Fracking sand mine video from Jim Tittle
May 31st, 2011
Rumor has it that there’s a fracking sand mine in the future down by Hay Creek. More on that here:
There’s a similar operation just across the river in Maiden Rock that’s grown with the natural gas surge, and here’s a video by Jim Tittle of what people who have to live with that mine think about it:
It’s not just about living next door. Stopping our Hay Creek mine is one part of the picture, that sand is the start of fracking, and stopping it is one thing we can do to slow the destruction of aquifers, land, and communities when natural gas drilling comes to town.
Gil Scott-Heron dead at a high-mileage 62
May 30th, 2011
Gil Scott Heron died at 62, the end of a tortured and torturous life, he was one of the few speaking out, standing up…
On Gil Scott-Heron, prelude to a performance at the Dakota last year, and “Gil,” warns his road manager, Danielle Beckom, “is not good with schedules.”
From City Pages:
By Rick Mason Wednesday, Mar 24 2010
Often called the Godfather of Rap these days, Gil Scott-Heron in fact emerged as a fiercely eloquent voice from the urban wilderness in the early 1970s, mercilessly skewering political and social forces that had disenfranchised huge swaths of the population and were leading the world down a treacherous path. A writer first and an admirer of Langston Hughes, Scott-Heron eventually fused his own poetry with a potent dose of jazz laced with blues and R&B, railing against complacent media, an oblivious mainstream America, runaway consumerism, racism, venal politicians, and drug abuse. Pieces like “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” “Winter in America,” “Johannesburg,” and “Home Is Where the Hatred Is” hit like lightning bolts, both electrifying and enlightening. The rise of hip hop was clearly indebted to Scott-Heron, who has been sampled and referenced by the likes of Kanye West and Common. Silent for a decade and a half—during which he reportedly battled health, addiction, financial, and legal problems—Scott-Heron, 60, recently re-emerged with I’m New Here, a stark, riveting portrait of the artist as weathered scribe, more personally analytical than of the wayward world that once drew his searing scrutiny. In place of jazz is hard-edged post-industrial blues laced with ragged beats as he covers Robert Johnson’s “Me and the Devil,” Bobby Blue Bland’s “I’ll Take Care of You,” and Smog, in the title track’s tale of arid alienation. It’s like hearing a voice from the other side of the apocalypse, but unmistakably that of a survivor.
South Africa, U.S. tunes from way back, became the theme today for me as I listened to Gil Scott-Heron, I’d seen him decades ago… a riveting show… the Guthrie, early 80s??? He was a staple in our album collection at KFAI. In Paul Hipp’s Bachmann McCarthy Overdrive “What’s the word? TINKLENBERG!” seemed like a good riff off of Scott-Heron’s Jo’burg. In the CapX 2020 Hampton-LaCrosse docket there’s a conslutant from Biko Associates, which reminds me of that era, everytime I look at his testimony, my tape loop starts.
Here’s Gil doing Johannesburg:
And another earlier version, 1976:
… and speaking of Jo’burg, then there’s the Biko song that keeps going through my brain whenever I read William P. Smith’s testimony in the Hampton-LaCrosse case — what’s his tie?
“People must not just give in to the hardship of life. People must develop a hope. People must develop some form of security to be together to look at their problems, and people must, in this way, build up their community.”
-Stephen Bantu Biko
So on that theme, Peter Gabriel on one of the Amnesty International tours, best version I could find:
Morels in the backyard!!!
May 27th, 2011
Here in SE Minnesota, there are morels everywhere, so I hear, and I’ve been searching for 11 years now (locations are top secret of course) and nada… lookin’ for morels in all the wrong places, and here today, I’m flinging Summer poops up the hill and:
EEEEEEEEEEEEEE-HA!!! IT’S A MOREL!!! … so I take another look around, and:
Could use a few more — and they must be there — so nevermind those Information Requests I want to get out, THIS IS A PRIORITY!!!
So the good news today is that it’s not just nuclear waste that I’ll find in my own back yard!
You didn’t make promises…
May 25th, 2011
Sending out a hearty cheer for my state House Representative, Tim Kelly, for declaring he would vote NO on whether to send to voters a Constitutional Amendment to limit marriage to “one man and one woman.” One of only four Republicans to vote NO!
“You didn’t make promises to impose your will on other people…”
I greatly appreciate his drawing the distinction between having beliefs and legislating those beliefs. It’s a no-brainer that the majority of our Legislature does not understand.
The question to be put to voters:
Pawlenty the Green Chameleon
May 23rd, 2011
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He’s finally announced he’s running. Tim Pawlenty for President. Pass the barf bags. As he describes our horrible situation, it looks like he’s trying real hard not to break out laughing. After all he’s done to Minnesota, I can only hope his reputation precedes him:
And the StPPP announces this on the Obituary page, thank you thank you thank you thank you:
And he can shovel it with the best of them:
