Gina Harris's Blog, page 133

Band Review: Camryn Wilson

Camryn Wilson is a 17-year old singer/songwriter from North Carolina.
Her age may be best reflected by her son "Blah Blah Blah", where parental things are said but not really heard. It was the song that stood out the most to me, but it also annoyed me. This is jaded teenage attitude, not adolescent exuberance. The reason she isn't listening is that she can't stop thinking about someone else, but instead of feeling the heartbreak, there was just the moping lack of respect. I may be too old for it.
The song I liked best ended up being "It's Christmas"  which brought in more child-like sentiments. That is, it does until the end, when she starts talking about all of the things she wants for Christmas. It's no worse than "Santa Baby" but that is also an annoying song.
None of which makes Camryn Wilson horrible, but she probably needs to grow up a little.
http://www.camrynwilsonmusic.com/
https://www.facebook.com/camrynwilsonmusic/
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheCamrynNicole
https://soundcloud.com/camryn-wilson-1
https://twitter.com/camrynwilson35

Native American Heritage Month 2016 - Lasting impressions

I have a few thoughts left that I want to get out.
The first one is just a bitter little thing. As George Bent got older and saw those older than him dying off, he realized that their stories and ways were being lost. He started reaching out to different writers and scholars, trying to get that history captured. One of the most responsive was George Bird Grinnell, who did end up publishing two books using a lot of information collected by Bent, much of it in conjunction with another writer, George Hyde.
Grinnell believed the Indians were worthy of respect, and saw them as a vanishing people so knew there was limited time. He still felt free to put Bent off, and deceive him, and cheat Hyde. After all, he could. Bent and Hyde were financially poor. Grinnell knew more about publishing than they did and had better resources. Why not profit from it?
That happens a lot. Sometimes it happens with a very righteous feeling that this is a favor; you don't have to help. It reminds me both how important honest self-examination is if you want to accomplish any good, and also that marginalize people have a lot of reasons for being suspicious.
One thing that may have made it easier for Grinnell to be that way is that after all, the Indians were doomed. It is still easy to forget that they are around as anything more than mascots and stories, but we lose things that way. We especially lose if we do not look to indigenous people on the environment. I had heard that before, but I didn't understand it. It is true for a few reasons.
Perhaps the most obvious one - in light of the North Dakota Access Pipeline controversy - is that native lands are often used in the worst ways. They are out of sight, which makes ignoring legal treaties easier, and so things can be done that we don't see. This can include nuclear and other kinds of waste, and fossil fuel issues. It has also included medical testing. If we want to achieve environmental justice and medical justice, we need to look at that.
That self-righteousness can come up in ways you don't expect. An environmental organization can decide that the best way to preserve lands is to keep people off of them, or only allow certain uses, but the people who were on those lands first knew how to live on them without destroying them. Maybe there's a better way.
I still remember animal rights protesters interfering with the attempts of the Makah tribe to finally get back their tradition of whale-hunting. If they were all vegetarian maybe that was not hypocritical. Even so, when we have spent centuries trying to snuff out a people, and their culture, and it is important to their well-being to reconnect to it, that can be reason enough to shut up. If we listened to them more it might improve circumstances for all whales.
Much of the environmental and medical information came from Andrea Smith's book, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. That sounds like it would focus more on rape, but that was only a small part of it. However, one point that was brought up multiple times in multiple books is that there was no rape before, at least in the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) culture. This was true for both the native women and the white women who visited them.
It was not that they didn't know that such a crime was possible, but it was regarded as a terrible crime and it wasn't done. Later on there are cases of captives being raped (that does come up in the Bent book) and it is a common problem on the reservations now, but it looks like they learned that from us.
There is room for a lot more knowledge here. The Haudenosaunee had defined gender roles, but were still equal. Was the equality why they didn't rape? What other cultures didn't rape, and which ones did? Our culture says that rape is a terrible crime, but given how we treat it, it's like we don't really mean it. What sets apart the societies that are not like that?
Perhaps that is the most important lingering thought: we do not have to be this way.
White supremacy was invented. It has deep roots, but it is not innate. We can overcome that.
Even cultures that see different roles for men and women can see them as equal. We can do that.
There is plenty of evidence of how horrible we can be, but it is not the only story.
With that, I leave which books appear to be the most important out of those that I read this time around.
Sisters in Sprirt: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influences on Early American Feminists, by Sally Wagner Roesch
Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide, by Andrea Lee Smith
The Invention of the White Race, Volumes 1 and 2, by Theodore W. Allen
Related links:
http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2017/01/10/standing-rock-to-the-world-10-indigenous-and-environmental-struggles-you-can-support-in-2017/
https://mic.com/articles/164608/senate-john-hoeven-indian-affairs-committee#.uHmwM4S8D

