Africa is one vast, beautiful, and spectacular place.
It’s the most interesting and diverse continent on the earth: home to an incredible variety of people, animals, geographies and climates.
Africa covers six percent of the earth’s total surface, has a billion people, and speaks over 2,000 languages in its 54 countries.
It was also your house at one time. Like, home.
Long before we were around, Africa was joined to the other continents in a massive continent called Pangaea. Over millions of years this huge continent broke apart, shaping the landscape as we know it today.
The cradle of mankind, ancient ancestral hominids first appeared in Africa more than 3-4+ million years ago; anatomically modern human beings migrated in several waves from here more than 200,000 years ago. The first great civilization, Egypt, arose from Africa’s humble origins. All of humanity– all of us, you and I, we– likely descend from this very place.
It’s also home to the world’s largest and shyest primate (the gorilla), the largest land mammal (the African elephant), and the fastest and the tallest animals (the cheetah and giraffe)– among its 3,700 unique species. It is where the largest reptile, the Nile crocodile, resides.
Straddling the equator, Africa is the only continent to extend from the northern temperate zone to the southern temperate zone, laying claim to being the hottest continent on the planet.
Africa has the longest river in the world, the Nile, meandering along for 4,132 miles. The world’s largest desert, the Sahara, is almost the size of the United States. Victoria Falls, Africa’s largest waterfall, is 355 feet high and one mile wide.
Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain on the continent, towers above 19,300 feet. It’s so tall that glaciers can be found at its summit– even though the mountain is near the equator.
What a long strange trip it’s been: Out of Africa and Into the Wild. We’re fortunate to be here in this diverse world, a beautiful planet, living, breathing, and dancing for a brief evolutionary moment.
Let’s hope we don’t wear out our welcome.
Devin Graham’s high-def video is best seen at the full-screen setting. Giving us a special glimpse into an extraordinary place, he and his girl describes their mighty-white-of-you Mogambo experiences in Kenya, below, along with some stunning visuals and an absurd breakfast on the Maasai Mara savannah.
I was in the college library where I was supposed to meet this girl who never showed up and I’ll admit it, I was gassed out of my mind on this sick weed my roommate brought back from Humboldt, and I wandered up to the third
floor which I had never been to and there was this enormous
globe of the world.
I had heard about it but I never saw it due to my not liking of geography and my not coming to the library almost ever. This fucker must be ten feet in diameter. So I started spinning it because a sign says that’s OK to do if you want to for research purposes. At first I zoned out on all the colors, but then I started to notice there goes China, there goes India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Atlantic ocean, New York, the Great Lakes, Pacific ocean and then it all started up all over again, China, India, around and around.
And then I had this amazing thought I admit I probably wouldn’t have had if I wasn’t so ripped out of my gourd. What if I had this giant rake, OK? And what if what this rake did is, it raked up just these two things: People, plus all the things that people have ever made. And what if I’m standing in the library with my giant rake and I keep spinning the globe and running my rake over the entire ball except now it’s the real world and I’m raking up all the people and all the things that people have ever made into one gigantic pile. I rake up the Empire State Building, every house on the planet, every truck, every couch, every shoe, books, the Great Wall of China, tools, pipes, wires, oil tankers, movie theaters, every screw, every brick, every road, airplanes, building materials, bulldozers, cranes, hottubs, garbage, bottles, let’s even say satellites. Everything, every single person and every single thing people ever made, into one gigantic pile.
Here’s my question: If I raked up all that stuff into the United States, what’s the smallest state you think I could fit that entire junkpile in?
I just got back from going into the bathroom and I’ll admit it, I sucked down some more Humboldt weed because I was getting all cheesed out on this globe thing and a whole nother unbelieveable idea came to me: What if a sorcerer came along and I traded my rake for a magic wand which I know is a cliché even wrecked, but what if I made the trade anyway and then poof, I got rid of the entire pile of people plus all the shit people have made. Poof. Pile gone. Which leads to my question number two: Would the planet be better off or worse off? I can not deal with my own question. That is one mind-fuck question.
Well, that’s it. No, one more question. Do you think smoking dope
is good or bad. Because I’m guessing I’m going to wake up tomorrow
with a familiar feeling that goes What the fuck.
Thank-you, Paul
Dear Paul,
Stoned out of your ever-loving mind or not, I think you’ve stumbled upon a fascinating proposition. I’ll bet most people think of the world as theirs, as a platform made especially for them. There’s animals and bugs and plants and that kind of thing, but most folks think this production is sponsored by us, humans, and that the planet is really our stage, and so quiet down Everything Else because we got a show to put on.
But this giant rake concept of yours makes it clear that people, for all their huffing and puffing, have had nothing to do with most of what goes on in our planet. My guess is that the smallest state that could accommodate all of the things your rake rakes up would be, ohh, Massachusetts. I live in Massachusetts and it seems to me, as I look around while driving, that there’s plenty of extra room here for a gigantic pile of every house, battle-ship, truck, cinder-block etc., particularly if you take care to pile things efficiently.
I could be laughably wrong. I realize that there are minds capable of approaching your question with tools much more sophisticated and precise than my handy all-in-one Wild-Guess Mallet. And so let’s choose a place on earth which we all can agree is sufficiently large to accommodate this pile you’re talking about Paul. Texas? Alaska? Definitely one of those. Let’s pick the bigger of the two: Alaska.
Rake rake rake rake rake rake rake. Good. Now there’s everything made by man ever, plus every person on earth, in a pile on Alaska.
Spin that globe Paul. Well what do you know. It’s clear we’re really not responsible for much, given all there is. Just that little pile of shit every time Alaska comes around.
Anyway, in answer to your second question Paul, about would the world be better or worse without us. If those are my only two choices, I say better off. Please keep in mind that I could be laughably wrong.
In answer to your third question, here’s what I say about marijuana, chardonnay, Heath Bars, LSD, coffee, nutritious foods, nicotine, water, or anything else that eventually enters our bloodstream: Holy shit! How about this! We’re nothing but test tubes filled with a balance of chemicals so delicate that we can change moods or even go kerflooey at the drop of a hat!
Thank-you for your letter Paul. Happy Graduation!
Your Fan, Waldo Mellon
* * * * * * * * * *
Waldo Mellon wishes he had more writing credits to boast about, but he doesn’t.
He did go to a fancy, expensive college, yet most of the things that got stuffed into his head there are now nowhere to be found. In fact, he has a breath-taking lack of the kind of knowledge that comes from things he’s read and things he’s been told, as opposed to things he’s experienced.
A mysterious fellow, he likes his life very much and that’s the vat he draws from.
Pages From A Forlorn and Depressed Feline Existence
(VIRAL VIDEO)
Skippy Massey Humboldt Sentinel
Now we know what lurks in their little minds.
Living in a world of insufferable confusion and loneliness, devoid of any logic, and surrounded by neglectful authorities, it’s a tale of sorrowful tragedy we can scarcely fathom.
The full story of their life hasn’t been revealed until now: the Diary of a Sad Cat.
Everyone loves a light show, large things that sparkle,
loud things that go boom in the night.
Vibrant colors, noise, and a freedom and fear factor all combine for
a brief moment or two, making for an incredible show.
Life is too short, so enjoy the ride while you can.
For the people of Boston, who looked after us when we were visiting.
Boston Strong throughout , you were proud and unwavering. You kindly showed us your beautiful City, the inspiring history of our
forefathers, and this sweet land of Liberty as the marathon
mayhem went down around us all. You didn’t even flinch.
Thank you, Boston. This is for you. Let freedom ring.
(The above video is best seen at the full-screen setting)
So I’ve been trying to put out a video once a week.
Which let me tell you… this has meant I don’t sleep, and have been working around the clock 24/7. Not only am I creating the main video, but also the behind the scene videos, which is a full time job within itself… So yes, I don’t sleep very often, haha.
Here’s the latest video I shot a couple months back.
In fact, I have shot 19 YouTube videos within the last 3 months that I still have to release. I have a ton of content I shot during the warmer months, so I could release them each week and be a head of schedule, but I often find that because I’m a perfectionist I don’t have the videos done until the day I release them
These videos I did with my friends company at the BlueHouse Ski Company. They provided the house boat, skis, food, and helped make it all happen!
If you read the comments on a lot of the videos, everyone says that we must have rich parents, haha, when in reality, I’m able to pull off these videos because I get sponsors and people that believe in what I’m doing.
So they help pull resources together to make them happen, and that’s what happened with BlueHouse Skis.
Here’s the main video above, and the ‘Behind the Scene’ video below.
This video features a huge Rube Goldberg machine, a deliberately over-engineered contraption that performs a very
simple task in an overly complex and nonsensical fashion.
Why? Who knows why. That’s the whole pointless point. Just like your daily 9-5 workday, it’s an enigma wrapped up in a bean burrito.
In the video, the entire “This Too Shall Pass” song by OK Go is sung to a set of mechanical ‘dominos’ falling in a chain reaction. It was built and engineered by a creative geek group of mad scientists, art lovers, and inspired geniuses collectively going by the name of Syyn Labs.
In total some 65 people worked three months to build and film the machine in an Echo Park warehouse in Los Angeles. It took over 60 takes to get the one perfectly filmed version you see here, shot perfectly in time to the music. It was no easy task; resetting the machine after each failed try took over an hour.
The tune is catchy and the overall piece is engaging, inventive, and original. It would be wholly unbelievable if it weren’t shown in one uninterrupted take.
The video went on to become one of the most watched viral hits on YouTube with over 40 million views since appearing in 2010.
(Filmed in high-def, it’s best seen at the full screen setting)
Time out for a little fun and sun from an otherwise typical
college day.
Thousands of young Mormons gathered on the field of battle in Provo, Utah, armed with nothing more than a few thousand water balloons and a strong sense of destiny.
The Brigham Young University students threw their virginal, uncaffeinated selves into the fray, thereby setting a Guinness world record for the Largest Water Balloon Fight in July of 2010. They also made the viral video above, “You Always Make Me Smile” by Kyle Andrews, garnering over two million views on YouTube.
In total, 3,927 Mormons lobbed 120,021 balloons, unleashing a massive barrage of colorful cool frolic for six minutes. It had taken the students three days just to fill that many balloons.
Most water balloon fight observers thought the BYU record would last the ages. It was certainly a stout and glorious victory that would be hard to beat. But alas! A couple thousand Kentuckian faithful proved them wrong.
Mind you, Kentucky held the previous record– until the Mormons came along and stole it out from underneath them.
So the University of Kentucky Christian Student Fellowship led the charge to recapture the Mormon-held record once and for all.
In August of 2011, over 5,000 equally wholesome young people from the Bluegrass State launched 153,497 balloons. Some, like the video below, claim it was really 8,957 people and 175,141 balloons, but you know how confused facts get in the heat of battle. Especially when setting a new world record for college glory.
Whatever the numbers, the Guinness guys said Kentucky had it– and BYU lost it.
Below is the video of that epic winning event. The Kentuckians, though, lost the video side of the competition to their Mormon brethren, capturing only one million YouTube hits.
Utah native Devin Graham’s video of people cliff jumping in Hawaii will mostly leave you wishing you were there, though
some moments– especially with the point of view cameras–
are a little stomach churning.
