Gina Harris's Blog, page 137

Band Review: Tracy Bone

Tracy Bone is country and I don't mind.
I attribute this at least partially to her being Canadian, which may give her version of country a different (and better) flavor. Also, though, even when a genre isn't your favorite, often someone who does it well stands out more, and you can like and appreciate them more.
Her country of origin may also make her First Nations heritage come through differently. I found references to her tribal background much more difficult to find, and the abuse through the residential schools - which Canadians seem to have dealt with more openly - are more prominent in her work, especially on "Woman of Red".
Favorite tracks for me include "Lonely With You" and "The Air I Breathe". She infuses them with a freshness and sweetness that is found in many of the songs, coming from her voice and delivery. There is also often an element of fun, like on "Do It For Me".
Although I do not remember seeing Tracy Bone featured in For the Generations, she has toured with the Women of the Four Winds tour.
https://www.facebook.com/TracyBoneSongs/
https://www.reverbnation.com/tracybone
https://www.youtube.com/user/tracyandjc
https://twitter.com/TracyBone

The Snow White Selfie Shoot

Being a princess isn't all dancing around in long skirts and communing with nature. Often you are expected to develop artistic skills, making you more of an ornament to the court. Sketching and music are reasonable pursuits.


If you have a wicked stepmother, things are different. You may be expected to labor, with chores so difficult that it makes taking care of seven miners for room and board seem like a good deal. Fortunately, you can often get your animal friends to help you, or at least not get in the way.

Well, maybe not cats so much. Woodland creatures might work better.



But greyhounds are kind of like deer, right?

The witch with the apple looks awfully familiar. Is she really just my stepmother?


I thought apples were supposed to be good for you.


I was tired anyway.

I have to wake myself up, because there's still no prince.

Maybe that will be a different story.

Dressing up: Halloween edition

If you have been following along, there were four components to dressing up. One was going bare-legged more. I may take a break on that one for a few months, but it was the easiest to do.
Next up was trying cosplay. I did that at Comic-Con and it was fine. That brings us to Halloween.
Because the point of this is reconciling with my appearance - as I am - I had been leaning toward Ursula from The Little Mermaid. She is full-figured and still owns her sexuality. She may be evil, but her self-esteem is strong. There were Ursula costumes available, but the tentacles seem to drive the price up. In a way very similar to Comic-Con, the date started sneaking up on me where I would have to do something soon or miss it.
One of the first things I realized is that a big part of my not dressing up for years is the dread of trying to find something my size. Everything is standard, and standard is smaller than me. Still, the internet has made shopping easier. I searched on plus size Halloween costumes and started finding some options, including options for me.
I am very grateful for halloweencostumes.com. Suddenly there were many options, and they weren't even all sexy. There were multiple choices available, with some out of stock and some much more expensive than I could justify. The best option ended up being Snow White. From new Disney villain to original Disney princess? I hadn't been a princess since fourth grade. But somehow there I was ordering it.
Even though they had extended sizing (as opposed to only regular and extra large), so it was reasonable to believe it would fit, I was still scared. I have gotten so used to feeling like a freak and a monster that I had to have a backup plan, where if it didn't fit I was just going to wear all black and the witch hat I have from a few years ago. It fit. I could be a Disney princess.
I had wanted to wear it somewhere to really make it count for growth and achievement, and there just wasn't anywhere to go. I had been thinking karaoke, but before Halloween I had been invited to another karaoke thing, so really, all I did was hand out candy. There were two things about that.
First of all, the younger kids seem to enjoy having the door answered by someone in costume. I don't remember it happening when I was young, so I wasn't expecting that. But anyway, okay, dressing up can involve thinking of the children.
The other thing was that I did still feel like I needed to do something more with it. Make the most of it. I'm trying to heal years of self-doubt here. I figured out what to do, and that will go up tomorrow.
That just leaves dressing up nicely sometime over the holiday season. That can involve using clothing I already own, which will be very helpful. It will need to involve going out though.
At some point I will figure that out, and it will be a blog post. With photos!


