in the 90s i always assumed those ominous string charts on those wu and wu-adjacent albums were samples. nope. that was rza. i guess he was the talented quiet piano-playing kid all the rappers in his hood wanted on their records. and the rest is history.
The grad students are already in the midst of far too many experiments. Better to do it with tenured profs. Or best of all, tyrants, by whom I mean, of course, rats of the administrator breed, especially spp. DEI / HR (they are the same to me) vermin.
A town near me has held “downtown revitalization” sessions, complete with flip charts and stenographers, for nearly 40 years. All they have to show are wire bound reports in a dusty bin somewhere, while outside developers cut the town in two with an ever widening throughway, and a cookie-cutter shopping center that siphons off business to corporations and is now half-vacant. Pathetic, in a place with so much to offer and so much energy from the imaginative population, and all the geographic and demographic ingredients for success, utterly lacking the political will to lift a finger and fight.
And that, unfortunately, seems to be the norm. Small towns are dying. Or dead. And gone.
War Story: Over a half century ago, in my University days, I had a girlfriend whose family farmed near a small community about a hundred miles from the city. Nice little town. Two block business district. Complete with automobile and two farm equipment dealers. Stockyard, and three grain elevators by the tracks. Repair shops, drug store, doctor's and lawyer's offices, dry goods and hardware stores. A school, two churches, and community hall. Very similar to the town near the ranch where I grew up.
My girlfriend's family were very involved in their little community. Her mother played piano in the orchestra, and the organ at the church. Her father built sets for the local playhouse, and starred as the bass singer in numerous productions. Her older, married, sisters participated in both.
They're all gone now. As is the town. My wife and I drove through there a few years ago. En route from somewhere to somewhere. (Never take a main highway when a backroad will get you there!) The tracks are gone, and the elevators, and the stockyards. And most of the businesses. Derelict buildings. Some still standing - empty windows staring at overgrown streets marked by occasional clumps of trees where houses used to be.
I guess that's progress - the highways passed them by. The railroads too. No more Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. No more Christmas concerts, Spring Flings, Saturday Night Socials, or just music for the sake of music.
It made me smile to hear about Humbolt again. I'm very happy they got their hotel open and pray they are able to make it. Small businesses have such a hard time of it in most places. I so wish it was the 60s/early 70s again. America is so generic now. (Most) Everyone speaks Valley Girl (Up speak). Everywhere has the same stores and eateries. Each place has the same products. Only the small local businesses will have different or one of a kind items, always at much higher prices, because of the cost of business.
I actually prefer antique shops/malls, Goodwill, other local thrift shops, and flea markets. Most things are different than the norm and still have intrinsic value.
Thank-you so much for this article today! Plop your wife and kids in the car today and DRIVE somewhere. (I love to drive.) Enjoy!
The US Army, in its infinite wisdom, dragged me into an infantry battalion in the Wisconsin National Guard to fill in its depleted ranks for an overseas deployment during the GWOT. I found myself standing in a room, one morning, with Capt. Grajkowski, Lt. Grochowski, Lt. Zielinski, and Pfc. Zawelski. There are still little islands out there that aren't generic America. Shrinking, though.
We deployed with the MICO from the WIARNG (not sure which BCT they had, but we took their MI geeks with us). CPT Makowski & 1SG Grabinski. Seriously. Too funny.
Meanwhile, my town, your insular city of the Manhattoes, is engaged in a multi-pronged, public/private initiative to get people to not want to visit. Ironic
At least they aren’t like New Braunfels, Tx. The town which made its name on having tourists come and float down the Guadalupe and Coma rivers using inflated inner tubes. In 1987-1990 sometime the town elected to double their property tax rate to pay for an advertising campaign to bring more tourists to town. 15 years later after the campaign had worked better than expected, the citizens of the town demanded the government do something to quell all the tourism. I’ve never seen a place that held the virtue of NIMBY(Not In My Back Yard) as New Braunfels. A small town of 65,000 citizens when I left in 1989, grandparents stayed until they were gone. The town also brags the largest police force of any small town (not sure of that population, but they seem to have at least two police cars regularly patrolling every city block at all times. Authoritarian I believe started here).
