July - 2019

FIELD NOTES / Cold Load ~ A report from the Ercotastrophe zone

Message to Immigrants: ‘You Aren’t Alone’

The rideshare dropped me off 15 minutes early at the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles. Already, there were hundreds of people standing in witness. There would be thousands by the Lights for Liberty vigil’s end. A voice filled the air, that of a black woman backed by a choir: “Won’t let nobody turn me around, turn me around, turn me around. Won’t let nobody turn me around, got to keep on walking, keep on talking, marching to the freedom land.” The light be

Bill Bentley

Jul 30, 2019
10 min

Bentley's Bandstand / July 2019

Dave Alvin King of California Downeyite Dave Alvin would be the first call if California names a new State Musician, but that would actually be short-sheeting the musician because in reality Alvin’s multi-dimensional songs cover the whole nation and then some. He may have started as a rootsy booster of all things bluesy, but the guitarist’s playing and songwriting quickly went beyond that and put his stake in the ground for so much more. His originals had been the gold standa

James BigBoy Medlin

Jul 26, 2019
16 min

Vietnam: Getting In / Getting Out

A Three-Part Account of My Experience PART I: Dreams, Schemes and the End of Innocence 1969 was a year of contrasts and contradictions. We had the Moon landing and the Manson family murders. We had Woodstock and Altamont. We had “The Brady Bunch” and “The Wild Bunch.” And on June 7, 1969, I was wounded in Vietnam. Why did I go there? I’ve had people ask me. I have pondered the question. I have felt guilt, shame and pride. I respect the Conscientious Objector and the patriotic

Michael Ventura / Art: Dan Hubig

Jul 12, 2019
2 min

Ventura @ 4am / Re Concentration Camps

“Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. They’re allowed to take only a knapsack and a little cash with them, and even then, they’re robbed of these possessions on the way. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find their parents have disappeared. Women return from shopping to find their houses sealed, their families gone. Everyon

Outside Sources / No One Called the United States "America" Until It Became an Empire

Daniel Immerwahr / Mother Jones Magazine

Jul 11, 2019
4 min

Outside Sources / No One Called the United States "America" Until It Became an Empire

Adapted from How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States. America, as a shorthand for the United States, has a way of raising hackles around the globe. The Americas stretch from Canada to South America’s southern cone. Why should one country, accounting for a third of their population and less than a quarter of their land, have a nomenclatural claim on the whole hemisphere? To many in the United States, such complaints—as voiced by Canadians and Chileans and

Outside Sources / 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

Julia Carrie Wong / The Guardian

Jul 11, 2019
5 min

Outside Sources / 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

For Zoe, the newfound financial security from working in tech does not counterbalance a constant sense of being unsafe in the city. She now earns three to four times more than when she was a “starving artist”, but she says she is terrified to walk at night. She no longer rides scooters and says she feels “triggered” when she sees them around the city. She takes Ubers everywhere after dark and asks drivers to watch to make sure she gets inside her apartment building. “Mark Zuc

David Talbot

Jul 11, 2019
4 min

Talbot / An American Dystopia

San Francisco has been turned into such a grotesque dystopia in the last several years that even the tech industry that ruined The City is now bitterly complaining. I love the entitled former Apple manager quoted in this article (who wouldn't give his full name) who's decamping for Texas with his partner because a $300,000 income just doesn't go that far in San Francisco. "You know… what with $30,000 a year for each kid's private school..." Yes, he actually said that. This wa

Outside Sources / Mad Magazine to Effectively Shutter After 67 Years

Trilby Beresford & Abid Rahman / Hollywood

Jul 4, 2019
2 min

Outside Sources / Mad Magazine to Effectively Shutter After 67 Years

The beloved satire publication will no longer be sold on newsstands after the August issue, and future editions will shift to previously published material with new covers. Mad Magazine, the irreverent and highly influential satirical magazine that gave the world Alfred E. Neuman, will effectively cease publication some time later this year after 67 years, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. Sources tell THR that after issue 9, Mad will no longer be sold on newsstands and w

Outside Sources / Goodbye America! Tanks for Everything!

