goddesscafe

Friday, September 28, 2001 :::

True about Derrick and music -- he made me listen to a million things but it never was to my taste, as music-whores Kevin and Alex are more open-minded than I am. ;) I was, however, initially intruigued with him in J300-Journalism Law (Honors -- that sucked) because he announced on the first day of class that his double-major was ethnomusicology, which is what I had planned in majoring in back in high school. So that's why we started talking in the first place -- we just liked different hemispheres and styles. ;) He did make me a mix tape once, though, and I fell in love with just one song, by an artist I've never liked otherwise -- Joni Mitchell's Hejira, which always makes me want to cry for some reason.

::: posted by Alura Allumeuse at 9:59 AM

I have roughly 20-30 cd's in my bedroom that I bought on Derrick's recommendation. He directed my attention to P-Funk, Sly and the Family Stone, James Brown, Fela Kuti, Charles Mingus, Tom Zé, Zap Mama, all sorts of Brazilian music, and a hell of a lot more. In return, I was able to give him Greg Brown and Tom Waits - but the debt was entirely on my side. I owe a lot of music and the happiness that that music has brought me to Derrick Smith. Others do too. In the past few years, whenever I spoke to him on the phone, I always asked him for a few recommendations and generally went straight to a record store the next day. This is one of the ways that he communicated.

Derrick was all about music. He taught himself Portuguese so that he could understand the lyrics on Tom Zé records. He'd hang around the Indianapolis library tracing the ethnic and cultural diaspora throughout the Caribbean and South America searching for the roots of the music he loved. He was the most active listener I have ever known. And he wasn't just a listener... I spoke with Justin Stephenson last night and he reminded me of the time we watched Derrick on stage with Chive, shaking an egg and looking more confident and happier than we had ever seen him. I wish someone had given that guy music lessons when he was a kid.

I've done about a dozen google searches this morning and I've uncovered these traces of Derrick on the internet. Predictably, they all relate to music. There are a lot of records reviewed here to check out - if you're unfamiliar with the Derrick/music phenomenon: if Derrick says you should buy it, then buy it.

Derrick on the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour, he didn't like it. link
Derrick on Tom Ze. link
Derrick wrote 28 reviews on Amazon.com, here they are. The most recent is from this September. link
Derrick's Desert Island Picks (jazz). link
On the Fringes of Jazz, by Derrick Smith. link
Derrick's CD reviews from All About Jazz: 1,
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.

::: posted by the boot at 8:58 AM

Thursday, September 27, 2001 :::

here.

::: posted by the boot at 1:09 PM

I can't fucking deal today. Everything is too unstable, too transient. Our friend Derrick (r) killed himself. Trish is leaving for Indy next week. Ann broke up with her boyfriend today and is moving to D.C. to be closer to her parents. Alex is headed to Chicago shortly. My friend Kate left grad school and is headed to L.A. to work retail. Everyone's depressed, broke, unsure of the next step. Why do I feel like there's an earthquake coming, and we're all like animals, scattering about before it hits? THIS FUCKING SUCKS.

::: posted by Alura Allumeuse at 11:28 AM

Wednesday, September 26, 2001 :::

prettie

::: posted by Zarbet Rabbit at 4:34 PM

I was under the impression that Drudge lived off of a rich father...? But I guess I'm wrong...I can't find anything on the web other than that AOL paid him ("a modest stipend," says one site, $3000/mo says another) for his initial columns when he was starting, and that Richard Scaife's money paid for his legal defense. So maybe he started small, but like many young right-wingers, when you've got support from well-funded orgs, you can quickly be thrust into the limelight (see: any number of young anti-feminist commentators who make regular appearances on TV and op-ed pages, despite a total lack of intellectual rigor or credentials), and therefore more money. I believe it's quite easy to make a living in the media if you're a young conservative. The guy was making appearances all over the country there for a while, and then he had a TV show. There's shadowy funding there, to be sure. As for Eggers, he had an inheritance! He was able to blow time and energy on Might magazine because of it, no?

At any rate, so you want a non-partisan thing. I thought about that years ago, about having a magazine that maybe focused on one topic at a time, and had a zillion points of view within it. I've found that reading debates on metafilter has helped lately, because everyone's always got more info to contribute that may change your mind, and it's better to know as much as possible. Anyway, I still don't see how any of this would attract a mainstream audience...magazines that are politics/issue-based don't seem to be all that popular. I'm all for getting stuff to the masses...but how do you get them to a) want it and b) give a shit? I believe people feel terribly powerless these days. It seems the aristocrats are in power for good now. Corporate-funded media gives us one viewpoint so we go out and vote for identical wealthy candidates who get into gov't and simply obey their corporate funding. It's all a fucking vicious circle, coordinated by corporate interests.