The Marxist- Democrat destruction of the economy and civil society WILL eventually make a lot of not-insane, not-masochistic people leave the Deep Blue Prison Cities/States. And other places will flourish because people and capital go where they are treated well. Sure we all want modern amenities. But at what cost? Your mental and physical health? Your children’s well being? I mean it’s coming to a head. And a lot of places are better than you think they’ll be. In surgery, there is an old saying: The solution to pollution is dilution. Translated into political terms, this means get away from Marxist mind control (the pollution). Leaving (the dilution) will break their budgets and tax rolls. When nobody can do anything any more, they will give up. Like the Russians did. At a certain point, they realized they sucked and they couldn’t muster the energy to keep up the charade. Speaking of which, there’s a very timely and well done show on Prime right now - A Gentleman in Moscow, with Ewan McGregor as a dispossessed Count living in the aftermath of the Revolution under Lenin and then Stalin. It has a number of themes that should resonate with people in Comrade Mannequin Biden’s America.
You’re not fooling anyone, Mr. Bray, I know what you’re up to! You’re planning these trips to Kansas, and South Dakota in the hopes that in your absence, someone will come and steal the cat… or maybe it will just opt to go mooch somewhere else where the food is better. Good luck with that!
Your family is very unreasonable, not immediately jumping into the auto and driving to Kansas... or the Dakotas... or where ever. I think it's time for an intervention...of something, by someone, to explain to them why they are so lucky to have the opportunities of seeing our great but fading empire. But I'm certain they love you anyway. Thanks for sharing about the hotel. I hope they make it. The federal government pays twice the normal rate for illegals to stay in hotels here in Texas. Maybe they can get that deal. Great money maker.
Danny Huckabee
I miss road trips. My hubby has RA, so longer drives are bad. There will be no Kansas or South Dakota in our future (I'm boycotting the TSA so no flying for me). Maybe Charleston, when his mother passes. We're kind of stuck at home right now.
"federal government pays twice the normal rate for illegals to stay in hotels"
True. But I couldn't help but notice that filling hotels with "illegals" is frequently the end of such facilities as actual businesses. Just sayin'.
One is never faster than the slowest member of a group. Speed goes alone.
I've grown to despise the psychology and psychiatry business, for different reasons, but the worst is the batshit experimentation. They torture humans and animals for no purpose other than "just to see." How is that "understanding" (derived from a batshit experiment) supposed to be applied? Because frankly, our own common sense achieves good results in most cases. Do we need to study children growing up in violent streets to know it's undesirable?
Would it be cynical of me to suggest that the "need to study children growing up in violent streets" is connected in some way to a need to justify grants and funding?
Well of course that's the underlying motivation. Not "human knowledge" or anything so prosaic.
One look through the DSM and you realise that Psychiatrists and Psychologists need their heads read !
Things have changed since my human sexuality seminar in 1976.
Yes, and everyone was skinny (relatively speaking)
Well, not fat, anyway. No Danger Hair, tats or piercings, and we all knew if we were male or female.
I type this from my backyard. Mostly clear skies and 60˚ which is absolutely GLORIOUS for us pasty-white, shriveled PNWers. I have to spray my Mac off with compressed air constantly because of all the pollen falling on my computer.
This alone makes reading the news (Iran seizing container ship in Straits of Hormuz!?!?!?--PRAY FOR PEACE!) much more palatable. It is truly amazing how much environment influences behavior, mood, cognition--just wanted to echo Chris's counsel to get out and touch grass.
I won't make it to Kansas--but nearly all of the Johnson/Nelson extended clan is in SD, ND, MN.