Related posts:http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2016/09/dressing-up.htmlhttp://sporkful.blogspot.com/2016/09/my-first-cosplay.html

Curses

I found an intersection between the personal and the political blogging. One of the books on the long reading list was Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing by Melissa Mohr, and last week I used profanity politically:
https://www.facebook.com/sporktastic/posts/10154786172239074?pnref=story
I was very angry, but still collected. Using the F-word so generously was a deliberate choice. There was some shock, which I think caused people to read it in a different frame of mind than they might otherwise do. I believe my first public use of profanity was effective.
(Because of the ensuing discussion, that has become its own thing where I am doing daily Facebook posts that I futilely try to keep short, but may be useful to some and can free up the blog for the personal stuff which is probably more effective anyway. If we're not friends on Facebook and you want to be, let me know.)
I don't believe it would have been nearly as effective if I swore on a regular basis. It's not a new habit, but it was a tool that I used, and one that I have been thinking about differently since reading the book.
First of all, let me recommend the book. There is etymology and history and a lot of the interrelated things that you might not think about. For example, many words for bodily functions were not considered obscene when families were sleeping in the same bed and using the privy at the same time. That changed as privacy became a thing, which was related to bigger houses with more rooms which related to economic trends and the historical events that set the economic trends in motion.
I thought about how we use swearing a lot while reading. It didn't change my overall views, but it reinforced some things. When I talk about profanity as a tool, it goes back to the reason I read the book, and the swearing that I would have justified even years ago.
Like so many thing in the building of the long reading list, it started with a tweet. One girl tweeted that her mother called her b*tch and c*nt more than she ever heard her own name. (Yes, I will still be editing them out most of the time. But I didn't edit the book title - that asterisk is on the cover.)
It seemed profoundly sad, and yet there was a strength to the way she tweeted and the way she is in general. I was thinking of all the ways that girls and women are addressed - sometimes openly diminishing but often not obviously so - that's why I needed to check the book out. And the book wasn't really about that, but it was still a really interesting book.
That particular issue will come up more with the Slut!book, which we will get to.
For now, just words? Or not just words? It's both. We can use language carelessly, and have results we don't intend. We can use language deliberately and be very harmful or very helpful.
I try and use my words in a good way, which may incorporate shocking people, making them uncomfortable, and even offending them. Even when I get it wrong, I can promise you that I have thought about it.
Related posts:
http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-very-long-reading-list.htmlhttp://sporkful.blogspot.com/2012/08/profanity.html

Band Review: Pura Fé

Pura Fé is also one I found through the Women of the Four Winds tour, but it has been much easier finding and listening to her music. Some of her links focus on her trio, but there is a lot of information available, and while there are no upcoming shows listed the history shows some fairly recent dates.
One thing I appreciated is that while she has a variety of styles she can perform in, the albums are very focused. The songs selected for each album go together well and form a good whole. On Hold the Rain you hear Blues, and the guitar on the final track, "True Freedom" is blues sublime. For a disciple of Charley Patton and an influencer of Taj Mahal, that makes sense for Pura Fé. But then on Follow Your Heart's Desire you hear the influence of her First Nations heritage more, and then on Caution To The Wind you hear more jazz and it is a different mood again.
This unity makes each album more effective, so that a mood and message is conveyed without great effort on the part of the listener. It also provides a good reason to put in effort, listen more deeply, and hear why and how the album took its respective form.
I enjoyed the bounce and the romance of Caution To The Wind (maybe I just needed to feel something more "up" this week). Even while that appealed to me, it also includes the haunting and beautiful, "This is Progress". It works, and belongs there, but it stays with you in a different way.
There is a lot being offered here.
http://purafe.com/
https://www.facebook.com/purafetrio/
https://www.youtube.com/user/purafe
https://twitter.com/purafetrio

Band Review: Wayquay

Wayquay was also part of the Women of the Four Winds tour.
She makes interesting use of techno elements without it really becoming techno music. I would classify it still as rock, but synthesizer is used as an accent, emphasizing and affecting the mood of each song. There are aspects to "Navigate" that remind me of early Blondie. It is completely distinct, but if people like punk disco melding with rap, that could be a reason to check Wayquay out.
I also sometimes hear a Blues influence, like on "Overnight", but the overall impression is that she gets some really interesting musical textures, taking tracks in different directions.
I could not find evidence of a strong social media presence, with a Soundcloud and Twitter that aren't used and the music on Myspace and Youtube not being very easy to navigate, so there is room from improvement there. For right now going to Myspace and clicking on "Music" and "Play all" is the best bet, and it won't be as many songs as it looks like. Still worth doing.
https://myspace.com/wayquay
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS_KXZtSfGbtgfiV4ZcpdNw