Native American Heritage Month 2016 - Synergy

I have made peace with how susceptible I am to mission creep, especially when it comes to studying.
That is partly just because I really like learning, but also I have come to see that often things fit together well. The extra book rounds out the total picture, or it simply brings one corner more into focus.
Sometimes it is just that part of a topic is more familiar. That can make digesting the material easier, but it can also have pangs. Every time I see the name Black Kettle now there is a drop in my stomach, because it means Sand Creek is coming.
There were things that worked together well this time around, sometimes in unexpected ways. I did not expect reading up on Native American history to get me compulsively reading Hellboy comics, but that is all right. Here are other things that were unexpected.
Around the middle of the reading I read Full-Rip 9.0: The Next Big Earthquake in the Pacific Northwest, by Sandi Doughton. I did not expect that to relate at all. If anything, pending cataclysms feel more and more likely, and I like reading about things to be prepared. I didn't expect how many Indians would appear, but there were all these tribes I had just been reading about, because they had stories of the last great quake and tsunami. I knew that - the Coos retelling affected me deeply - but I hadn't been thinking about it.
The book I finished right before Sisters in Sprirt: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influences on Early American Feminists was Why We Lost the ERA, by Jane J. Mansbridge. It was not intentionally related. The blog series that I started on the Constitution back in March had expanded to include failed amendments, and when I got to the Equal Rights Amendment I thought I needed more knowledge. I had added Mansbridge's book to my Goodreads list a while back, so that was the obvious place to go. Together that was a good block of feminist history, and that perspective does not hurt for someone trying to find her way as an intersectional feminist today.
(There were interesting correlations to how conformity could be expected in movements. It hadn't really been that long since I had finished Utopia either.)
Deciding to read The Invention of the White Race, Volumes 1 and 2, by Theodore W. Allen, was more deliberate. Actually, it came from a Black History Month. In 2014 I read How the Irish Became Whiteby Noel Ignatiev, and it was terribly disappointing (boring in its execution and concluding ridiculously). Someone suggested Allen's book to me then, and it occurred to me now that this was the time to read it, though that is no small undertaking.
What Allen says about race is important, but he spends a lot of time establishing groundwork, including a lot of time on English oppression of the Irish. It had many corollaries with treatment of indigenous people by colonists in the Americas. One interesting aspect of that is that there are ways in which taking over a society with its own hierarchies goes more smoothly than with a more communal society. Given capitalism's relationship with colonialism, that makes sense, but again it was something I hadn't really thought of.
What you may not know is that I am also working on a gardening reading list. I have been even worse about adding things to that, but a couple of books may relate.
The potato monoculture in Ireland left the Irish vulnerable to famine, which is well-known. It may be less understood that centuries of persecution and theft had left the Irish vulnerable to a monoculture. The potato kept them from starving when there were few other options. (That is lightly covered in Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire, but there is much more about that in Allen's book.)
Many of the circumstances that favored the imposition of chattel slavery (an evil in itself) and caused a great deal of hardship even for the free was focus on tobacco monoculture in colonial Virginia. People couldn't eat it, but it was still all they wanted to plant because money could be made. (Though with everyone planting it, prices went down.)
Allen spends a lot of time on the capital investments necessary for sugar production and tobacco production, going over economic development and the growth of slavery in the West Indies and Virginia, and their similarities and differences. The most glaring similarity was that these were cash crops that were labor-intensive and planted by people that didn't want to do the work themselves.
Tobacco has the added perk of being poisonous, which is still an issue for farm workers who are often minors (something I was reminded of when researching the Child Labor Amendment).
But here's the other thing I know: the natives farmed! They practiced animal husbandry. In some areas they had summer homes and winter homes. They worked and played, but it wasn't recognized as such by the colonizers. Some of that was because they were looking for profits in a cash economy instead of a subsistence economy, but some of that is not recognizing easier, more natural systems. This brings me to Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway, which showed me a lot about how we fight nature when we should be learning from it.
So the path of success for the Virginians was that you had to do back-breaking work of breaking sod, hoeing, planting, weeding, and harvesting a crop that could sicken them, and they could starve with a barn full of it, in the hopes of becoming rich and living a life of leisure, for which they killed and chased out people who were already living a better life. Plus they enslaved others.
"Civilization" doesn't seem like a good word for that.