They deserve to be.
Cliff jumping or tombstoning sometimes makes the news, and unfortunately for all the wrong reasons.
Every summer, many youngsters severely injure themselves or die because they dive off rocks and cliffs – often inebriated – into waters of unknown depths and submerged obstacles. Some are knocked unconscious; others drown.
We’ve had our fair share of accidents off Big Rock, Sandy Beach, Swimmer’s Delight, and a host of other Humboldt jump spots. It’s a death wish of sorts if one isn’t thinking about taking the fun jump halfway seriously and with a clear head.
Tombstoning, however, has a long tradition that goes back to ancient tribes – inhabitants of Easter Island or Hawaii, for example – that used cliff jumping as an initiation rite. Tombstoning is done in such a way that the jumper enters the water from a very high point vertically straight, like a tombstone. It was practiced with some degree of, well, let’s just say institutional experience, the wisdom and experience and trepidation of those mentors and elders who went before you. If you didn’t listen to your elders, you were toast. After all, these were the same guys who navigated thousands of miles across the ocean using only the stars and memory for a compass.
Instead of condemning the activity, we say go ahead and do it if you must– but do it wisely with someone who knows and has carefully checked out the lake, pond or ocean they’re jumping into. Or simply watch the pros do it. Heed your elders, because as you can see there are plenty of cool cliff jumping and tombstoning sites all around to live and dive for.
These viral videos by Devin Graham are best seen at full-screen resolution.
“Maybe, maybe not. But let’s see, we’ll find out. Do ya think cow pie shit really can hit the fan?”
“Nah. But let’s try it. It’s better than cow tipping. You go first, shit-for brains. I’ll film it.”
“Uh… well …yeah, OK.”
…Silly sod farm boys looking for fun in all the wrong places. LOL. Silly people. It’s going to be stuck in his braces forever. Hope he didn’t have a date that night.
Who knew they could have so much redneck dairy fun in McKinleyville?
They’re the Lucky Pro Riders: Kota, Jon, and Mike.
Yeah, they’re really good, they’re professional, and they’re
sponsored by the Lucky Scooter Company.
Who knew scooters could be so cool. Or you could get paid to ride them. We didn’t.
Scooters, or kick scooters as we knew them, used to consist of a thin stamped steel or wood platform, a soon-to-be wobbly handlebar, and some ultra-cheap, cheap, wheels propelled by the rider furiously pushing himself off the ground. They were notoriously flimsy affairs that often fell apart or broke in short order about a week or two after Christmas. Doing any sort of tricks on them was akin to taking your life into your hands.
That all changed in 1996 when a Swiss company produced the Razor, a durable and foldable aluminum scooter with inline skate wheels. After it was introduced in Japan in 1999, many young people used it for simple transport, and the Razor became the fad du jour throughout the world.
Due to the new light weight and durability, a new sport, “freestyle scootering,” was born from the folding scooter which you can see in the above video.
Today, unfoldable professional scooters with rigid one-piece welded chromoly or 6061 grade aluminum stems and handles with a flip-deck are the choice for the pro trick riders you see here. Competitions involving tricks, stunts, flips, whips, and spins are held similar to BMX freestyle events.
Scooters are now designed with wider decks, hand brakes, and larger wheels. Some models sport three, and even four, wheels for added stability. Another brand of scooter advertises it can support up to 300 pounds of weight. Some are motorized.
Below is the ‘Behind the Scenes’ 7-minute clip describing more of what it’s all about and how it was filmed for those scooter and photography buffs out there wanting to know more.
Filmed in high-def by Devin Graham, both videos here are best viewed at full-screen resolution.
–Taking The Three-Wheel Trikes Out For a Little Spin– (VIRAL VIDEO)
Skippy Massey Humboldt Sentinel
Who says there’s not enough for kids to do. Kids are an adventurous and innovative lot. Especially when it comes to
slapping on some wheels, the need for speed, and trying out
something new.
Move over, Big Wheels. Enter Trike Drifting.
Drift trikes are modified tricycles that have slick rear wheels, normally made from a hard plastic, most often PVC. They are usually ridden on paved roads with a steep downhill grade and some corners. Smooth roads are preferred to coarse roads so they don’t wear out the rear wheels faster.
Riders gather most of their momentum through gravity, but many trike drifters choose to have a freewheeling pedal front wheel which makes for a more versatile trike. Operating speeds for drift trikes is generally between 15 and 40 MPH, but higher speeds are attainable.
Many drift trikes are homemade or custom fabricated affairs by professional welders. However, Huffy, Trek, and a number of other companies have released children’s versions commercially. Two companies, MadAzz Trikes and Maple’s Wheels, produce full size custom trikes for adults in New Zealand.
Once up to speed, trike drifters engage in ‘drifts,’ taking pride in their ability to cut corners and spin. Trike Drifting is commonly within the jurisdiction of cyclist traffic laws, but many districts, regions, and countries require the use of safety gear– helmets, brakes, a rear red reflector, and lights– along with shoes, which are notably absent in the top clip.
A spin-off of drifting has been trike racing, seen in the second video here. It’s a different deal altogether. It’s fast and furious and freewheelingly far more dangerous.
The origins of drift trikes come from New Zealand, where the sport was first invented. The above video, for example, was shot along New Zealand’s Colonial Road, a popular drifting spot. Fueled by New Zealand’s on-going car and drift culture of ‘boy racers’ and car enthusiasts, the sport has a dedicated following and it’s quickly growing in popularity across the globe.
It’s not without controversy, however. Trike Drifting and trike racing have led to their share of scrapes, bruises, and worn out shoes. Yes, there’s been a few crashes and collisions along the way. Life has risks.
Kids just wanna have fun. Like everyone else.
* * * * * * * *
Young filmmaker Devin Graham talk a little about the photography techniques and equipment he used in Trike Drifting Behind the Scenes.
The tune is ‘Toys for Boys’ by Can’t Stop Won’t Stop.
These videos are best viewed at the fullscreen setting. Other film works by the young Devin Graham that we’ve covered include Wingsuit Racing and The Phantom of the Opera.
Shooting the Tube and the Far-Flung Slip ‘N Slide Slingshot
(TWO VIRAL VIDEOS)
Skippy Massey Humboldt Sentinel
This looks like something tailor-made for Humboldt peeps.
We know of a few good spots to try. C’mon Summer.
Devin Graham’s video features a 1/4 mile culvert transformed into a 1/4 mile water long slide. Water draining from nearby mountains of a semi-secret Utah location are blocked for about 4 minutes and then released, slip-sliding the riders away down the heavy current through the culvert to the other side.
Almost as cool is the ‘Slingshot Slip And Slide’ Devin shot last year, below. Devin’s an old pro at filming this sort of thing, having been around the block before. It’s one of the coolest things we’ve seen. Just hold on to the tube and be prepared to be slung and flung. Happy flying!
Department of Defense and DARPA’s Latest Pet Projects (VIDEOS)
Meet Mr. Domo DARPA Roboto– and His Little Friends
Skippy Massey Humboldt Sentinel
Imagine this Mr. Roboto guyknocking at your door to conduct a police manhunt for a suspected terrorist. Stayin’ Alive takes on a whole new meaning. Say hello to the future. Say hello to our little friend(s).
Released on April 5, the PETMAN robot seen above was developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from the Department of Defense (DOD) CBD program.
PETMAN is used to test the performance of protective clothing designed for hazardous environments. The video shows initial testing in a chemical protection suit and gas mask.
PETMAN has sensors embedded in its skin that detect any chemicals leaking through the suit. The skin also maintains a micro-climate inside the clothing by sweating and regulating temperature.
We suspect Mr. Roboto will take on other military and combat applications for the battlefield soon. Partners in developing PETMAN were MRI Global, Measurement Technology Northwest, Smith Carter, SRD, CUH2A, and HHI.
DARPA’s Cheetah robot, above—already the fastest legged robot in history—just broke its own land speed record of 18 miles per hour.
In the process, Cheetah also surpassed another very fast mover: Olympic runner Usain Bolt. According to the International Association of Athletics Federations, Bolt set the world speed record for a human in 2009 when he reached a peak speed of 27.78 mph for a 20-meter split during the 100-meter sprint.
Cheetah was recently clocked at 29.3 mph for a 20-meter split. The Cheetah had a slight advantage over Bolt as it ran on a treadmill.
Cheetah is being developed and tested under DARPA’s (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) Maximum Mobility and Manipulation program by Boston Dynamics. The increase in speed since results were last reported in March of 2012 and is due to improved control algorithms and a more powerful pump. The goal is to reach 50 mph.
DARPA’s intent with the Cheetah-bot and its other robotics programs is to attempt to understand and engineer robots having certain core capabilities that living organisms have refined over the course of evolution: efficient locomotion, manipulation of objects, and adaptability to environments.
By drawing inspiration from nature, DARPA gains technological building blocks that create possibilities for a whole range of robots suited to future Department of Defense military missions.
The Pentagon’s DARPA and others reveal their most sinister robots coming together into a cohesive whole in the above collage clip. The wickedly Star Wars-like project named the LS3 starts at minute 2:34. The new developments in insect drones start at 3:50.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, released video footage of these projects that have been long in the works and are now starting to take shape. These related projects could very well be all it takes to scare off any insurgents once they’re combat ready for the battlefield.
Produced in numbers, they may very well counter the largest standing army in the world: China, with 3.5 million available soldiers at the ready (though estimates of their size vary and kept secret by Chinese officials).
Better living– and an even quicker death– through science and technology in the 21st century.
Welcome to the future, our Brave New World, brought to you by DARPA, the Department of Defense, and your generous tax dollars.
“MR. ROBOTO” by Styx (from the album Killroy Was Here, 1983)
You’re wondering who I am, (Secret secret, I’ve got a secret) Machine or mannequin, (Secret secret, I’ve got a secret) With parts made in Japan, (Secret secret, I’ve got a secret) I am the modern man.
I’ve got a secret I’ve been hiding under my skin, My heart is human, my blood is boiling, my brain IBM, So if you see me acting strangely, don’t be surprised, I’m just a man who needed someone and somewhere to hide, To keep me alive, just keep me alive, Somewhere to hide to keep me alive.
I’m not a robot without emotions, I’m not what you see, I’ve come to help you with your problems so we can be free, I’m not a hero, I’m not a savior, forget what you know, I’m just a man who’s circumstances went beyond his control, Beyond my control, We all need control, I need control, We all need control.
I am the modern man, (Secret secret, I’ve got a secret) Who hides behind a mask, (Secret secret, I’ve got a secret) So no one else can see, (Secret secret, I’ve got a secret) My true identity,
Domo arigato, Mr, Roboto, Domo, Domo,
(Thank you very much, oh Mr. Roboto, For doing the jobs that nobody wants to) (And thank you very much oh Mr. Roboto, For helping me escape just when I needed to)
(Thank you thank you, thank you) Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto, (I wanna thank you) Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto, (Please thank you)
The problem’s plain to see, Too much technology, Machines to save our lives, Machines de-humanize,
The time has come at last, (Secret secret, I’ve got a secret) To throw away this mask, (Secret secret, I’ve got a secret) Now everyone can see, (Secret secret, I’ve got a secret) My true identity…
Fundraiser to Help Pixie’s Loleta Meat Market Move
Deep Pit Pulled Pork Barbecue on the Menu
Skippy Massey Humboldt Sentinel
The Friends of the Loleta Meat Market are holding a luau on Saturday, April 27, at the Loleta Fireman’s Pavilion beginning at 5:30 p.m., with dinner being served until 8:30 p.m.