::: posted by Alura Allumeuse at 4:19 PM

Laura, can you clarify what you mean about Eggers and Drudge? I had no idea that either of them had a trust fund or anything like that. In fact, my impression was that Drudge was working full-time when he started, getting up early to read all of the papers and dash off some posts before work.

To address some of your concerns, I should clarify what I'm thinking: it would not be "alternative viewpoints" in the same way that Pacifica or Mother Jones are. It wouldn't be a "left-wing publication." You're right, there are already enough, if not too many, of those. Rather, I would envision it as being as non-partisan as possible, striving always for showing both sides of a story - part of the reason our news media don't work right is that people have a political agenda that causes them to selectively include facts in stories. I would like to provide a thorough, balanced perspective in an interesting way that draws people in. I would like to try to bring to a mainstream audience some of the stuff that's in lefty pubs and on NPR and in newspapers in other countries and even in the National Review if it's important: basically all the stuff that our mainstream media ignore, but shouldn't.

I like Kevin's idea of a digest of sorts, but with lots of additional info. I'm not sure if it should cross over into being a lifestyle site/mag - God knows there are enough of those already - but wit and humor would definitely be a must.

::: posted by Mark Gabel at 2:55 PM

neither eggers nor drudge had excesses of time or money when they started. that brill's content article on drudge talked about how he was in a $600/mo two-bedroom in hollywood well after his site got huge.

perhaps young left-leaners would relate to an utne reader-style compendium of coverage. metafilter is a bit like that, actually; a democratic take on reader's digest.

packaging it with music and film always helps the medicine go down, as does wit. however it's handled, it has to avoid the humorless, text-heavy feel of most politicized publications. the balance of earnestness and absurdity certainly helped movements like reclaim the streets, right?

in formation (thanks, laura) had a good mixture of satire and real content; not very consistent, but for a nascent, almost ad-free mag, damn respectable. i can't tell if they're even around anymore, though. they're not accepting payments for subscription, which is never a good sign.

and here, as Jon Stewart would say, is your moment of Zen. An image I meant to post Sept 10, was reminded when it popped up on metafilter just now...had a gigantic unfinished blog, a lot of links about the economy and such, now irrelevant...but there's still these: Tram 'n' Bus, a site for enviro-sound collectors such as Zarbet, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, an NYC map that goes by neighborhood, with links to bits of fiction, journalism and essays about landmarks in each, and a new take on navel-gazing. Plus: a link for Guy -- information wants to be free, but not if these anti-library freaks have anything to say about it.

::: posted by Alura Allumeuse at 10:00 AM

Tuesday, September 25, 2001 :::

I agree fully with that idea, of course. But my cynicism swamps any vision right now. I don't honestly believe people want to read muckraking journalism. If they did, they'd read any number of left-wing publications that already do that, or buy one of many well-researched books on various political horrors. I do think there's something to be said for making it digestible -- even I have a hard time slogging through some of those rags when I'm browsing at an alt-bookstore, even while silently chastising myself that I should just try harder, read more, struggle to understand more world events and politics and history. I think it would just end up preaching to the same tiny community all the others do. Plus, Eggers and Drudge have endless money and time, don't need to worry about profit models and paying rent and all that. The thing is, there's plenty of websites out there that provide alternative viewpoints and information -- who reads them? Enough to make a critical mass of anything? The information has always been there, it's now easier than ever before to access it. I don't think people really want it.

Someone cure my instinctive cynicism, show me the light. But, speaking of current events and American news distortion...

Related to that is a comment I saw yesterday about the death of dissent in the U.S. in the wake of the attacks...someone posted that the nature of being a member of a democracy requires constant critical thinking and questioning no matter what. A point not well-grokked by the masses who just want their WWF fix and Nike shoes, methinks.

::: posted by Alura Allumeuse at 2:24 PM

Just throwing an idea out there, in the "what could we do about all of this" category...what do y'all think of the idea of a serious, thoughtful news magazine aimed at the under-35 set? I mean, aimed at the mainsteam under-35 set, not just people like us. Trying to make the unglamorous news digestible, but without compromising the serious news content - rather like Rolling Stone's political coverage (which I think is usually excellent).