Regrouping

I guess I am not done with this election after all.
I'm not sure how much that changes what I have had in mind to write for next. On one level, I feel like any self-improvement and examination I want to do had better be done quickly, because life feels very unstable.
On the other hand, how much has it helped? All the reading where I try and understand everything, and all the times where I engaged tenaciously and with care, what has any of it really accomplished? Not that I expected to influence the election - I said I didn't think I could. Even so, seeing that there are that many people who chose racism and fascism, well, I see the attraction of nihilism. What is the point?
But realistically I'm not going to become a nihilist.
I care and I try. My personality is pretty well set. It has been hard feeling so poor and isolated and tied down, like there's not much that I even can do, but a lot of people are talking about organizing. Maybe there are things I can do that I haven't thought of.
This is something that I thought I would write about today anyway. A week ago I had hope for the election, but not a lot for myself. I have come to see how much the last job loss and this one hurt my employment prospects. It doesn't matter whether there was an economic downturn or how good I was at different jobs; it's like taking a pay cut then and looking while unemployed means that I will have to take another pay cut. Realizing that when I am contemplating become Mom's home health worker - which fills several needs but is a cut in pay and prestige - well, it looked like a pretty bleak future.
What helped was not that now everyone has a bleak future, but before that a friend reached out and came and got me, solving all concerns about time and transportation and money. She gave me a chance to talk and laugh and maybe cry some but also to be enjoyed. Then another friend called and set up a time to get together. I knew I needed socialization, but I was too low to muster the effort to arrange it. People came through for me.
Then, after I got home from that, a message I had sent a while ago (August 30th actually) suddenly had an answer, because I had reached out to someone, and we got to relate to each other, and boost each other. I do have some impact.
So I have to keep being me, because I don't really know any other way to be.
It does feel like I might start swearing.

Back to me

While I do still have things to say about the state of the world, I have been needing to get back to personal writing, and maybe today is the right time. I have some stories with some hardship, but also there were people who were good to me, and maybe that makes these stories good for this time. After all, for as much as ordinary people can be horrible, they can be good too, and they often are.
About a month ago I had a doctor's appointment. I had rescheduled twice due to financial concerns, and I knew I just needed to get it over with. The rescheduled time happened to be while my younger sisters were out of town, so leaving Mom alone was a worry. My older sister was going to pick her up and have her hang out for a while there.
She was a little late (and didn't even offer me a ride to the bus stop or a MAX station or anything), but I made the bus that I needed to and was not going to be late.
I felt good about that. I also felt good because I had been getting more patient with Mom. I had been able to field her questions more gently. I wasn't actually getting her to believe we were at home, but there hadn't been any really bad moments for a few days. Yes, there were concerns about paying for this appointment and concerns about being out of insulin, but it still kind of felt like I was handling my life better.
Then I got to the doctors office and found out I was a day late.
Against all odds, there was an open slot an hour later, and they could get me in. I got that set up, then went to the bathroom and spent a few moments crying and hating myself. I wasn't getting better! I was just a stupid bonehead who couldn't get anything right! I didn't even know what day it was!
Maybe it was the strain of that day, or having Julie and Maria gone, or something about the time at Misty's apartment, but that night Mom was really persistent about asking to go home, and then she asked about her church calling - from which she had been released, at my request, because I had been doing it - and then there were bruised feelings again, and neither of us handled it well. And then she forgot it, which is the one good thing about this disease.
That was a hard day, but things happened that needed to happen. I got some more insulin samples to keep me going a bit longer, and my doctor recommended an alternative that is more affordable. It involves going to Wal-Mart, because they are the only ones who carry it, so there goes my last vestige of pride in social consciousness there, but I always understood that there were people needed to go there. Now I am one of them.
The good part is that people were helpful. The office manager was so kind. She saw how on the edge I was, and talked me down. I mean, I still needed to cry, but some kindness can really help. My medication will be about $100 a month instead of $900. I'll take that.
And I was not better with Mom that night, but I was the next day. I am spotting new things that give me ideas for how to help. There are things I can't fix, so there are always adjustments to be made. That will keep happening. I will keep getting new blank slates with her, and if that's less than ideal, there are ways in which it helps.
So I'm pretty reluctant to congratulate myself on getting better now, but I am at least not getting worse.