Dinner tickets are $15 for deep pit pulled pork, rice, assorted salads, fruit, and bread with butter.
The event will have free live music along with beer and wine for $3. Coffee and non-alcoholic beverages will also be available throughout the evening festivities.
The event has been organized to help raise funds to offset moving and renovation expenses. The 81-year old Loleta Meat Market is planning to move into the Gilded Rose located just up the street from its current location.
You may remember the thorny issue back in January when many folks, mostly Loleta locals, came to protest the Loleta Bakery and its owner Peter van der Zee after he handed Loleta Meat Market owner Pixie Setterlund a 60-day eviction notice, saying he needed to expand his adjacent popular bakery.
News of van der Zee’s proposed expansion — he and his wife Jeanne own several of the properties that make up quaint downtown Loleta, including the meat market — had local residents in an uproar due to evicting Setterlund.
The issue subsided amicably after the van der Zees made a large monetary donation and set up a bank account to help Pixie and her business move down the street into the Gilded Rose, which van der Zee also owns.
Others in the community also pitched in their support for Pixie. They took to Facebook, organized, protested, offered to help Pixie move, and made donations. An online petition called “Save Loleta Meat Market” garnered well over 300 signatures. Protesters swelled to a crowd of more than 40 citizens at the time holding signs. ”This business feeds our community,” read one colorful sign. “We love meat” and “We love Pixie,” read others.
Saturday’s pig luau is yet the latest example of the rallying support and help for Pixie and the Loleta Meat Market by the community.
”The community has been awesome with their donations and most of all emotional support,” Loleta Meat Market co-owner Pixie Setterlund said. “I have never seen a community get together like this. It is truly amazing.”
Setterlund said business has gone up 25 percent since January. ”We are all very humbled by the community outpouring,” she said.
There will be Dutch and silent auctions with live music provided by ‘The Lost Coasters’ performing authentic Hawaiian music during the luau. Dancing to the Rooster McClintock Band will heat up the floors after dinner ends at 8:30 p.m.
For more information, contact the Loleta Meat Market at 733-5319.
Who knew? Jump roping isn’t necessarily for aspiring Rocky Balboas and little kids anymore.
After 15 years of competitive rope skipping, holding 2 world records and winning World and European Jump Rope Championships several times, Adrienn was selected to be an artist of Cirque du Soleil after performing in New York City and touring in North America for a while.
She’s got some wicked moves. Adrienn’s rope skipping routines are perfectly choreographed with the music: high speed, manipulations, vigorous footwork, and rope releases combined with spectacular acrobatic elements.
With her jump rope performances, she reveals the endless possibilities of using a simple tool in creative and fun ways. Yeah, she makes it look aerobically easy, too.
Not only a performer, Adrienn gives workshops to children, adults, athletes, and future rope skippers all over the world, helping them keep fit, improve their concentration and coordination, and discovering creative and effective ways of exercising.
The above video shot by cinematographer Devin Graham at Heroes’ Square and the Fisherman’s Bastion in Budapest, Hungary, went viral with over two million views in the past week. As with Devin’s past films, it’s best viewed at full screen resolution.
Life, love, and celebration. What else do you need?
More color.
In India, Holi announces the arrival of spring and the passing of winter. Holi’s festival of colors breathes an atmosphere of social merriment. People bury their hatchets with a warm embrace and throw their worries to the wind.
Every nook and corner presents a colorful sight. Young and old alike are covered with colors (red, green, yellow, blue, black and silver). People in small groups are seen singing, dancing and throwing colors on each other.
Holi has long traditional links with several legends celebrating the triumph of good over evil, light over darkness, and kindness over cruelty.
Celebrated with a special importance in the North of India, Holi’s traditional spraying of colored powders recalls the love sport of Lord Krishna and his fun-loving impish devotees. The color, noise and entertainment that accompanies the celebration of Holi are supposed to be representative of oneness; instilling a sense of brotherhood and social harmony amongst all.
Well, that’s the idea anyway.
OK, it’s a Krishna kind of thing which sort of explains why it’s a colorful fun youthful love rave coupled with a 1960s cosmic flashback-thing meets Burning Man. Trust me, those were good days, my friends.
Shot by Devin Graham and posted 5 days ago, this film was taken during Salt Lake City’s Holi Festival of Colors at the Utah Krishna temple several weeks before. We’re not exactly sure what the other temple brethren– you know,
the really big Latter Day Saint ones– thought about it all.
One big happy cosmic Partridge family living together in spiritual harmony on Planet Earth like the Brady Bunch and the Cleavers. Sounds good in theory at least. It can happen.
This vid is best seen at fullscreen resolution.
(Skippy’s gone on leave soon, folks.
Have more fun and throw in a
little color for me while you’re away…)
It would be the nation’s first sovereign depository for private gold.
Texas also hopes to pass a law that would protect the supply
from federal government seizure.
Will it work and could other states do the same?
Senior Director Jim Rickards of Tangent Capital says “it’s not a run on Fort Knox, it’s a run on the Fed.”
It’s also part of the slow and steady re-monetization of gold throughout the world. Foreign nations are bringing their stored gold back– Venezuela, Germany, Switzerland, Azerbaijan, and possibly the Netherlands where it’s being currently debated.
Rickards believes another economic depression is around the corner and Texas wants to hedge its bets.
Texas believes taking its gold back and securing in it its own ‘Fort Knox of Texas’ is all possible because of the 10th Amendment:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
Legislation by Texas State Rep. Giovanni Capriglione would create the Texas Bullion Depository. “We don’t want just the certificates. We want our gold. And if you’re the state of Texas, you should be able to get your gold,” Capriglione said.
Capriglione said the bill is not about putting Texas on its own gold standard. Rather, a depository would give the state a reputation as being more financially secure in the event of a national or international financial crisis and economic meltdown.
The depository would be a secure state-based bank that would hold the gold bars owned by the University of Texas Investment Management. It’s no surprise that Ron Paul supports the plan, as he explains that the gold would be safer in the hands of
Texans.
“If you think gold is a hedge, or a protection, you always want it as close to the individual and the entity as possible,“ Ron Paul said. “Texas is better served if it knows exactly where its gold is rather than depending on the security of the Federal Reserve.”
Just folks having fun and letting loose on the world’s largest rope swing at Corona Arch in Moab, Utah.
It’s become the newest and most popular pendulum destination for thrill seekers. The red sandstone formation’s popularity has risen over the past few years with the arch becoming known as “The Granddaddy of all Cheap Thrills” after climbers used their equipment to set up a giant rope swing last year.
Thanks to this viral video dubbed “World’s Largest Rope Swing” garnering over 19 million views, adrenaline junkies everywhere have been jumping off and swinging wild while tethered to climbing ropes.
Commercial tour companies even started rope swinging trips to Corona until they were recently banned. Nonetheless, the arch has remained open to individual swingers, hikers, climbers, partygoers, and weekend warriors– as long as they use their own private rigs.
Officials from the agency that manage the land the arch is on, the Utah Trust Lands Administration, said they can’t outright ban or prevent visitors from swinging from the arch, but will continue to emphasize its potential dangers: they’ve posted a sign warning of “severe injury or death even if your equipment works.”
“There’s no way on Earth you can tell someone not to climb a mountain,” Kim Christy, a deputy director at the agency, said.
That may change very soon. Due to the unfortunate death of a young jumper who miscalculated the length of his rope and fell to his death on Sunday, the days of swinging off the arch may be darkening.
The Phantom of the Opera is a novel by French writer Gaston
Leroux. A story of unrequited love in a beauty and the beast
narrative, Leroux claimed that Erik, the “Phantom of the Opera,”
was a real person upon which he based his 1909 story on.
There have been numerous works based on The Phantom of the Opera, ranging from musicals to films to children’s books. Well-known stage and screen adaptations of the novel include the 1925 silent film version starring Lon Chaney, the 1962 film version made by Hammer Film Productions, and the 1986 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.
In Leroux’s classic horror-romance tale, Christine is a beautiful and gifted young woman who longs to join the company of the Paris Opera House. During rehearsals for one of the opera’s grand productions, a backdrop mysteriously falls and crashes to the floor nearly crushing the leading lady, Carlotta.
Several members of the company suggest this could be the work of the “Phantom of the Opera,” a ghostly presence said to haunt the building. Carlotta drops out of the show and importune fate allows Christine stepping in as her replacement. Christine’s performance is a triumph, and on opening night she becomes reacquainted with Raoul, a former childhood friend and now a wealthy and well-known nobleman.
Christine soon finds herself taken with the handsome Raoul. But on the same evening she also makes a startling discovery — the story of the Phantom is not just a legend. He’s very real.
A brilliant but horribly disfigured composer, the Phantom lives deep in the bowels of the old opera house, and he’s taken with the sheer beauty of Christine’s voice. The masked Phantom abducts and brings Christine to his secret lair– where he offers to help perfect her talents and write an opera especially for her. As the terrified Christine is comforted by Raoul, the Phantom sees her misplaced affection as yet another tremendous betrayal. The vengeful and bitterly jealous Phantom nearly kills Christine– just as he previously nearly killed Carlotta.
When the Phantom finally emerges to present the opera’s management with the piece he has written for Christine, the singer is asked to risk her life in an effort to capture and unmask the mad genius– once and for all.
The performer in this musical adaption of The Phantom of the Opera is accomplished violinist, musician, dancer, and composer Lindsey Stirling. She plays it fast, hard, and wicked.
Stirling performs a variety of music styles, from classical to Celtic, pop to rock, hip-hop to dubstep. At the age of 5, after being influenced by the classical music records played by her father, Stirling began to study the violin. She took private lessons for 12 years, and when she was 16, joined a rock band with four of her friends. From there, her career took off.
In 2010, the 24-year-old Stirling was a quarter-finalist on the fifth season of America’s Got Talent where she was known as the ‘Hip Hop Violinist’.
Stirling’s performances were dubbed “electrifying” by the judges and she won the acclaim of the audience, but after she stepped up her final performance judge Piers Morgan bluntly told her, “You’re not untalented, but you’re not good enough to get away with flying through the air and trying to play the violin at the same time.”
Sharon Osbourne softened the blow bittersweetly by adding, “You need to be in a group. What you’re doing is not enough to fill a theater in Vegas.”
Stirling confided later, “I was devastated at the results. It was painful, and a bit humiliating; however, I had to relearn where it was that I drew my strength.”
And draw upon it she did. She has since done many collaborations, solo works, recordings, a few films and videos, and is presently touring across the country.
Shortly after her performance on America’s Got Talent, an awesome cinematographer named Devin Graham contacted her in hopes of making a YouTube video together. The above video has gone viral with over seven million views and is one of their many fine collaborations together, among others.