I bring this up because part of my frustration in the current situation is that this country is too ignorant - not stupid, but ignorant - because the mainstream media refuses to properly educate us about what's going on in our country and in the world. I think if people really knew what was going on, if muckraking, no-compromises journalism really came back with a vengence, if what is on NPR and Pacifica now was on CNN and in Time Magazine instead, things would change, at least to some degree.

I know that it's very easy to come up with an idea like this, but very difficult to execute. Many journalists start out thinking idealistically, but then either join mainstream media organizations at a level where they have no real influence, or become marginalized (resulting, again, in having no real influence - who the hell reads Mother Jones anyway). I wonder, then, if starting completely outside the mainstream media establishment, the way, say, Dave Eggers or Matt Drudge (not an expemplary role model, but his influence is undeniable) or (to a lesser extent) Ira Glass were at the start of their careers, would be a way to really effect some change.

I'm totally serious. Not that I'm ready to do this tomorrow, but I really do think that it's a good idea and would love to be a part of it. And, collectively, this group has exactly the right skillset to make it happen. It could be done online at very little cost.

To clarify - I am not talking about something like Salon here. Salon is aimed at the New York Times/NPR set, already well-educated and well-informed. I am talking about reaching people who get most of their news from their local metropolitain daily or CNN or the CBS Evening News, who may or may not be of above-average intelligence, and who are not necessarily already interested in what this magazine would be trying to tell them. The idea would be to tackle the incredibly tough task of making them interested, or making it interesting to them without watering it down, or both.

One possibility would be to make it non-profit, so that the issue of corporate influence is taken out of the picture. Another idea would be to make it as close to non-partisan as possible - sorta like the BBC, with no editorials, because those would inevitably turn a large group of people off and marginalize the thing to a certain degree.

Laura, your note with a helpless tone from the other day really touched me. I've felt the same way - what can I actually do to affect the way things are headed? Not much.

This feeling was only exacerbated when I wrote a lengthy, impassioned letter to my Senators last week, pleading them to change course, and received a form letter in response from Senator Boxer's office which contained the same flat, meaningless jingoistic rhetoric the President has been spouting for the last two weeks. There were two things that really bothered me about the form letter I received: A) I know that I'm going to get form letters when I write my representatives, but the letter I got was not really an adequate, or even an appropriate, response to mine, making it quite obvious that no one in her office had even bothered to come up with a response to those who might oppose military intervention; B) Senator Boxer is one of the most liberal members of the Senate, and if she isn't thinking critically about all of this, then probably no one in the Senate is.

I have come to the conclusion that the only way to affect politics is to become directly involved. So that's what I plan to do. How I'm not sure exactly - I may change careers, or I may just get involved in political campaigns the next time 'round, but I'm going to do something.

Need I begin this letter by expressing the combination of shock, pity,
anger, disbelief, fear and dismay I have felt since last Tuesday’s
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? Those emotions are
almost a given at this point for the vast majority of Americans, aren’t
they? Like everyone around me, like everyone in the country, I mourn
the loss of thousands of innocent lives, and send my money, thoughts
and prayers to the survivors and their families, doing what I can to
help.

And I still have trouble sleeping - not least because I am worried
about what might happen next.

Here’s what I am not worried about: I am not worried about more of the
same. My guess is that the people who committed this horrible crime had
to know that once they did it, security clampdowns at airports would be
inevitable, and that the same thing would not be allowed to happen
again. If more terrorism is planned it will likely take some entirely
different form, for which, even now, as we tighten security in
airports, we are probably unprepared.

Here is what I am worried about: I am worried about the erosion my
civil liberties in the name of counterterrorism. More urgently, I am
worried about what our President and his administration may be about to
do in Central Asia, supposedly on my behalf. I am worried that the US
military will attack another country, killing as many innocent
civilians as died in our cities last week, without sufficient evidence
to show that the government or people of that country were somehow
involved in last week’s crimes. I am worried that in the name of
capturing one person, many innocents will die. I am worried about war –
and let there be no mistake, what happened last week was horrible and
evil almost beyond belief, but it was a terrible crime, not an act of
war. We are not at war unless we choose to be. In this circumstance, we
should not choose to be.