The devil inside

This post could have easily been titled "Sympathy for the devil". It was inspired by a recent run of think pieces trying to empathize with the Trump voters, because they have had it rough, and they aren't being racist on purpose.
I can give credit for not being evil on purpose, but I think deliberately evil masterminds are still pretty rare. However, when people are ignorant or greedy enough to downplay qualms - so they have this feeling that something might be kind of bad here but ignore it for whatever self-interested reason - that leads to a lot of horror. I can't give too much credit for that.
I do see value in trying to understand how people get this way. If you want to dismantle that, a base understanding should be helpful. Sympathy for them over sympathy for the people who are being racially profiled, or underpaid, or having their neighborhoods filled with toxins, or having their voting rights illegally stripped in an effort to maintain this abusive status quo, well, that seems misguided, and improperly prioritized.
This post is really more for those who feel guilt coming from both sides. Maybe you are socially conscious, and you try to be aware of your privilege but you have friends and family members who buy into it all. Letting them say it is uncomfortable and arguing with them is awful.
This is your periodic reminder that people can do pretty awful things without being worse than the average person. You have to make peace with that.
I'm going to speak a little more religiously today, starting right in with the Sermon on the Mount:
"For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?"(Matthew 5:46-47)
The publicans were reviled as a class, but even they were civil with family and loving with friends. You do not have to be a great person to do that. Some of that comes from cultural expectations, though natural feelings play a part.
We have bad feelings too, though, and there may be times when it is culturally acceptable to be abusive. Some of our more famous examples come from Vietnam, but one example that stuck with me came from a book, Facing the Enemy by Dean Hughes.
I believe it was part of a series; I was given it as a gift. It followed the adventures of a young Mormon boy in Far West Missouri. This book covered the Haun's Mill Massacre, but he also learns of the Danites - a band of Mormons seeking vengeance on the settlers around them. He helps a woman forced out of her home by Danites, but there is also a part where his mother is nearly raped by non-Mormons who are forcing the Mormons out of the area.
What happens is that she speaks very calmly to the men and tells them that she hopes they will tell their families how brave they were, and they slink off. That wouldn't always work, but in this case it did, and it went along with the discussion she then has with her son, reminding him that they have wives and children that they love.
The men at Haun's Mill who hacked an old man to death with a knife and shot a little boy in the head were human too. They may not have considered Mormons fully human, because they could be murderers there and then go home and plant crops and share meals with their families, but people do that. You can be appalled by it, but it still happens.
I can't tell you whether in any one situation it is worth engaging or not. My brother was here recently and ended many thoughts with "if you keep voting the way you do". We didn't bite because we promised Mom we wouldn't, and hey, he clearly does know how we vote, so we at least don't need to clarify that.
I did call him out once, a different time, to straight out ask if he was calling us stupid, and no, he was not going that far. It might have helped a little. I messaged another guy on Facebook, and he still contradicts my posts, but he has stopped doing so with name-calling. Progress? Enough progress to be worth the effort? I don't know. I just do what feels right at the moment, thinking about things all the time.
But there is one other story that comes to mind. It came from the documentary Slavery By Another Name, which I recommend, but I am only going to link to a short clip here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHUyrcHDbMw
Her great-grandfather killed eleven men because he had been illegally using them as slaves after emancipation, and he didn't want to get into trouble for it. Her family through him told a story of hardened criminals trying to escape so they could have their patriarch not be a mass-murderer.
If she can process that, you can process your uncle telling racist jokes or your cousin voting for Trump. You can see their humanity and know that they are wrong at the same time. Humanity is messy, but it's what we've got.
I still can't tell you how to handle your holiday dinners.

Band Review: Michael Bucher

Michael Bucher ended up on the review list when his manager followed me. I'm not sure I even realized initially that he was Cherokee. Then, when researching him, I found something alarming:
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/02/10/cherokee-folk-musician-michael-bucher-loses-three-fingers-accident-159133
Of course the first thought on seeing that a guitarist has lost three fingers is horror, and knowing that he sings too doesn't really change that, but in the article he sounded very optimistic.
“This is only a transition in my life and nothing—I mean nothing—will stop me from playing the songs of my ancestors for the benefit of my fans in Indian country.”
It struck me more because one of my characters has been through that. In Family Ghosts an injury temporarily keeps one guitar player from playing. It is emotionally grueling, with a lot of fear about whether recovery will even be complete. He takes comfort in Django Reinhardt and Tommy Iommi, and their triumph over injuries, and that is something that can happen. I can only wish Michael Bucher all the best. I believe there will be more music.
For his currently existing music, there is a nice variety. I appreciate that "Never Meant to Make You Bleed" doesn't devolve into country, which would have been an easy way to go. Some songs are very blues-y, especially "Fat Cats", with along with "Dirty Water" underscores Bucher's social consciousness. His personal content is full of links for important causes, especially suicide prevention.
Native elements are more pronounced in some tracks, like "Eagle Song", but even when the song is more traditionally rock, there are often important messages drawing from history. "Don't Forget About Me" is powerful and true.
Bucher also has a lovely instrumental version of "Amazing Grace".  It may give the greatest sense of what was lost in the accident, but does not lose hope of it being found again, even if the way it is found cannot currently be seen.
http://www.michaelbucher.com/
https://www.facebook.com/CherokeeMusicianMichaelBucher
https://www.reverbnation.com/michaelbucher7
https://www.youtube.com/user/michaelbucher
https://twitter.com/MichaelBucher