Stirling decided to continue to embrace her unique style of performance. In a 2012 interview she remarked, “A lot of people have told me along the way that my style and the music I do is unmarketable. But the only reason I’m successful is because I have stayed true to myself.”
She must be Irish.
* * * * * * * *
The above video is best viewed at the fullscreen setting. The sound is great. Crank it up.
St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated on March 17, the saint’s religious feast day and the anniversary of his death in the fifth century.
The Irish have observed this day as a religious holiday for over 1,000 years. On St. Patrick’s Day, which falls during the Christian season of Lent, Irish families would traditionally attend church in the morning and celebrate in the afternoon. Lenten prohibitions against the consumption of meat were waived and people would dance, drink, feast, play basketball and listen to U2, the Chieftains, and Flogging Molly–on the traditional meal of Irish bacon and cabbage and oatmeal, which kept everyone happy and regular.
St. Patrick and the First St. Patrick’s Day Parade
Saint Patrick, who lived during the fifth century, is the patron saint and national apostle of Ireland. Born in Roman Britain, he was kidnapped and brought to Ireland as a slave at the age of 16. As a form of sadistic punishment he was pimped out as a shepherd for six years.
He later escaped, but returned to Ireland and was credited with bringing Christianity to its formerly heathen people. In the centuries following Patrick’s death (believed to have been on March 17, 461), the mythology surrounding his life became ever more ingrained in the Irish culture.
Perhaps the most well known legends are that he explained the Holy Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) using the three leaves of a native Irish clover, the shamrock, and drove the snakes out of Ireland. St. Patrick also invented Guinness beer, Irish Spring, Lucky Charms, turtlenecks, golf and basketball. This was before Darby O’Gill and Super Mario Bros. came to fore.
Since around the ninth or 10th century, people in Ireland have been observing the Roman Catholic feast day of St. Patrick on March 17. Interestingly, however, the first parade held to honor St. Patrick’s Day took place not in Ireland, but in the United States. On March 17, 1762, Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched through New York City four blocks to the nearest pub. Along with their music, the parade helped the soldiers reconnect with their Irish roots as well as with fellow Irishmen serving in the English army, and served as yet another wee occaision to get thoroughly schnockered.
Growth of St. Patrick’s Day Celebrations
Over the next 35 years, Irish patriotism among American immigrants flourished, prompting the rise of so-called “Irish Aid” societies like the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick and the Hibernian Society. Each group would hold annual parades featuring bagpipes and drums and hoisting pints of beer.
In 1848, several New York Irish Aid societies decided to unite their parades to form one official New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Today, that parade is the world’s oldest civilian parade and the largest in the United States, with over 150,000 participants. Each year, nearly 3 million wannabe Irish people line the 1.5-mile parade route to watch the procession while getting Irishly drunk and doing embarrassingly silly little things.
St. Patrick’s Day, No Irish Need Apply and the “Green Machine”
Up until the mid-19th century, most Irish already in America were members of the Protestant middle class. When the Great Potato-Head Famine hit Ireland in 1845, close to 1 million poor and uneducated Irish Catholics began pouring into America to escape starvation and the English Crown, whom they’d been fighting for 800 years and being a royal pain in the Gaelic arse. Remember, the basis for luck and optimism always begins with sheer terror.
Despised for their religious beliefs and unfamiliar accents by the Protestant Yank majority, the potato-gorged country bumpkin immigrants had trouble finding even the most menial jobs. When Irish Americans in the country’s cities took to the streets on St. Patrick’s Day to celebrate their heritage, newspapers portrayed them in cartoons as drunk, violent monkeys. The National Enquirer published pictures of them as aliens, Big Feet, Honey Boo Boo, leprechauns, banshees, faeries, and Richard Simmons. Also Sean Connery and George Clooney, too. In suits. But no one minded that.
The American Irish soon began to realize, however, that their large and growing numbers endowed them with the bollocks and a political power that had yet to be exploited. They started to organize, and their voting bloc, known as the “green machine,” became an important swing vote for political hopefuls like Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and John Edwards. Suddenly, annual St. Patrick’s Day parades became a show of strength for Irish Americans and billy club-wielding Boston cops, as well as a must-attend event for a slew of political candidates and masculine playwrights.
In 1948, President Harry S. Truman attended New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, a proud moment for the many Irish Americans whose ancestors had to fight stereotypes and racial prejudice to find acceptance in the New World. Believing that moderation is a fatal thing and nothing succeeds like excess, they now throw a ton of dye into the Chicago River every year which is about as close to bucolic emerald green pastures as Chicago will ever see.
St. Patrick’s Day Around the World
Today, people of all backgrounds celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, especially throughout the United States, Canada and Australia. Although North America is home to the largest productions, St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated in many other locations far from Ireland’s green isles, including Japan, Singapore, Russia, and Burnt Ranch.
Ireland has a long and rich history, the facts of which have been the cause of many a retarded and often violent fuppin’ argument at least 7,000 years before Riverdance existed.
An island, Ireland has been invaded by the Celts, the Vikings, the Normans, the English, and Japanese tourists. This is why the Irish are world class at swearing, poetry, drinking single malt whiskies and fighting amongst themselves– all at the same time.
The Irish say the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. So go ahead. Paint yourself green and clog a lucky jig, say Bob’s your uncle and don a funny hat, kiss the Blarney Stone and drink more beer. On St. Patrick’s Day, celebrate, relax and smile.
Dabbing marijuana seems to be the new way of getting high.
What is dabbing? “Dabbing” is an endearing term for consuming potently extracted cannabis concentrate—hash oil or butane honey oil—that is normally ”dabbed” onto a super-heated surface. The vapor that is created by dabbing is inhaled by the smoker.
Some say dabs are awesome; a great way to instantly take one hit and be done for. Two hits and you’re out for the count. Wasted, baked and fried in a moment’s notice.
But are their dangers to being immensely high? There is when you pass out.
“Marijuana is perfectly safe” is one of the marijuana legalization movement’s most widely accepted (and most important) truisms.
Comical estimations of what would constitute a “lethal dose,” such as orally consuming more marijuana than the stomach can physically hold, leads to the truism that it’s impossible to overdose on marijuana.
That may not be true.
With high-dosage edibles, it’s easy to become “uncomfortably high,” and with a recent trend called “dabbing,” it’s also easy to become so high that the user passes out.
“Dabbing” is a simple concept: a small amount of super-high concentrate — hash oil, wax, or another compound where so much of the marijuana plant’s plant material is removed that what’s left is between 50-to-80% active ingredients, a sort of grain alcohol to a bud’s wine — is put on a heated surface. A puff of smoke is emitted, and then the user inhales the entire puff of super-concentrated smoke.
The effects are immediate — and they’re intense. Folks who have used cannabis daily for 30 years report, “I am high again!”
Other people not so used to the magic plant usually need to sit down for a minute or two before they can talk again. In other words, “dabbing” is a way to ingest a lot of medicine very quickly — and a way to get really fucked up.
The number one hazard of dabbing in my experience… is the danger of passing out from an overdose.
In the past couple of years, there have been repeated occasions in which 911 teams have had to be called in due to cannabis overdoses.
At the NORML conference in LA, there were at least three different emergency calls due to use of high-potency cannabis extracts. I hear that 911 was also called a few times at the High Times cannabis cup two years ago.
At the NORML party in LA, one person fainted and cracked his nose on the sidewalk. I know someone else, a beautiful lady my age who has been smoking pot since the ’70s, who fainted and broke her teeth on the floor after dabbing. Things like this never happened until the popularization of hash oil in recent years.
The dangers are dire enough to merit a special warning. The best-authenticated case of a cannabis death in the literature —reported by Gabriel Nahas or Reese Jones as I recall— was of someone who collapsed and cracked their skull in the bathroom from a hashish overdose.
So dab away – and realize a little dab will do ‘ya. But when you toke yourself stupid through dabbing, you may be literally doing so.
On Tuesday afternoon, 115 Catholic cardinals gathered at the Sistine Chapel in Rome to vote for the successor to the recently-resigned Pope Benedict XVI.
After each cardinal took a vow of secrecy before placing their vote written on a rectangular piece of paper, the tally was accumulated and the outcome was announced. The ballots were bound together and burned with a special chemical, releasing a white smoke from the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel today, signaling to the world that a new Pope has been selected.
Tens of thousands of people gathered at St. Peter’s Square in anticipation of the announcement.
So who did they select? It came as stunning surprise to most.
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, age 76, formerly Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and of the Jesuit order.
He has taken on the name Pope Francis I. Named after St. Francis of Assisi, the humble friar who dedicated his life to helping the poor, Pope Francis will be the new leader of 1.2 billion Catholics throughout the world. The first non-European Pope chosen in more than 1,000 years, Pope Francis will formally be installed in a Mass later this month.
A stunned-looking Bergoglio shyly waved to the crowd gathered in St. Peter’s Square, marveling that the Cardinals had had to look to “the end of the earth” to find a bishop of Rome.
He asked for prayers for himself, and for retired Pope Benedict XVI, whose surprising resignation paved the way for the tumultuous conclave that brought the first Jesuit to the papacy. The Cardinal electors overcame deep divisions to select the 266th pontiff in a remarkably fast conclave.
The Catholic Church’s new leader was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1936 and has four brothers and sisters. He was born to an Italian immigrant railroad father and a mother who was a housewife. While Bergoglio originally wanted to be a chemist, his path took a very different turn. In 1958, he joined the Society of Jesus and began preparing for the priesthood. He spent nearly his entire career at home in Argentina overseeing churches and humble “shoe-leather” priests.
Just over five decades later, he will now lead the church that he joined as a young man. He inherits a Catholic church in turmoil, plagued by the clerical sex abuse scandal, internal divisions, and dwindling numbers of the faithful in parts of the Christian world.
Bergoglio appealed to conservatives in the College of Cardinals as a man who had held the line against liberalizing the Jesuits, and to moderates as a symbol of the church’s commitment to the developing world. He is a fierce defender of the poor and underprivileged.
He drew high marks as an accomplished intellectual, having studied theology in Germany. His leading role during the Argentine economic crisis established his reputation as a voice of conscience, and made him a powerful symbol of the costs that globalization imposes on the world’s poor.
His reputation for personal simplicity also exercised an undeniable appeal. A Prince of the Church who chose to live in a simple apartment rather than the Archbishop’s palace, he gave up his chauffeured limousine in favor of taking the bus to work, cooked his own meals, regularly visited the poor in Buenos Aires’s slums, and often took long solitary walks in the countryside. He considers social outreach, rather than doctrinal or philosophical battles, to be the essential business of the church.
“It’s a huge gift for all of Latin America. We waited 20 centuries. It was worth the wait,” said Jose Cruz, a friar
at the St. Francis of Assisi church in Puerto Rico. “Everyone
from Canada down to Patagonia is going to feel blessed.”
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner congratulated Pope Francis along with the rest of the world’s Catholic faithful – and expressed hope that he will work toward justice, equality and peace for all.
President Barack Obama said in a statement today, “As a champion of the poor and the most vulnerable among us, he carries forth the message of love and compassion that has inspired the world for more than 2,000 years – that in each other, we see the face of God.”