Native American Heritage Month 2016 - Overview

Actually being able to start my reading in November did not lead to actually finishing in November, but I don't feel horrible about the time involved. There was a lot of reading, some of it quite challenging. While various concerns came up during the reading, solutions arose as well.
Last year I reviewed one Native American artist each week in November, but I hadn't started the reading quite yet. This year not only did the reading sync up with the listening, but I only reviewed indigenous artists.
One of the concerns - which I mentioned in another post - was this feeling of being rushed. I only reviewed Native musicians not only for immersion but also because I wanted to make sure that I got everyone who was waiting. I read more books because I wanted to be sure to read all of the books.
I can think of some possible reasons (possibly reflecting a sense of foreboding related to the election) for a sense of urgency, but then there was also the thought of another year coming, and what would I do then? Part of the answer came through a completely different concern.
Previously many of the Native American musicians I reviewed came through a special I had watched, For the Generations. I had a list of artists left from that, but as I was getting ready to check out one of the artists, Dawn Dumont, she turned out to be more of a standup comedian than a musician. Well, comics go on tour too.
I didn't want to ignore her, and reviewing standup comedy was an intriguing idea, but I did not see any upcoming performances that I could get to or archives of recorded performances. However, she did have a book. I added that to my reading list, and next year I will read Nobody Cries at Bingo.
The artists themselves provided solutions for me. I have had a hard time finding poets, but one of the books, Dreaming the Dawn, included interviews with poets. I have several more names to check out now. Tracking down their individual work may still be difficult, but it helps.
It seems that they are never only artists. Two of the books I read were by musicians (Robert Mirabal and Jana Mashonee) I had reviewed last year. Many of the musicians also make instruments or weave baskets or make jewelry, and the poets also draw and sculpt. Because creativity is so important to me, I take inspiration from that.
I will have more to say about how they worked together, but here is a quick overview:
Musicians reviewed:
Davidica Little Spotted HorseMichael BucherWayquay Pura FéTracy BoneMartha RedboneUlaliLitefoot
Books read:
Sisters in Sprirt: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influences on Early American Feminists, by Sally Wagner Roesch
Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide, by Andrea Lee Smith
Skeleton of a Bridge, by Robert Mirabal
To the American Indian: Reminiscences of a Yurok Woman, by Lucy Thompson
American Indian Story - the Adventures of Sha'Kona, by Jana Mashonee
Dreaming the Dawn: Conversations with Native Artists and Activists, by E. K. Caldwell
Seven Hands, Seven Hearts: Prose and Poetry, by Elizabeth Woody
Halfbreed: The Remarkable True Story of George Bent -- Caught Between the Worlds of the Indian and the White Man, by David F. Halaas and Andrew E. Masich
Related Posts:
http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2016/02/native-american-heritage-month-2015.html
http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2017/01/a-year-for-comics.html