I wonder if it occurred to you and your staff to think, as I did, in
the first days after the tragedy, whether this new sense of
vulnerability has given us an unwanted something in common with people
suffering all over the world. Is this what it feels like to be an
Israeli, wondering whether your neighborhood store will be the next
target of a suicide bombing? Is this what it feels like to be a
Palestinian who wonders whether American-made Israeli missiles will
slam into your apartment building without warning because of something
your neighbor did but of which you know nothing? Is this what it feels
like to be a civilian caught up in a civil war in Sudan, Sri Lanka,
Macedonia, or Congo, never knowing for certain whether you will make it
safely through the day?

Certainly, this is just what the terrorists wanted – to hit us where it
counted, in our self-confidence. To make us feel vulnerable. When I
think about it, though, I am not actually that vulnerable, even now,
after our worldview has changed so dramatically and painfully. Compared
to the people in most of the countries I’ve just mentioned, my American
middle class lifestyle is great wealth. I am protected by the most
powerful military in the world. The daily danger and suffering of the
people in those countries is much greater than that of most Americans –
even in an America under threat of more heinous terorrism.

In fact, I almost feel embarrassed at being so indignant over what
happened – how dare I be so upset, I ask myself, when I still have it
better than the vast majority of the people on Earth? Do we as a
country have the right to inflict more suffering and death because we
suddenly feel less at ease than we did last Monday? We, in our great
privilege of relative health, safety, and security? We, the richest and
most powerful nation on the planet? We are still strong and powerful;
the terrorists have not won, whether or not we strike back militarily.

I am Jewish, and I believe (forgive me if I am wrong) that you are too.
Perhaps you went to Rosh Hashannah services this week, as I did? If so,
perhaps you were struck, as I was, by the appropriateness of the
service. Our people have experienced so much tragedy over the millennia
of our history that our liturgy has evolved to be uniquely suited to
dealing with the most horrible aspects of life: we say the Mourner’s
Kaddish to comfort us for the loss of our loved ones – and for the loss
of our fellow Americans; we say the Shema to recall not only the unity
of God, but our unity as a people and our unity with all other people
on Earth; and we say Oseh Shalom, a plaintive prayer for peace.

In the service I went to, the Rabbi had changed the Oseh Shalom prayer
slightly: the traditional reference to peace “v’al kol Yisrael,” for
all Jews, was changed to “v’al kol ha’olam,” peace for all the world.
This change is made in many American congregations nowadays, to reflect
the fact that when we pray, we pray not only for ourselves, but also
for the whole world. When we say this revised prayer, we show that we
care not only for ourselves and for our people, but for every human
being.

It is in the spirit of Oseh Shalom that I ask you to use the great
power that the people of California have given you for peace, rather
than to escalate the cause of violence in the world.

I ask you not only to vote against, but to speak out in the Senate
against any military action by the US which may harm large numbers of
innocent civilians in other countries.

I ask you to vote against any declaration of war against another
country, since no other country has declared war on us.

I ask you to push the administration to work through the UN and other
international organizations to achieve justice for last week’s victims,
rather than acting unilaterally.

And I ask you to carefully consider any future votes on foreign policy
issues to ensure that the US consistently stands up for the cause of
peace and justice, rather than supporting oppressive regimes and taking
reckless military action out of self-interest, without proper regard
for the people of other nations.

You can do all of these things and still support bringing the
perpetrators of last week’s awful crimes to justice. Because justice is
a very different thing from vengeance. Because anger should lead to a
measured, thoughtful and just response, not to lashing out. Because
doing what is right is not a matter of protecting “US interests,” but a
matter of protecting the interests of all people everywhere.

In my fury, I deleted the response from Senator Boxer's office imediately after reading it, so I can't post that. Believe me, though, it was not pretty. I got no response at all from Senator Feinstein, which is typical. She's really arrogant, and I quite dislike her, so much so that I actually almost voted for the moderate Republican who ran against her last year just as a protest vote.

::: posted by Mark Gabel at 11:44 AM

Monday, September 24, 2001 :::

Anyone else offended by a company willing to use this tragedy as a public relations angle? This message arrived this morning:

The horrific terrorist attacks on America have made many business people hesitant to travel by air. Video conferencing is quickly emerging as the workable alternative to air travel. VBrick Systems (www.vbrick.com) has seen a surge in interest in its low cost video technology that uses existing broadband networks to deliver full motion TV quality video.

Rich Mavrogeanes, president of VBrick, is available to discuss the new reality of video conferencing in post-attack America. To learn more please feel free to contact me via email or directly at 617.926.6665, ext. 215.

I thought this 3D map of the damage was useful, since my TV-averse self has barely seen any images. Also, finally something about terror's first victims -- women.

::: posted by Alura Allumeuse at 9:46 AM