By John Martin
Courtesy of Global Research
January 27, 2013
“They came as slaves; vast human cargo transported on tall British ships bound for the Americas. They were shipped by the hundreds of thousands and included men, women, and even the youngest of children.
Whenever they rebelled or even disobeyed an order, they were punished in the harshest ways. Slave owners would hang their human property by their hands and set their hands or feet on fire as one form of punishment. They were burned alive and had their heads placed on pikes in the marketplace as a warning to other captives.
We don’t really need to go through all of the gory details, do we? We know all too well the atrocities of the African slave trade.”
But, are we talking about African slavery? King James II and Charles I also led a continued effort to enslave the Irish. Britain’s famed Oliver Cromwell furthered this practice of dehumanizing one’s next door neighbor.
The Irish slave trade began when James II sold
30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.
Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.
From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves.
Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.
During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2,000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.
Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe what occurred to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.
As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.
African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Pounds Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African.
The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and remain in servitude.
In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women– in many cases, girls as young as 12–to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion.
These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves. This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread, that, in 1681, legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the
purpose of producing slaves for sale.”
In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company.
England continued to ship tens of thousands of
Irish slaves for more than a century. Records state that, after the 1798 Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia. There were horrible abuses of both African and Irish captives. One British ship even dumped 1,302 slaves into the Atlantic Ocean so that the crew would have plenty of food to eat.
There is little question that the Irish experienced the horrors of slavery as much (if not more in the 17th Century) as the Africans did. There is, also, very little question that those brown, tanned faces you witness in your travels to the West Indies are
very likely a combination of African and Irish ancestry.
In 1839, Britain finally decided on it’s own to end it’s participation in Satan’s highway to hell and stopped transporting slaves. While their decision did not stop pirates from doing what they desired, the new law slowly concluded this chapter of nightmarish Irish misery.
But, if anyone, black or white, believes that slavery was only an African experience, then they’ve got it completely wrong. Irish slavery is a subject worth remembering, not erasing from our memories.
But, where are our public and private schools? Where are the history books? Why is it so seldom discussed? Do the memories of hundreds of thousands of Irish victims merit more than a mention from an unknown writer?
Or is their story to be one that their English pirates intended: To have the terrible Irish story utterly and completely disappear almost as if it never happened.
None of the Irish victims ever made it back to their homeland to describe their ordeal. These are the lost slaves; the ones that time and biased history books conveniently forgot.
* * * * * * * * *
We were curious about this subject and looked into it a bit more.
Indeed, according to James Cavanaugh, author of Irish Slaves of the Caribbean, the English sold more Irish slaves between 1600 and 1699 than they did African slaves.
Cavanaugh notes the extent of the Irish slave trade:
“The Proclamation of 1625 ordered that Irish political prisoners be transported overseas and sold as laborers to English planters, who were settling the islands of the West Indies, officially establishing a policy that was to continue for two centuries. In 1629 a large group of Irish men and women were sent to Guiana, and by 1632, Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat in the West Indies.
But there were not enough political prisoners to supply the demand, so every petty infraction carried a sentence of transporting, and slaver gangs combed the country sides to kidnap enough people to fill out their quotas.”
Cavanaugh tells of shiploads of Irish children who were shipped off. The numbers are staggering. He
writes as follows:
“In 1649, Cromwell landed in Ireland and attacked Drogheda, slaughtering some 30,000 Irish living in the city. Cromwell reported: ‘I do not think 30 of their whole number escaped with their lives. Those that did are in safe custody in the Barbados.’
A few months later, in 1650, 25,000 Irish were sold to planters in St. Kitt.
During the 1650s decade of Cromwell’s Reign of Terror, over 100,000 Irish children were taken from Catholic parents and sold as slaves in the New Americas.
In fact, more Irish were sold as slaves to the American colonies and plantations from 1651 to 1660 than the total existing free population of the Americas.”
We found urchins were swept up from London’s streets to labor in the tobacco fields where life expectancy was no more than two years. Brothels were raided to provide “breeders” for Virginia. Hopeful migrants were duped into signing as indentured servants, unaware they would become personal property who could be bought, sold, and even gambled away. Transported convicts were paraded for sale like livestock.
Contrary to popular belief, the Irish were anything but lucky. No wonder we like good whiskey.
We were pleased today to see the Gensaw, Lara, Santsche, Swain, and Bailey kids working to preserve
their Yurok language and culture in this Access Humboldt video,
produced with fellow students at the Klamath River Early College
of the Redwoods.
Kids, you may not know this, but we knew many of your families, relatives, Aunties and Uncles through the years living in Humboldt. Consider it an old-school kind of thing. Elders and community are like that.
We also know it wasn’t easy nor was it always this way. These efforts took a long time to come about. A very hard long time.
“We Welcome You,” below, is from the Yurok Tribe’s website. It explains more of the history and culture of the Yurok people.
Tradition
At one time our people lived in over fifty villages throughout our ancestral territory. The laws, health and spirituality of our people were untouched by non-Indians.
Culturally, our people are known as great fishermen, eelers, basket weavers, canoe makers, storytellers, singers, dancers, healers and strong medicine people.
Before we were given the name “Yurok” (the name means “downriver people” in the neighboring Karuk
language) we referred to ourselves and others in our
area using our Indian language. When we refer to
ourselves we say Oohl, meaning Indian people.
Our traditional family homes and sweathouses are made from fallen keehl (redwood trees) which are then cut into redwood boards. Before contact, it was common for every village to have several family homes and sweathouses. Today, only a small number of villages with traditional family homes and sweathouses remain intact. Our traditional stories teach us that the redwood trees are sacred living beings. Although we use them in our homes and canoes, we also respect redwood trees because they stand as guardians over our sacred places.
The yoch (canoe) makers are recognized for their intuitive craftsmanship. The primary function of the canoes was to get people up and down the river and for ocean travel. The canoe is also very important to the White Deerskin Dance, a ceremony recently rejuvenated. The canoes are used to transport dancers and ceremonial people.
The traditional money used by Yurok people is terk-term (dentalia shell), which is a shell harvested from the ocean. The dentalia used on necklaces are most often used in traditional ceremonies, such as the u pyue-wes (White Deerskin Dance), woo-neek-we-ley-goo (Jump Dance) and mey-lee
(Brush Dance). It was standard years ago to use dentalia
to settle debts, pay dowry, and purchase large or small items
needed by individuals or families.
Contact and Change
The Yurok did not experience non-Indian exploration until much later than other tribal groups in California and the United States. By 1849 settlers were quickly moving into Northern California because of the discovery of gold at Gold Bluffs and Orleans. The Yurok and settlers traded goods and the Yurok assisted with transporting items via dugout canoe. However, this relationship quickly changed as more settlers moved into the area and demonstrated hostility toward Indian people.
The gold mining expeditions resulted in the destruction of villages, loss of life and a culture severely fragmented. By the end of the gold rush era at least 75% of the Yurok people died due to massacres and disease, while other
tribes in California saw a 95% loss of life.
The Federal Government established the Yurok Reservation in 1855 and immediately Yurok people were confined to the area. The Reservation was considerably smaller than the Yurok original ancestral territory. This presented a hardship for Yurok families who traditionally lived in villages along the Klamath River and northern Pacific coastline.
Reservations, Relocation and Education
When Fort Terwer was established many Yurok families were relocated and forced to learn farming and the English language. Several Yurok people were relocated to the newly established Reservation in Smith River that same year. Once the Hoopa Valley Reservation was established many Yurok people were sent to live there, as were the Mad River, Eel River and Tolowa Indians.
In the years following the opening of the Hoopa Valley Reservation, several squatters on the Yurok Reservation continued to farm and fish in the Klamath River. The government’s response was to evict squatters and use military force. At the time, logging practices were
unregulated and resulted in the contamination of the Klamath
River, depletion of the salmon population, and destruction of
Yurok village sites and sacred areas.
Western education was imposed on Yurok children beginning in the late 1850s at Fort Terwer. Yurok children, sent to live at the Hoopa Valley Reservation, continued to be taught by missionaries.
The goal of the missionary style of teaching was to eliminate the continued use of cultural and religious teachings that Indian children’s families taught. Children were abused by missionaries for using the Yurok language and observing cultural and ceremonial traditions.
In the late 1800s children were removed from the Reservation to Chemawain Oregon and Sherman Institute in Riverside, California. Today, many elders look back on this period in time as a horrifying experience because they lost their connection to their families, and their culture. Many were not able to learn the Yurok language and did not participate in ceremonies for fear of violence being brought against them by non-Indians.
Some elders went to great lengths to escape from the schools, traveling hundreds of miles to return home to their families. They lived with the constant fear of being caught and returned to the school. Families often hid their children when they saw government officials. Over time the use of boarding schools declined and day schools were established on the Yurok Reservation.
Elders recall getting up early in the morning, traveling by canoe to the nearest day school and returning home late at night. The fact that they were at day schools did not eliminate the constant pressure to forget their language and culture.
Families disguised the practice of teaching traditional ways, while others succumbed to the western philosophy of education and left their traditional ways behind.
Eventually, Indian children were granted permission to enroll in public schools. Although they were granted access many faced harsh prejudice and stereotypes. These hardships plagued Indian students for generations and are major factors in the decline of the Yurok language and traditional ways.
Cultural Revitalization
The younger generations of Yurok who survived these eras became strong advocates (as elders) for cultural revitalization.
Similar to other tribal groups in California, Yurok people overcame the destruction of their villages, and assimilation attempts by non-Indians. Many Yurok people went to extreme measures to hold on to their traditional ways. When government policy forbade the use of traditional languages and outlawed the practice of traditional ceremonies, Yurok people continued. Some dances stopped while others were revitalized. Most importantly, the knowledge and beliefs continued and eventually reappeared and have remained constant.
The late 1970s and 80s were a time when the revitalization effort
soared in the local area. The Jump Dance returned to Pek-won in 1984, a War Dance demonstration was held in the late 1980s, and communities came together to support the revitalization of Brush Dances along the river and the coast. In the year 2000, the White Deerskin Dance was held again at the village of Weych-pues.
For several generations there were times of darkness – no cultural traditions being passed on and the language slowly fading away. With so few Yurok families able to hold onto traditional ways, it appeared as though the attempts to eliminate the cultural traditions would be successful.
With the help of many elders (who have since passed on), a glimpse of light began to emerge. Young people who were eager to learn Yurok traditions did so and for the past twenty years Yurok traditional ceremonies have continued.
Language Revitalization
The use of the Yurok language dramatically decreased when non-Indians settled in the Yurok territory. By the early 1900s the Yurok language was near extinction. It took less than 40 years for the language to reach that level. It took another 70 years for the Yurok language to recover.
When the language revitalization effort began, the use of old records helped new language learners. However, it was through hearing fluent
speakers that many young learners fluency level
increased.
In 1996 the Yurok Tribe received assistance from the Administration for Native Americans (ANA). With the development of a Long Range Restoration Plan a survey was completed and the results showed that there were only 20 fluent speakers and 12 semi-fluent speakers of the Yurok language.
After a decade of language restoration activities, the Tribe most recently documented that there are now only 11 fluent Yurok speakers, but now have 37 advanced speakers, 60 intermediate speakers and approximately 311 basic speakers.