Minnesota joke: Wanna know why the Mississippi River runs south?
Cuz Iowa sucks!
My brother and I drove cross country back in 99. He finished sub school in Groton Connecticut, and was assigned to Bangor, WA. So I flew out and we drove here.
My dad was one of five, mom one of two. We are the only kooks who moved out West. Dad died when I was 4.5, and we've never really met the larger family. Step dad interference, and the new step-in-laws became extended family.
So brother and I drive into this small town in western Minnesota to meet one of our Aunt/Uncles we'd only seen 20+ years before when our Dad died.
We'd been driving all morning, so pulled into a small corner store to get snacked up before meeting everyone. The clerk was a woman in her 60s. She looked at us and said, "You must be the Nelson boys."
How small is a town that everyone knows when two nephews are planning to drop by?
This is a long post to say that when we went to dinner with all of our cousins/aunts/uncles in Sioux Falls, we felt like aliens. Both Alan and I had been all over the world, had advanced degrees, fancied ourselves as 'cosmopolitan'.
We may have been cosmopolitan, but we were tribe-less. No anchor. Our small town extended family members were/are, in many ways standing on much more solid ground than those of us who moved away.
I think of this often. Popular culture has disdain for the simple. The quaint. The small. Middle America.
Thank you Chris for reminding us of the places most of us or at least most of our parents actually came from. A simpler time...and yet they have an Orchestra.
bsn
I thought the Mississippi RUNS South, because it's trying to get away from Minnesota. 😉😊😋
That is good as well. I never lived in either place--was born in Grand Forks, ND and we moved to the southwestern tip of Washington when I was 2...so no memories of the midwest--but I absolutely love any well-played regional shit-talking!
At least 25% of all sports is in the psyops we employ--and it cracks me up to this day. I guess the boy never truly leaves the man...
bsn
Washington is the farthest West state I've ever been to. Went to Seattle to catch a cruise ship. Took Amtrak all the way across from Chicago. It was gorgeous. Even the boring flat states. America is a pretty place.
Bandit,
Check this out. This is the event we produce every August. The school is from the movie "10 Things I Hate About You"--looks like Hogwarts. We race up and down the stairs in this stadium--fundraiser for our animal rescue. I'm gonna delete the link shortly--but wanted to show you.
America is beautiful. Washington, especially July/Aug/Sep is simply 'stop you in your tracks beautiful'.
This place--kinda like the Golden Gate Bridge--it one of those rare places where God's Beauty/Natural World is in perfect juxtaposition with 'what man can do at his best'. I run these stairs every weekend, it is like church to me.
bsn
That looks pretty awesome! Looks like a very pretty place!
Animal welfare, huh? You're one of my new heroes.
Were you the Brian giving instructions in the video?
Thanks for your kind words--but like those bumper stickers, "who rescued who?"
I had to check out the website...wife put up new video from last year. Yes, that's me. It is just a race...and yet...
It is a meaningful event for me.
We added the Heroes Race last year--those were the people wearing weighted vests. Teams of three: mil/fire/police. It was so inspirational people were crying tears of joy.
.....
edited...inappropriately shared stuff about our event on another's blog. Got carried away in convo...
bsn
Too bad it's being controlled by assorted degenerate Seattle lunatics. Also one of the first to go mail in only cementing leftist control. Thanks to " the top elected republican on the west coast." How's your new day job at the D.C. DNC going Kim?
Off shore much?
It has gotten crazier over time. My legislative district was 2 republican reps and 1 republican senator--all dem now. Small glimmer of hope--referendums pushing back on some of the nonsense are finding traction, and there is a local conservative billionaire funding it.
bsn
I was gonna say …
I think Minnesota needs to workshop their Iowa slams.
I bet that lady in the shop thought you & your brother looked just like your Dad did when he was 25yo (or one of your uncles or cousins). I love this story and thank you for sharing it.