Band Review: No Devotion

No Devotion is a mostly Welsh band that I was checking out based on the recommendation of Gerard Way. They turned out to be surprisingly familiar.
Singer Geoff Rickly is formerly of the band Thursday, whom I had just been listening to because of something else I was working on. The other band members - Stuart Richardson on bass, Jamie Oliver on keyboards, and Mike Lewis and Lee Gaze on guitars - had previously been together in Lostprophets. Their band's dissolution shattered many of my younger friends. While there's no question about whether that breakup was the right thing to do, it's nice to know that it wasn't the end.
One possible band influence listed is The Cure. I can kind of hear that, but right as I was typing that I am listening to "Stay", and the way the beat tracks, and I just think No Devotion is funkier.
Where I can see the resemblance more is in an often similar sense of yearning, which is there. Still, without being so completely grounded in Robert Smith's psyche, No Devotion ends up sounding a bit more extraterrestrial. My mental image was that these are sounds carried over space winds to your cosmic radio, which may make the yearning more poignant.
Permanence is a very good album, but don't neglect checking out "Only Thing" which appears to be the B-side for "10,000 Summers".
http://nodevotion.com/
https://www.facebook.com/nodevotion
https://twitter.com/nodevotionband

Band Review: The Old Days

The Old Days is a modern pop band that I came to via member Scott Chesak, who also plays keyboards for The All-American Rejects.
"Modern" pop is the band's chosen descriptor, while their name implies something opposite of that. Musically, they are equally tricky to place.
At times there are echoes of something that I think is familiar but can't identify. It's almost like in the '90s when some bands got kind of hippie-ish, but not really. Like, they don't sound like Natalie Merchant, but I think she might enjoy listening to them.
Their sounds often build in a way that sounds triumphant, but it never becomes loud. It's almost like there is a distance of time, where these are good memories and going over them brings the feelings back, but I can't really say it sounds nostalgic either.
I guess that leaves the music as intriguing.
https://www.facebook.com/TheOLDdaysmusic
https://theolddaysmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-old-days-ep
https://www.youtube.com/user/theolddaysmusic/
https://soundcloud.com/the-old-days-music
https://twitter.com/TheOldDaysMusic

Reasons to see Hidden Figures this weekend

I saw a tweet from LeslieMac about who would be willing to plan something on a city level to give this movie a good opening. That sounded like something I could possibly do.
Shortly after I post this, I am going to add all my Facebook connections to an event that does already exist for reminding people to go. This post will come first to explain why.
https://www.facebook.com/events/185411138543402/
The first obvious reason is to encourage young people interested in STEM. While I believe we have made some progress, both gender and race bias exist in education, and that especially occurs in math and science.
We also know that there is potential to be good at math and science everywhere, and that people with those skills are often able to figure out how to make things happen. Sometimes it is getting a man into orbit, but an understanding of physical properties, natural laws, and how to calculate their interactions can take us many other places.
The movie is not directed at children, but they can enjoy it. Rated PG for mild language and thematic elements, it should be suitable for older children. I was just watching a segment of cast member Taraji P. Henson's guest appearance on the talk, and Julie Chen said her 7-year old son loved it and wanted to see it again.
I was surprised to see that the resources on the movie site do not capitalize on inspiring young people - especially those who might be otherwise discouraged from it - in math. Local resources may vary, but at least for my area, the Washington County Museum's exhibit on the Silicon Forest included a segment on women in technology, and a trip there could be a way of extending the conversation.
http://www.washingtoncountymuseum.org/home/
The movie resources include on PDF on faith and one on family. The family one is a lightly changed version of the faith one, and it doesn't focus as much on family as on community, but I like some of the questions it asks about what you might not be noticing. That capitalizes on the theme of "hidden figures", which represents both the solutions to be uncovered for solving their physics problems, and women themselves, relegated to the basement, could enough to do the work but not to be seen.
http://www.hiddenfigurestickets.com/resource-materials/
Inspiring people of all ages to believe that they can do things that defy the expectations of others, inspiring people to not allow the judgment of others to pigeonhole them, is reason enough to buy a movie ticket. It might not be reason enough to make an event and focus so hard on the opening weekend, even if there are some really good actors in it (which there are). Here are some reasons for the push:
Hollywood still likes to pay women less and pass over movies with women in the lead. They have often overlooked actual data in order to stick with that nonsense, but it still doesn't hurt to have such a movie report good box office sales.
Hollywood does the same thing with Black people. And they do this with other people of color. Then it becomes a reason to cast Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves as samurai, or make the live-action Mulan about a white guy, or have a Hawaiian native played by Emma Stone. I could go on, but I think the point is clear.
Sometimes Hollywood seems to think that only really loud movies sell. And then a cozy little book like The Hobbit becomes a convoluted, bombastic, three-part movie. Action films can be great, and broad comedies, but there should be lots of different types of movies out there, and part of making that happen is to go see them.
Because bigots are already trying to sink the movie. The IMDB board for it is full of people questioning that it happened, calling it PC revisionism. It's not getting as much publicity as the backlash against the new Ghostbustersbut it's the same concept: sad people clinging so tightly to white supremacy that any acknowledgment or credit for any other race or gender cannot be allowed. It's pathetic, and it becomes more important to fight it every day.
So I will post this, and I will invite, and in my post I will also tag mothers of smart little girls and people I know who are good at community organizing. And also I will go see a movie.