The Yurok Tribe continues to look to new approaches like the use of digital technology, Internet sites, short stories, and supplemental curriculum. The Tribe continues to increase the number of language classes taught on and off the Reservation, at local schools for young learners and at community classes.
Today
Today, the Yurok Tribe is currently the largest Tribe in California, with more than 5,000 enrolled members.
The Tribe provides numerous services to the local community and membership with its more than 200 employees. The Tribe’s major initiatives include: the Hoopa-Yurok Settlement Act, dam removal, natural resources protection, sustainable economic development enterprises and land acquisition.”
“We invite all people sharing this planet with us to join in: our deep appreciation and respect for the natural world, acceptance of our role as responsible stewards keeping balance in the world, and realization of the power that every individual has within them to make positive change for all people, wildlife, and the world as a whole.”
* * * * * * * *
The Yurok people have worked tenaciously to reclaim their culture, language, young people, and rightful place in the sun.
Our appreciation goes out to Josh, Jeremiah, Lena-Belle, Sammy, James, Ke-yoh, Eric, Misty, Page, Mari, Jasmine, and Madison for carrying the lit torch and family fishing net further, and to the Elders for teaching them on their way.
(“We Welcome You: History and Culture” has been slightly abridged. The full article can be found here)
An anonymous amateur prospector in southern Australia
has unearthed a huge piece of gold, reportedly worth more
than $300,000. The man found the 177 troy ounce nugget
near Ballarat, Victoria.
The prospector passed the gold on to a mining exchange
in Ballarat, reportedly saying, ‘Mate, I found a good one.’
If sold at market value it would be worth just shy of $300,000, but its extreme rarity would mean it be worth far more, according to Cordell Kent, owner of the Ballarat Mining Exchange Gold Shop.
Such a large nugget such may be worth upwards of half a million dollars for individuals and museums desiring to add the unique and rare speciman to their collections.
“If you are silly enough to melt it down, it would be worth just under $300,000 on market value but as a nugget at this size and shape, it’s worth significantly more than that,” Kent said. “I can’t remember a nugget this big ever
being found locally.”
The exact location and the identity of the lucky prospector
remain secret, but Kent said the “very pure” nugget was
found within 18 miles of Ballarat.
The massive nug was found about 2 feet below the surface of the ground. The man was using a $6,000 state-of-the-art Minelab GPX5000 super metal detector with a small coil, which meant he was able to find the gold relatively deep underground in an area which had been searched many times in the past.
The prospector said it sounded like the hood of a car going off through his headphones. He noticed the ground wasn’t disturbed so the area hadn’t been previously searched before. The Y-shaped nugget was lying flat in the clay and gravel soil below, and when he carefully dug it up, was surprised to find a solid chunk of gold measuring 8.6 inches long , 5.5 inches wide, and having a maximum thickness of nearly 2 inches.
The man had only made small finds before, Kent said, but he was “a person that really deserved it. Up until yesterday the smallest nugget he had found was a small one, about a quarter of an ounce.”
Kent said the giant nugget is of national and historical significance and he hopes to sell it within Australia. Given its size, there would need to be special permission granted for it to be exported overseas. He also predicted there would be a fresh gold rush hit the Ballarat region.
“We’re so far into a gold rush and we have years and years and years of hope ahead of us. It’s unbelievable. I’ve got no doubt there will be a lot of people who will be very enthusiastic about the goldfields again,” the Ballarat Courier quoted him as saying.
“It gives people hope. It’s my dream to find something like that, and I’ve been prospecting for more than two decades. There’s nothing like digging up money, it’s good fun,” Kent said.
The last reported gold nugget found in the Ballarat region was in July of last year. That nugget, named Destiny, weighed 117 troy ounces and was discovered in the Golden Triangle region of Ballarat, Bendigo and Stawell of Australia.
“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas“ was first introduced by Judy Garland in the 1944 MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis.
Judy Garland’s character, Esther, sings the song to cheer up her despondent five-year-old sister, Tootie, played by Margaret O’Brien. They are disraught over leaving behind their beloved house in St. Louis and moving to New York City so their father can take on a new job.
In 1944, as World War II was raging across Europe and the South Pacific, Garland’s song became popular among United States troops weary of war, uncertainty, and the loss of loved ones.
Her performance of this song at the Hollywood Canteen, a free entertainment club for servicemen on their way overseas, brought many soldiers to tears.
The concert featured performances by Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Roger Waters joined by Eddie Vedder, Bon Jovi, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Billy Joel, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Chris Martin joined by Michael Stipe, and Paul McCartney joined by members of Nirvana.
In between there were appearances by Billy Crystal, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, P. Diddy, Chris Rock, and many more, spliced with footage of the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy that pummeled the East Coast in
October, leaving thousands homeless and billions of dollars of damages in its wake.
Other highlights from throughout the show included Roger Waters ending his set by bringing out Eddie Vedder to sing lead on Comfortably Numb. Roger, like many of the others, is looking terribly tired and old these days. Heck, for those who remember, we’re all getting older. These guys are pushing 70 now.
The Rolling Stones only got to play two songs (You Got Me Rocking and Jumpin’ Jack Flash) but still looked like they were having a good time.
The Who, meanwhile, played seven songs, one of which was Pinball Wizard above. Roger Daltrey doesn’t belt it out like he did in the old days, but he’s in fairly good shape for 68.
Kanye West delivered a set in a leather skirt which sent much of the Twitterverse into an angry fit– but the greater surprise was Chris Martin bringing out R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe to do Losing My Religion.
The most anticipated part of the night was that Nirvana reunion with Paul McCartney filling in for Kurt Cobain on vocals. Sir Paul brought Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Pat Smear out during his set to perform a new song they wrote together titled, Cut Me Some Slack. Rare and sloppily cut renditions of the song are being taken down as quickly as they appear on the web. But, for now, you can catch Cut Me Some Slack for the first time here. Shhh….
The 12/12/12 concert set was:
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Land of Hope and Dreams
Wrecking Ball
My City in Ruins/Working on a Building/Jersey Girl
Born to Run with Jon Bon Jovi
Roger Waters
In The Flesh
Another Brick in the Wall
Money
Us and Them
Comfortably Numb with Eddie Vedder
Bon Jovi
It’s My Life
Wanted Dead or Alive
Who Says You Can’t Go Home with Bruce Springsteen
Living on a Prayer
Eric Clapton
Nobody Loves You When You’re Down and Out
Got to get Better in a Little While
Crossroads
Rolling Stones
You Got Me Rocking
Jumpin Jack Flash
Alicia Keys
Brand New Me
No One
The Who
Who are You
Bellboy
Pinball Wizard/See Me, Feel Me
Baba O’Riley
Love Reign O’er Me
Tea & Theatre
Kanye West
Clique
Mercy
Power
Jesus Walks
Run This Town
Diamonds From Sierra Leone
Touch the Sky
Gold Digger
Good Life
Runaway
Stronger
Billy Joel
Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)
Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
New York State of Mind
River of Dreams
You May Be Right
Only the Good Die Young
Chris Martin
Viva la Vida
Losing My Religion with Michael Stipe
Us Against The World
Paul McCartney
Helter Skelter
Let Me Roll It
Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five
My Valentine with Diana Krall
Blackbird
Cut Me Some Slack with Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear
I Got a Feeling
Live and Let Die
Social Responsibility and Fine Soaps are a Bridgeville Family’s Passion
Skippy Massey
Humboldt Sentinel
Dennis and Dottie Simmons have both a passion and a mission: the Simmons Natural Bodycare Company. They make soaps– and a fine variety of other skin and health care
products in their small off-the-grid shop in Bridgeville.
We like their soaps very much. They’re handmade, pure, of wonderful quality, and delightfully packaged. Their soap rinses clean in hot or cold, hard or soft water without leaving a residue often found in other soaps.
We also like Simmons soaps because they’re a socially conscious and responsible family business caring about our Humboldt environment and community.
The following is from the Simmons family website. We’d like to share with you what makes them and their company uniquely special:
“We’ve been making a lot of soap lately. It is, after all, our business. And while it keeps us indoors on lovely summer days, it is still a labor of love.
We have been making soap since 1979, when we began as a way to provide natural & nontoxic soap for our own special needs. Sensitive to synthetic fragrances and colors, we could not find commercial soap locally that worked for us. And since that time we have never tired of creating the best soap we possibly can.
It’s our mission to provide for the basic needs of our skin and bodies in the best possible way. That is why the body care products we make are carefully handcrafted in small batches using high quality natural non-toxic ingredients, with formulas that are simple and honest, incorporating only what is needed to create safe and effective products that are a pleasure to use.
We have always chosen pure, quality oils & other botanical ingredients for their simple natural benefits. The basic care we provide works by assisting the natural processes of renewal and protection that keep us healthy and beautiful; care for everyday needs as well as for special needs common to the seasons such as dry skin, congestion, and biting insects. We also work to accommodate the basic needs of those special customers with allergies and sensitivities that limit their choices. Our products speak for themselves with quality you can feel.
We start by mixing organic oils of olive, palm, and coconut together. We choose these oils for their individual benefits. Olive oil is the best for the skin. Palm creates a harder, longer lasting bar. Coconut oil is the source of rich, copious lather, without it bubbles are small and thin.
Our soaps are made in rectangular columns. Once the liquid soap is ready, we pump it into molds, cover it with an insulating layer and let it sit up to 48 hours before it is ready to cut into bars.
Our soap cutter is a machine of our own devising, custom made by us for our soaps. Once cut we place the soaps on trays, then on ventilated shelves, where it cures for at least 3 weeks before we wrap it to sell.
At Simmons Natural Bodycare, what we make is only half the story. We believe, practice, and promote a philosophy of sustainability. This encompasses the use of renewable energy sources and ingredients to create our products, and doing it in a way which does not degrade the environment or cause harm to us and its other inhabitants.
It is not so much the idea of ‘doing the right thing’, but simply that it is the right thing to do.
This is why we use minimal packaging incorporating as much recycled and recyclable materials as possible. Why our invoices & labels are 100% PCW paper, including the adhesive mailing labels. Even the beautiful handmade Thai papers that wrap our soaps are from trees harvested in a sustainable manner, limbed, so the tree keeps growing. This is why our ingredients are biodegradable, food grade, and mostly organic, and why we do not test on animals.
We wrap the soap by hand. Each bar is wrapped in ecologically sustainable Thai mulberry paper, then labeled with a recycled paper band. You’ve probably noticed we color code our soaps: each variety has its own specific color paper.
Simmons Natural Bodycare is part of a self-sufficient family homestead in the rural mountains of far northern California. Our soap shop has evolved a lot over the years.
Starting by making soap in our kitchen, our original shop was built from trees we fell and milled ourselves (5 big buggy Douglas fir that were dying). We outgrew that in a few years and expanded it into the shop we have today. The electricity for our home and business is self-generated using solar (PV) panels, a 1kw wind turbine, and a small hydro-power system.
Our goal is to live and run our business with as little impact on the planet as possible. The business began by crafting natural, nontoxic, soaps & body care products to ensure the mildness needed for our own family’s sensitive skin. It now provides for our family as part of a working homestead in conjunction with our large organic vegetable garden, orchard, and poultry.