Wow, had never thought of that. I was chalking it up to small town gossip. Pretty sure this was 99/maybe 2000--but we sw a home for sale for $40K. Nearly crapped my pants! We paid more for our Jeep SUV!
Thanks for this thought Belling--I'm going to share it with my brother. He'll also appreciate it. He was 18 months when we lost our dad--basically zero memories of him.
bsn
After my dad passed, I found young pictures of him that I regretted not having seen when I could have asked him for the stories behind them.
Sounds to me, though, like you do have a tribe, if you want. Who we are isn't just having gone places and done things; human beings are built for connected stories and characters -- heroes, goofballs, saints, and black sheep. I hope you & your brother go back to hear more of the family lore. Somebody thereabouts probably has a stack of old photo albums with all the pictures, your dad and the rest of your kin, from way back when. And the stories. Good luck!
Thanks Belling. You're right. And there is also the 'build my own tribe' thought as well which is essentially what I'm trying to do with our race up and down stairs. Our race mission (fiscal goal is to fund our animal rescue) is to build character, connection, and community through shared struggle.
Oh, I meant to tell you. We have this 'cat-fence-in' surrounding our back yard fence. Keeps 99% of our cats inside our backyard...except for one. He's figured out how to jump it--so we put him in a dog harness with an Apple AirTag. I always think of this when I read your name.
bsn
Years ago I took a teaching job in a very small rural town. I had never been there before. On the 2nd day I went to the paint store to buy paint for the new apartment. The phone rang and the clerk excused herself to answer it. She then turned and handed the phone to me and said, "It's for you."
That is crazy!
bsn
"Popular "culture" ain't culture.
Its psyop dreck Ray Charles could see.
Ah, I love your optimism..."I immediately ran around the house and announced that....." it put a grin on my face. We will be heading to the Minack Theatre in Cornwall in the summer, to see whatever is playing. It's an unusual and iconic venue, carved out of a sheer cliff face with views out over the Atlantic ocean. I can't wait.
It's great to hear the regeneration of Humboldt is going well, that certainly makes a welcome change.
The Minack Theatre was new to me. Looks nice: sort of Epidaurus meets The Prisoner. Enjoy your visit
It's stunning. If only I could post pics on this site...🤣😂
Me too! But we can sneak one in with a link:
https://thirdeyetraveller.com/wp-content/uploads/MINACKTHEATRE-9-of-24-1440x1080.jpg
Ah, I have some gorgeous nighttime shots I could have shared though 😪 it looks incredible when it drops dark. Props to you for taking the trouble to search one out though, that's a lovely image.
I wish Substack would make it possible for you to post those shots.
Thank you! Maybe you could immediately run around the house announcing a trip to the UK and experience it in person? 😉 Despite the rumours, we have some gorgeous countryside (still, just), incredible history and a thriving craft beer/gin/vodka/whiskey industry! 😅
I love this post. Thank you, Chris. You brought value to my day.
I have been drawn into thinking more and more about the fundamental importance of the Arts in terms of the health and well-being of culture within a society. And I think about what is considered to be artful, and what is not; although there will and should always be varying opinions in that regard.
Iain McGilchrist speaks beautifully and passionately about the sacred nature of art and science, and life in-general. He has a lot of videos out on YouTube now if anyone prefers watching him and hearing him instead of trying to make it through his epic two-volume work of genius entitled The Matter With Things.
The ancient Greeks had it right in so many ways. Pythagoras had another big theory besides his mathematical equations; he had a theory regarding the sacredness of harmony in music and how it represents a fundamental civilizational truth beyond the music, yet it is contained within the music. We need a little Pythagorean wisdom to resurface right about now. I will keep striving to trust for good things ahead while appreciating the simple glories of each day.
I love these posts about Humboldt KS. Nice to see this follow-up!