Alexandra Petri / Washington Post

Jul 4, 2019
2 min

Outside Sources / Goodbye America! Tanks for Everything!

Well, America, it has been great. On the Fourth of July, President Trump and his followers are taking over the Mall and the Lincoln Memorial, as tanks roll down the streets and jets fly overhead. The Park Service has diverted $2.5 million to pay for this extravagance. This, apparently, is a Salute to America, some sort of combination birthday-retirement-funeral? It is unclear where America is going, but you certainly seem to be on your way out. Since you’ve invited us to this

Outside Sources / Agriculture Department buries studies showing dangers of climate change

Helena Bottemiller Evich / Politico

Jul 2, 2019
1 min

Outside Sources / Agriculture Department buries studies showing dangers of climate change

The Trump administration has refused to publicize dozens of government-funded studies that carry warnings about the effects of climate change, defying a longstanding practice of touting such findings by the Agriculture Department’s acclaimed in-house scientists. The studies range from a groundbreaking discovery that rice loses vitamins in a carbon-rich environment — a potentially serious health concern for the 600 million people world-wide whose diet consists mostly of rice —

Outside Sources / Canadian Cartoonist Loses His Job After Trump Drawing Goes Viral

Huffington Post

Jul 2, 2019
3 min

Outside Sources / Canadian Cartoonist Loses His Job After Trump Drawing Goes Viral

Cartoonist Michael de Adder’s contract with four Canadian newspapers was terminated last week after one of his political cartoons lambasting U.S. President Donald Trump went viral on social media. De Adder, who’d worked for the newspapers’ publisher for 17 years before his dismissal, suggested Sunday that he was let go for being too critical of Trump. But Brunswick News Inc. said earlier in the day that it was “entirely incorrect” to suggest that de Adder’s freelance contract

James 'BigBoy' Medlin / Photo: Dan Hubig

Jul 1, 2019
2 min

WHY NOT? / Hell to the Chief

He who calls me THE ugliest of writers shall have not his name spoken. Nor of the publication nor broadcast nor streaming service failing to expose the open wound in the head of the head of our grated nation from which the eels, the leeches and the neon orange roaches crawl and slither too freely feeding heartily upon rights and wrongs and savoring age’d parchments of a Constitution, a constitution belching greedily in its golf cart driving over limits more than speed to take

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Michael Ventura's podcast,

Long Distance Call, is a weekly contemplation on the most dire threat to our Republic in our lifetime. He means to keep it up until Inauguration Day.

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Micael Priest

A Short Film

by Bob Simmons

Micael Priest's work was one of the hallmarks of a special time in Austin. He made the art that drew the crowds to hear the music that made a city. He made us all a little richer just by strokes of a pen

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to see the Film

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The RAT File

Jeffrey Nightbyrd Shero

Short films and stories about the political & social turmoil in the 60's as seen thru the New York underground newspaper RAT

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Working Class Heart - Todd Samusson

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On the Right Side of the Brain - Todd samusson

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FIELD NOTES / Cold Load ~ A report from the Ercotastrophe zone

World War III

Vietnam: Getting In / Getting Out

The Rent Horse Kid

Never Another / Roky Erickson, R.I.P.

Ventura at 4AM / THIS USA: Origins

MOST POPULAR FEATURES

Message to Immigrants: ‘You Aren’t Alone’

Bentley's Bandstand / July 2019

Vietnam: Getting In / Getting Out

Ventura @ 4am / Re Concentration Camps

Outside Sources / No One Called the United States "America" Until It Became an Empire

Outside Sources / 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

Talbot / An American Dystopia

Outside Sources / Mad Magazine to Effectively Shutter After 67 Years

Outside Sources / Goodbye America! Tanks for Everything!

Outside Sources / Agriculture Department buries studies showing dangers of climate change

Outside Sources / Canadian Cartoonist Loses His Job After Trump Drawing Goes Viral

WHY NOT? / Hell to the Chief

The RAT File

Jeffrey Nightbyrd Shero

Short films and stories about the political & social turmoil in the 60's as seen thru the New York underground newspaper RAT

Music from

Todd Samusson

R. Crumb