We contribute to our local community and the world community through volunteer work and donations. We have donated 2% of the sales of our bars soaps to Heifer International since 2004 and support other small businesses through our website.
Since 2006 we have been 100% Carbon Neutral as we planted enough trees worldwide to offset our carbon emissions through Trees for the Future. In addition, we double our offsets annually by donating to CarbonFund.org to support renewable energy and energy conservation projects. We continue to plant trees, 1 for every 12 of our 4 oz. bar soaps sold.
By working in and for our community and environment, serving our customers the best we know how, reusing, recycling, and generally trying to conduct our lives and business conscious of the impact our behavior has on the people and planet around us, we bring into action the beliefs upon which Simmons Natural Bodycare was founded.
With over 30 years of soap making experience, it is our pleasure to provide you with the finest natural organic soaps. It makes us even happier to be able to do it in the most environmentally conscious way we know how.
~Dennis & Dottie Simmons
* * * * * * * * *
The Simmons family have put down long and strong roots in Humboldt County. They’ve made a go of a home and business and family. We wish every company were as responsible as the Simmons’. We like everything they represent.
We hope you try some of their great soaps this holiday season, and help support the wonderful mission they do. We wanted to share this story with you, and not because they asked us to. They didn’t. We chose to share this because we like their products and practices and what they do for our community. We hope you do, too.
American Gangnam Style: “Thank the Farmers” (VIRAL VIDEO)
–Updated Below–
Skippy Massey Humboldt Sentinel
Just when we were getting tired of the Gangnam Style parodies, a good one rises to the top like cream in our milk
catching our Humboldt attention: the beauty and spirit of
the American farming family.
This is by the Peterson Farm brothers– Greg, Nathan, and Kendal– promoting agriculture and reminding us to thank the American farmer for their hard and honest work.
When Greg Peterson went home from college to his family’s fourth-generation farm near Assaria, Kansas, Peterson talked his kid brothers, Nathan, 18, and Kendal, 15, into singing and filming a video of the three of them together, rapping their farming mission on the family’s Saline County farm.
Their sister, Laura, helped shoot some of the video from the break of
the dawn, as the brothers buck hay, feed cattle, drive combines and tractors
until sunset. Mom and Dad are in it, and even Grandma had a say.
“I have a hard time understanding all this electronic stuff,” says Eunice Peterson, the brothers’ 88-year-old grandmother. “But it is all very exciting. I am thrilled for the guys.”
“My brothers thought it was funny,” Greg Peterson said. “We all like rapping.”
True to the farm experience, the Peterson brothers worked 15-hour days cutting wheat and feeding the cattle in the midst of shooting the video.
“We started halfway through wheat harvest and I got them up at 6 a.m., they were so mad at me and thought I was so stupid,” Greg Peterson said of the scenes in the video. “I told them to just trust me. … The reason it is so silly is we were so tired.”
The video has since gone viral with over a million hits. “It’s definitely been a dream,” Peterson said.
It’s also been the dream for all three brothers to work together farming. “When we were little kids, we’d all play with our toy tractors,” Greg Peterson noted. “We’d farm together with our tractors on the carpet. The dream was we’d all farm together with Dad.”
Making videos on the side when not working the family farm, the Petersons ask you share this video with farmers and friends everywhere. We thought our local farmers, ranchers, dairymen, fishermen and food producers deserve equal merit for what they do, too.
Because we’re proud of our own, this is for you, Humboldt.
Please pass it on.
Update: America seems to love the message given the more than 8 million additional views the video has received since our column first posted.
We are the Peterson Farm Bros, and we’re farming and we grow it
We love agriculture, and we want the world to know it
Farming is a way of life with many different flavors
Being stewards of the gifts God gave us
Out here on the farm,
We’re running green John Deere Tractors
Out here on the farm,
We work in many weather factors
Out here on the farm,
We’re working hard to raise your food
Out here on the farm. On the family farm.
Agriculture, is so important to me, (and should be to you) HAY!
It feeds the world and will never ever cease to be, We need to eat!
We all need farmers to provide us with our food, food, food, food!
Haaaaaaay, for my cattle
Work, work, work, work, working farmer style Haaaaaaay, from the field
Work, work, work, work
Farmers are working harder than you might imagine
But that is just because we have a job that is our passion
We will work sunup to sundown time and time again
As if working for the Lord and not for men
Out here on the farm
We get away from lights of cities
Out here on the farm
The countryside is nice and pretty Out here on the farm.
We work together as a family.
Out here on the farm. On the family farm.
Workin’ farmer style
Hay, hay, hay, hay
Is what we feed our cattle
So they grow big and strong
And then become the food that keeps us living nice and long.
Our crops like corn and wheat
Help make diets complete
Without the farmers working
We would all be starving
You know what I’m saying?
Controversial American cartoonist Robert Crumb is widely considered to be the “father of underground comics.”
Talented, eccentric, whippy and perverse, Crumb’s work has a distinctive style and satirical tone. He often features strongly stereotyped portrayals of minorities, overly sexualized
thick-thighed women, and a sarcastic take on social issues.
He is best known for his prolific drawings and creating the cartoon characters Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural, Devil Girl, and the ‘Keep on Truckin’ dude.
An accomplished musical artist, Crumb has collected thousands of old tunes from the lesser known jazz and blues musicians of the 1920s and 30s, recording some of the obscure and long-lost pieces for his own group and label, R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Serenaders.
Mr. Crumb has made a few trips to Humboldt in years past, sometimes paying for his meals at Ramone’s with napkin drawings of the Eureka locale, customers, and staff.
The panel below is A Short History of America, drawn in 1995.
Sometimes we carry interesting videos of interesting news wherever we find it. This is one of them.
In China Uncensored, host Chris Chappell often criticises
human rights abuses in China. In this episode he explains why the Chinese
government doesn’t allow its citizens to own guns: they’d be able to fight back.
Guns and foreclosures don’t mix. And neither do homemade fire launchers.
Forced evictions in China are on the rise as corrupt officials seize land from homeowners while offering little in the way of compensation. The results are what are called “nail houses,” solitary homes left sticking out of construction sites like giant nails.
Losing land and homes under increasing Chinese ‘eminent domain’ land grabs, former landowners have been beaten, bulldozed, and carted off to jail.
The landowners have fought back in desperate, if not sorrowfully pathetic, ways: 41 cases of self-immolation, homemade cannons, and even creating an online video game of their plight.
They gave up on their courts, lawyers, and due process long ago. You can’t fight City Hall– or the Chinese government.
* * * * * * * * * *
We haven’t quite reached this breaking point, but we have some similarities in the Land of the Free.
The US Supreme court in “Kelo vs. City of New London” (2005) ruled that its perfectly fine for the government to steal land, then immediately sell it to land developers for the purpose of increasing property tax revenues.
New Riders of the Purple Sage– and the Adventures of Panama Red
Staff Report
Humboldt Sentinel
In the summer of 1969, John Dawson was looking to showcase his songs while Jerry Garcia was looking to practice his brand new pedal steel guitar. The two played in coffeehouses and small clubs initially, and the music they
made became the nucleus for a band—the New Riders of the Purple Sage.
That same year, David Nelson, expert in both country and rock guitar, joined the group on electric lead guitar. Filling out the rhythm section in those early days were Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart and engineer Bob Matthews on bass, later replaced by Phil Lesh. In 1970, Dave Torbert took over on bass and the New Riders played every chance they got. Soon enough, smoky clubs all over the San Francisco bay area were filling up with whooping crowds as their music got tighter and more dynamic.
They began to tour extensively with the Dead, and in December of 1970, Spencer Dryden, who had previously showed his impeccable drumming style with the Jefferson Airplane, had stepped in on drums.
One of the many gigs with the Dead included the Trans-Canadian Festival Express with Janis Joplin, The Band, and other American and Canadian artists like Ian and Sylvia, who had with them a brilliant, innovative pedal steel player named Buddy Cage. When Garcia’s busy schedule made it increasingly difficult for him to play with the New Riders, the talented Cage was the perfect choice to fill the pedal steel spot. With the addition of Cage, the New Riders emerged as a fully independent band with a special brand of music—sweet country harmonies mixed with pulsing rock rhythms.
The New Riders were signed to Columbia Records in 1971 by Clive Davis and their first album, New Riders of the Purple Sage, was released in September to widespread acclaim. In December, 1971 they played a live radio broadcast with the Dead over WNEW-FM in New York to an audience of millions.
In 1972 the pattern of their success continued to grow, with their first European tour followed in June by the release of their second album, Powerglide. They toured the United States extensively in response to increasing demand, and in November, 1972 released their third album Gypsy Cowboy. These first three New Riders albums were all produced by Stephen Barncard, who worked with Crosby, Stills and Nash and co-produced the Dead’s American Beauty.
New Riders of the Purple Sage is quite the flashback and classic jam band of old times past– and we were surprised to hear they’re still around and kicking for those who remember. Panama Red and those seedy $10 lids disappeared long ago.
They’re playing at Humboldt Brews tonight at 856 10th Street in Arcata.
With pleasant reminiscing of the Panama Red days, good beer, and a ticket price of $25, it sounds good for a Friday night. Drive safely, drink and smoke responsibly, and enjoy the show.
The show starts at 8:30 p.m. For more information, call 826-2739.
Humboldt Roller Derby: Rocking and Rolling Into 2013 (VIDEO)
M. Cartier
for the Humboldt Sentinel
Humboldt Roller Derby is a unique part of our redwood culture, and we are inviting you to be a part of it.
Roller Derby attracts thousands of fans to our bouts because it is unique, new, challenging and great fun to watch. Humboldt Roller Derby has pledged to be a “positive, family-friendly, long term community institution and resource” and during our short history of five years, we have fulfilled that purpose with “athletics, empowerment, and community.”
Each year we hold five to seven local bouts that attract six to seven hundred people each time. Our loyal fans are people whose commitment to Humboldt County is as great as the women competing on the floor.
Roller Derby is a full contact, all-woman sport that requires first-class quality skills, energy and commitment from it participants. It is one of the few all-Female athletic activities played today. Roller derby is one of the few sports that embraces all women regardless of body type.
Humboldt Roller Derby is part of a nation-wide roller derby organization the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association or WFTDA. We have 2 adult teams: the Widow Makers and the Redwood Rollers. HRD also has a junior derby team, the Redwood Saplings, that provides an athletic outlet, strong role models and mentorship for young girls.
Humboldt Roller Derby’s teams uphold the highest standards of athletics to inspire and lead women proudly into the future. This is a tough sport, definitely not for the faint-at-heart (visualize a couple of hard hits, a couple of hard falls, and a skater scrambling back up).
We offer a unique opportunity for adolescent girls and women that promotes a can-do attitude,
challenging each players psyche as they overcome fear and develop skill while personal strength and empowerment builds.
Humboldt Roller Derby is committed to our community. Our mission statement says we will “Build a stronger community and support other non-profits through the sport of roller derby.”
For every bout we donate a portion of our income to like-minded non-profit charities. In 2012 we contributed over $8,500. In the short lifetime of our league, we have given back over $50,000 to the community.