First of all, Chris, thanks for reporting good news. It's great that people are trying to do human (not digital) things. But I am surprised that liberal arts, even in South Dakota, are not full of diversity. Cf. "Rethinking Blind Auditions" (https://symphony.org/features/rethinking-blind-auditions/). Whenever we bend over backward to be fair, it's never enough. Remember: IT's NEVER ENOUGH, and it never will be.
p.s. From a "10 best list":
RZA, known primarily for his influential role in hip hop as a founding member and the de facto leader of the Wu-Tang Clan, extends his artistic prowess into classical music with the composition A Ballet Through Mud.
It hadn't even occurred to me that the SDSO was "not full of diversity," and now I'm cringing my way through a bunch of self-shaming rituals.
as a longtime nyc music snob, i highly recommend both the sd symphony and rza. my favorite sd symphony recording is their string quartet doing arthur farwell's ultra-rare repertoire. hard to find, here's a tantalizing snippet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXGMIfEmVqw
farwell was an american composer, decades ahead of his time, with an otherworldly sound world i've not heard anywhere else. some call him the american bartok, and that comparison works in the sense that he drew on sioux melodies just as bartok repurposed north african sounds.
why is farwell not as well known as bartok, which he most definitely deserves to be? because some dork condemned him for "cultural appropriation"
as if j.s. bach didn't steal every peasant dance he heard
let's be fair to rza while we're at it. having seen him live i can attest to his piano chops. as a youthful rap fan in the 90s i always assumed those ominous string charts on those wu and wu-adjacent albums were samples. nope. that was rza. i guess he was the talented quiet piano-playing kid all the rappers in his hood wanted on their records. and the rest is history.
I bet it's about as interesting as mud, too. (Little children being interested in mud, excepted.)
I suspect little children have had an affinity for mud for the last million years. The "diverse" - perhaps somewhat less for orchestral bliss.
Hopefully that cruel kitten experiment would not be approved today. The kittens could be replaced with graduate students.
The grad students are already in the midst of far too many experiments. Better to do it with tenured profs. Or best of all, tyrants, by whom I mean, of course, rats of the administrator breed, especially spp. DEI / HR (they are the same to me) vermin.
Definitely less cruel.
A town near me has held “downtown revitalization” sessions, complete with flip charts and stenographers, for nearly 40 years. All they have to show are wire bound reports in a dusty bin somewhere, while outside developers cut the town in two with an ever widening throughway, and a cookie-cutter shopping center that siphons off business to corporations and is now half-vacant. Pathetic, in a place with so much to offer and so much energy from the imaginative population, and all the geographic and demographic ingredients for success, utterly lacking the political will to lift a finger and fight.
And that, unfortunately, seems to be the norm. Small towns are dying. Or dead. And gone.
War Story: Over a half century ago, in my University days, I had a girlfriend whose family farmed near a small community about a hundred miles from the city. Nice little town. Two block business district. Complete with automobile and two farm equipment dealers. Stockyard, and three grain elevators by the tracks. Repair shops, drug store, doctor's and lawyer's offices, dry goods and hardware stores. A school, two churches, and community hall. Very similar to the town near the ranch where I grew up.
My girlfriend's family were very involved in their little community. Her mother played piano in the orchestra, and the organ at the church. Her father built sets for the local playhouse, and starred as the bass singer in numerous productions. Her older, married, sisters participated in both.
They're all gone now. As is the town. My wife and I drove through there a few years ago. En route from somewhere to somewhere. (Never take a main highway when a backroad will get you there!) The tracks are gone, and the elevators, and the stockyards. And most of the businesses. Derelict buildings. Some still standing - empty windows staring at overgrown streets marked by occasional clumps of trees where houses used to be.
I guess that's progress - the highways passed them by. The railroads too. No more Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. No more Christmas concerts, Spring Flings, Saturday Night Socials, or just music for the sake of music.
The music is not all that we lost!