Something better out there

Two of the books that I read were good, and I enjoyed them, but since then I have read books that I found more helpful.
The original two were numbers 16 and 17 on the Long Reading List:
Columbine, by Dave Cullen (2009)
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through The Madness Industry, by Jon Ronson (2011)
More recently I have read these two:
The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain, by James Fallon (2013)
Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings, by Katherine S. Newman, Cybelle Fox, David Harding, Jal Mehta, and Wendy Roth (2005)
I believe I found out about Rampage through the notes in Columbine; the books are not competing with each other. If they were, I gave both of the previous books higher ratings on Goodreads. I don't think I have become meaner in my ratings, but for readability, the less enlightening books were more gripping.
I also can't rule out that at least part of the helpfulness of the later books came from the foundation laid by reading the earlier works. There are things that I understand better and get faster when they are in areas where I have spent more time. That's one reason I never consider any reading wasted. (Well, unless it's a really terrible book, but none of these were.)
So that was just something that was interesting for me. Some sources of knowledge are more helpful than others, but you may not know about them. If it's still moving forward, that's worth something. That can be true of books, and courses you take, and assignments you give yourself, and the people you spend time with. They say when the student is ready the teacher will appear, but I think there are teachers everywhere if we are open to them.
As fascinating as all of that is, it would feel unfair to not explain the differences between the books.
Columbine told the story of one shooting, and it had some basic elements of school shootings, but was very specific to the situation there. In significant ways it ended up being more about law enforcement, media, and their failings in this situation. Rampage compared two shootings for a government commission where they were trying to get to the roots. They did a lot more statistical analysis. I suspect these factors explain why the one that answered the most questions and the one that read better were not the same, but they both have important information.
The Psychopath Test started with a mysterious book arriving anonymously and tracking down the puzzle, which seemed to be the work of someone who was mentally off. That led to questions about the nature of sanity, and the book is kind of a romp as it explores that topic, and what it means to be a psychopath. It is very interesting, and it does talk about the test, but it is much fluffier than The Psychopath Inside.
There a neuroscientist accidentally discovers that scans of his own brain are remarkably similar to the brain scans of diagnosed psychopaths. He doesn't always do a great job of making the more scientific parts comprehensible, and he often comes off as kind of a jerk (which makes sense in light of the brain scan), but it is fascinating. There is a much deeper understanding of how the brain works, how different areas associated with psychopathy work together, and - although he does not realize it - he really helped my understanding of what's wrong with libertarianism.
One thing that I am seeing a lot of through other sources is how psychopathic behavior is learned, which is not so present in these books. I believe Ronson addressed that some psychopaths do seem to grow out of it (at least they decide there is a value in ending their antisocial behavior and are able to go with it), but from these books alone it is easy to imagine that with the wrong combination of nature and nurture there is no hope. I suspect that is not true, and that society can do better.
Perhaps that is one of the books I will find this year.
Related links:
http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-very-long-reading-list.html