It made me smile to hear about Humbolt again. I'm very happy they got their hotel open and pray they are able to make it. Small businesses have such a hard time of it in most places. I so wish it was the 60s/early 70s again. America is so generic now. (Most) Everyone speaks Valley Girl (Up speak). Everywhere has the same stores and eateries. Each place has the same products. Only the small local businesses will have different or one of a kind items, always at much higher prices, because of the cost of business.
I actually prefer antique shops/malls, Goodwill, other local thrift shops, and flea markets. Most things are different than the norm and still have intrinsic value.
Thank-you so much for this article today! Plop your wife and kids in the car today and DRIVE somewhere. (I love to drive.) Enjoy!
The US Army, in its infinite wisdom, dragged me into an infantry battalion in the Wisconsin National Guard to fill in its depleted ranks for an overseas deployment during the GWOT. I found myself standing in a room, one morning, with Capt. Grajkowski, Lt. Grochowski, Lt. Zielinski, and Pfc. Zawelski. There are still little islands out there that aren't generic America. Shrinking, though.
Capt. Lipinski says knock it off people. That means you Bray and you Nelson.
We deployed with the MICO from the WIARNG (not sure which BCT they had, but we took their MI geeks with us). CPT Makowski & 1SG Grabinski. Seriously. Too funny.
bsn
I’m only 100 miles from Humboldt. I can be there is less than two hours. As soon as the spring rush is over, I’ll report back.
Excellent!
Meanwhile, my town, your insular city of the Manhattoes, is engaged in a multi-pronged, public/private initiative to get people to not want to visit. Ironic
At least they aren’t like New Braunfels, Tx. The town which made its name on having tourists come and float down the Guadalupe and Coma rivers using inflated inner tubes. In 1987-1990 sometime the town elected to double their property tax rate to pay for an advertising campaign to bring more tourists to town. 15 years later after the campaign had worked better than expected, the citizens of the town demanded the government do something to quell all the tourism. I’ve never seen a place that held the virtue of NIMBY(Not In My Back Yard) as New Braunfels. A small town of 65,000 citizens when I left in 1989, grandparents stayed until they were gone. The town also brags the largest police force of any small town (not sure of that population, but they seem to have at least two police cars regularly patrolling every city block at all times. Authoritarian I believe started here).
"the way you spend the hours of your life is the way you’re spending your life."
That's what Aaron Bushnell said: you are already doing what you are going to do.
Yeah, and in my case, that's pretty sad.
Don'tk yourself in.
The Marxist- Democrat destruction of the economy and civil society WILL eventually make a lot of not-insane, not-masochistic people leave the Deep Blue Prison Cities/States. And other places will flourish because people and capital go where they are treated well. Sure we all want modern amenities. But at what cost? Your mental and physical health? Your children’s well being? I mean it’s coming to a head. And a lot of places are better than you think they’ll be. In surgery, there is an old saying: The solution to pollution is dilution. Translated into political terms, this means get away from Marxist mind control (the pollution). Leaving (the dilution) will break their budgets and tax rolls. When nobody can do anything any more, they will give up. Like the Russians did. At a certain point, they realized they sucked and they couldn’t muster the energy to keep up the charade. Speaking of which, there’s a very timely and well done show on Prime right now - A Gentleman in Moscow, with Ewan McGregor as a dispossessed Count living in the aftermath of the Revolution under Lenin and then Stalin. It has a number of themes that should resonate with people in Comrade Mannequin Biden’s America.
I read that book! Had no idea there'd been a TV adaptation.
Yes. It’s worth a look. She’s a good writer- Amor Towles
Oh, I so wish I could go.
You’re not fooling anyone, Mr. Bray, I know what you’re up to! You’re planning these trips to Kansas, and South Dakota in the hopes that in your absence, someone will come and steal the cat… or maybe it will just opt to go mooch somewhere else where the food is better. Good luck with that!
SOMEWHERE ELSE WHERE THE FOOD IS BETTER!?!?!?
Don't MAKE me post video of our young ladies enjoying their wet food.