A year for comics

I wanted to start writing about my Native American Heritage Month reading this week, but I am still finishing two of the books.
That is after already reading six, plus some others that we will get to. Last year I ran into an issue with having a hard time finding books I had planned to read through the library. I had to completely rearrange my intended reading, but then I also added the books I could not find to my Amazon wish list so I would remember that at some point I needed to buy them.
I felt a sense of urgency with both books and music this year, which will also get more time later, so I ended up buying all of the Native American books except for one, Native Americans in Comic Books: A Critical Study. That was partly price, because in the first round I bought the four least expensive ones, and then I added some, but I kept holding back from that one, without being sure why.
Along with more historical books, I like reading some poetry and comics on the subject, though they can be hard to find. Reading material with stereotypes can be educational, but it wasn't necessarily the way I wanted to go. I was looking at Rob Recommends on Blue Corn Comics:
http://www.bluecorncomics.com/
Various titles that I searched for were not available through the library, and even hard to find to buy, but when I searched one title, Darkness Calls, that showed up as a Hellboy arc. Not only that, it was in my digital library. All right!
It started in the English countryside, which did not seem promising. He was quickly transported away from that, but then he was traveling through Russian folklore. I reached the end, and read into The Wild Hunt to get some resolution, and still no Indians. Upon further searching, there is a completely different, anti-suicide themed comic with a similar title, and that's what I should have been reading.
I kept thinking that I should just get that last book from my wish list, and it would give me ideas for comics to read, but it still didn't seem right.
Two things became clear from this, and Hellboy was important in both of them because of the way I devoured those arcs.
One is that when I do read that critical study, it is going to send me off down some path that I do not have the free time for right now. Next November it will be my first book.
Also, I have a lot of comics that I have been neglecting to read. My Dark Horse bookshelf has 172 titles, and 196 on Comixology. Okay, I have read a lot of them, especially on Comixology, but sometimes there were great offers that I only had time to accept, not to read. That includes an amazing Hellboy sale Dark Horse had.
In addition, a lot of them were free introductory volumes, many of which I have read but where I wanted to get back to the series because it seemed promising. Sometimes I read all of the series that was out up to that point, but more was going to come out. It's time to circle back.
So in 2017 I am going to read a lot of comics. The next two library request batches will include Hinterkind and Amuletsand I will be making my way through my Hellboy backlog one or two (and maybe sometimes three) issues per day.
That leads to another thing: there are individual issues on Goodreads now, at least for some of them. I mean, I am used to trades being there, and I have sometimes marked a trade as read and written a review even if I only read the individual issues (despite missing out on bonus content like sketches and essays).
It is very hard to write a review of a single issue. If it makes you want to read the next issue it did its job, but to speak coherently about themes and impact without having the full storyline is not something I am used to. At first I was writing inadequate single phrase reviews, which did not feel right. Then I left no comments, and that did not feel great, but it was better than a pointless review. Then a friend saw one of the blank ones and asked for a review!
I figured that out. I will mark the issues as read, and then when I complete the arc I will post review comments on the first episode of the arc. (Hellboy arcs are more clearly delineated than lots of books.)
I am not going to put reviews up for Darkness Calls and The Wild Hunt until I get back there and look back over them. As tempting as it was to go on, I went back to the beginning and I will be getting the full view this time.
Continuity is exceptional in Hellboy.

Band Review: Hidden Hospitals

Hidden Hospitals is a Chicago rock band.
I have a hard time thinking of similar bands. At times they remind me a little of Taking Back Sunday. Hidden Hospitals has toured with The Used, who have also toured with Taking Back Sunday, so maybe that gives an idea.
While they just released their first album, Surface Tension, last year, they have had two EPs previously.
I am most drawn to EP 001, from 2011. Distortion is used effectively, giving the songs an emotional heft. I like the sequence of "One to Ones" and "Controlled Chaos" there.
It's not that I don't hear those same elements on the album (the intro on the second track, "Rose Hips", really caught my ear), but there is enough of an emotional component to how we connect to music that it is not always predictable (or logical).
On a philosophical level I appreciate the band's biography, though it really reads as more of a definition for Hidden Hospitals:
“Places revealed to those seeking resuscitation, rejuvenation, decompression, atonement.”
It is hopeful to believe that healing spots are available when needed, and can be found. I think many people can connect to that.
So a good place to start is probably "Rose Hips", the second track on the album. There is a video, it is probably the emotional powerhouse of the album, and the guitars on it are pretty good.
http://www.hiddenhospitals.com/#weare
https://www.facebook.com/hiddenhospitals
https://www.youtube.com/user/HiddenHospitals
https://twitter.com/hiddenhospitals