Humboldt Roller Derby is not just our skaters. A huge army of faithful and hard working volunteers help make our league successful. HRD is always seeking new skaters, volunteers, and Board of Directors to help keep the league running smoothly.
Your joining will help to support our team, and also the rest of the community.
Humboldt Roller Derby is asking you to join us to support of this unique sport through your sponsorship. A variety of options are available for individuals and business sponsors. Our bouts are held at Redwood Acres, receive local media coverage, and are one
of the special things about our small county.
We proudly display banners for our major sponsors and provide program books where your ad promote your business and show that you align yourself with our values “athletics, empowerment, and community”
Join us to become a visible part of the fantastic community that is Humboldt. Join us to have your loyalty seen. Join us to shape the future of our community!
Learn more about Humboldt roller derby at humboldtrollerderby.com or check us out on Facebook!
Thanks, Humboldt Roller Derby for everything you do for our community. And for the equally awesome video with Joan Jett and the Blackhawks’ Bad Reputation, too! …Way cool.
Pitching a no-hit game in baseball is an extremely rare and difficult thing to do.
In fact, only 279 major league games have been no-hitters since baseball’s inception in 1875, an average of only two per year.
You’ve heard all too much about performance enhancing drugs from baseball greats like Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, Marion Jones, and Barry Bonds. Of the all the no-hitters ever thrown in the Big Leagues, one can only guess how many were aided by steroids.
We can say without question that only one was ever thrown on acid.
Pittsburgh Pirate Dock Ellispitched a no-hitter against the Padres on June 12, 1970, under the influence of LSD. He threw a no-hitter despite being unable to feel the ball or see the batter or catcher clearly.
As he recounted:
I can only remember bits and pieces of the game. I was psyched. I had a feeling of euphoria.
I was zeroed in on the catcher’s glove, but I didn’t hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters, and the bases were loaded two or three times.
The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes, I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder.
I started having a crazy idea in the fourth inning that Richard Nixon was the home plate umpire, and once I thought I was pitching a baseball to Jimi Hendrix, who to me was holding a guitar and swinging it over the plate.
Ellis pulled it off, apparently with flying colors and light trails. He walked eight batters, struck out six, and beaned a few. The Pirates won the game, 2-0. And we would have thought acid to be a performance inhibitor.
Ellis reported that he never used LSD during the season again, though he continued to use amphetamines.
After suffering through substance abuse problems most of his life, he entered a drug treatment program and remained sober in his later years, working as a drug abuse counselor for prisoners and baseball players.
Dock Ellis died of cirrhosis of the liver in 2008 at the age of 63, a condition weakened by years of abuse and a previous heart attack.
The above 4-minute clip is an interview he gave to radio producers Donnell Alexander and Neille Ilel, airing on NPR’s Weekend America a year before he passed, set to animation by artist James Blagden.
A Horse– And Veteran– That You Haven’t Heard Of (VIDEO)
Skippy Massey Humboldt Sentinel
You’ve heard of the famous racing ones: Seabiscuit, Secretariat, and War Admiral. But there’s one horse– a military hero– that you haven’t heard. It’s the story of Reckless,
the little chestnut Mongolian mare.
Reckless was a pack horse during the Korean War and she carried recoilless rifles, ammunition and supplies to Marines. This by itself wasn’t too unusual; lots of animals were pressed into service doing pack chores in many wars before Korea.
But Reckless did something more.
During the battle for a location called Outpost Vegas in 1953, this mare made 51 trips up and down the hill. On the way up, she carried ammunition. On the way down, she carried wounded soldiers.
What was so amazing about that?
She made every one of those trips without anyone leading her. Relentless artillery rounds fell around at her at the rate of 500 per hour. The fighting was so intense that only two men made it out alive without wounds.
We can imagine a horse carrying a wounded soldier, being smacked on the rump at the top of the hill, and heading back to the “safety” of the rear. It’s harder, though, to imagine the same horse loaded down with ammunition trudging back to the chaotic battlefield under enemy fire and exploding heavy artillery.
Making 51 of those trips in the blazing battle is unheard of. How many horses would even make it back once, let alone return to the soldiers in the field? Reckless did it without fail, every single time, on her own.
Reckless walked 35 miles and carried 9,000 pounds of equipment that day, and while exhausted and wounded twice, she kept her duty transporting the wounded faithfully throughout. Many men survived because of her fearless actions.
She became a national hero, covered by Life magazine and the Saturday Evening Post. She was promoted by the Marines
to the rank of Sergeant and later, Staff Sergeant, in her
career.
After the Korean War, Reckless was brought back to the United States in 1954. She retired at the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base in 1960 where her commanding General issued the following order: “She was never to carry any more weight on her back except her own blankets.”
Reckless died in 1968 at the age of 20 as a full-fledged Marine with full military honors.
Reckless’ decorations included two Purple Hearts, Good Conduct Medal, Presidential Unit Citation with star, National Defense Service Medal, Korean Service Medal, United Nations Service Medal, and a Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation, all of which she proudly wore on her scarlet and
gold blanket.
She was quite a courageous and hardworking gal, fondly looked after and loved by her unit. Lieutenant General Randolph M. Pate reminisced later:
“I first saw this little lady when the First Marine Division was in reserve for a brief period.
I was surprised at her beauty and intelligence, and believe it or not, her esprit de corps. Like any other Marine, she was enjoying a bottle of beer with her comrades.
She was constantly the center of attraction and was fully aware of her importance. If she failed to receive the attention she felt her due, she would deliberately walk into a group of Marines and, in effect, enter the conversation. It was obvious the Marines loved her.”
There’s a great deal more to the story of Reckless. If you’d like to read more of her amazing and forgotten story here’s the best and detailed article that we could find, located in the Marines Leatherneck magazine archives of 1992.
It’s a very good read.
Please feel free to pass this story onto others– fellow Veterans, friends, and equestrians.
* * * * * * * * * *
Thank you for your service, Veterans. This story is for you– and to Patrick, James, and Jacob.
We thought the article was curious but in all fairness it scarcely proved a thing. Nonetheless, it was an interesting notion needing far more analytical proof to be considered substantial or of worthy import. More meat on the bone needing to be fleshed out, so to speak. Some data-wonk statisticians remarked the hypothesis was worthy; others said it was flawed in its process.
We were, however, more intrigued when the publisher of the site and author of the piece, Denis G. Campbell, remarked under the comments:
Apologies, we have been under a DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack for 13 hours now. We’re slowly coming back. Please let the world know about this attempted election theft. Thank you.
Hmmm. The plot thickened.
So our search on the subject continued, leading to the above video. Now this was something veryinteresting. We pulled the original testimony by Mr. Curtis testifying before Congress and found his presentation above to be contextually accurate:
“Mr. Curtis,” said the questioner at the U.S. House Judiciary Committee proceedings, “are there programs that can be used to secretly fix elections?”
“Yes,” Mr. Curtis replied. “I was asked to write a prototype for Congressman Tom Feeney.”
Now this warranted a closer look.
And so began the fascinating story of Clint Curtis detailed above– computer programmer, Floridian, Republican– who was asked by the company he worked for to create a vote-rigging software prototype that he assumed would be used to try and catch would-be fraudsters.
The truth of what occurred weaved into a tangled web the 2000 and 2004 Presidential Election debacles, a then-sitting U.S. Congressman, electronic voting, and a whole lot more.
Which then led us to this chillingly good documentary below: Murder Spies and Voting Lies: The Clint Curtis Story.
We suggest you give it a look because it’s surprisingly well done. Produced by Earthworks Films, Patty Sharaf, and Brad Friedmanof the the Brad Blog, it’s
encapsulated in 10-minute viewing segments for those on a tight timeline.
With interviews by knowledgeable folks of reasonably sound mind, good judgement, and articulate recollection, this fair and reasonable documentary raises some serious questions about elections, ethics, and voting machine fraud.
It also includes suspenseful side plots of murder, computer hacking, Chinese spies, corrupt lobbyists the likes of Jack Abramoff, suicide, Diebold, payoffs, and everything else a good conspiracy is made of. Even local citizen David Cobb makes an appearance at the end.
We found it riveting. We hope you do, too.
It will cause you to wonder about the veracity of those electronic
machines and why Congressman Tom Feeney (R-Fla) remained
in office for so long shielded by an Ethics Commission and after
being named one of the 20 most corrupt members of Congress:
Obama succeeded George W. Bush, a two-term President whose misbegotten legacy, measured in the money it squandered and the misery it inflicted, has become only
more evident with time.
Bush left behind an America in dire condition and with a degraded reputation. On Inauguration Day, the United States was in a downward financial spiral brought on by predatory lending, legally sanctioned greed and pyramid schemes, an economic policy geared to the priorities and the comforts of what soon came to be called “the one per cent,” and deregulation that began before the Bush Presidency.
In 2008 alone, more than two and a half million jobs were lost—up to three-quarters of a million jobs a month. The gross domestic product was shrinking at a rate of nine per cent. Housing prices collapsed. Credit markets collapsed. The stock market collapsed—and, with it, the retirement prospects of millions. Foreclosures and evictions were ubiquitous; whole neighborhoods and towns emptied. The automobile industry appeared to be headed for bankruptcy.
Banks as large as Lehman Brothers were dead, and other banks were foundering. It was a crisis of historic dimensions and global ramifications.
However skillful the management in Washington, the slump was bound to last longer than any since the Great Depression.
At the same time, the United States was in the midst of the grinding and unnecessary war in Iraq, which killed a hundred thousand Iraqis and four thousand Americans, and depleted the federal coffers.
The political and moral damage of Bush’s duplicitous rush to war rivaled the conflict’s price in blood and treasure. America’s standing in the world was further compromised by the torture of prisoners and by illegal surveillance at home. Al Qaeda, which, on September 11, 2001, killed three thousand people on American soil, was still strong. Its leader, Osama bin Laden, was, despite a global manhunt, living securely in Abbottabad, a verdant retreat near Islamabad.
…The satirical paper The Onion came up with a painfully apt inaugural headline: “BLACK MAN GIVEN NATION’S WORST JOB.”
Perhaps inevitably, the President has disappointed some of his most ardent supporters. Part of their disappointment is a reflection of the fantastical expectations that attached to him…
The President has achieved a run of ambitious legislative, social, and foreign-policy successes that relieved a large measure of the human suffering and national shame inflicted by the Bush Administration.
Obama has renewed the honor of the office he holds.
… There is another, larger “counterfactual” to consider—the one represented by Obama’s Republican challenger, Willard Mitt Romney.
The Republican Party’s nominee is handsome, confident, and articulate. He made a fortune in business, first as a consultant, then in private equity.
In the service of that ambition, Romney has embraced the values and the priorities of a Republican Party that has grown increasingly reactionary and rigid in its social vision. It is a party dominated by those who despise government and see no value in public efforts aimed at ameliorating the immense and rapidly increasing inequalities in American society.
A visitor to the F.D.R. Memorial, in Washington, is confronted by these words from Roosevelt’s second Inaugural Address, etched in stone:
“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide for those who have too little.”
Romney and the leaders of the contemporary G.O.P. would consider this a call to class warfare. Their effort to disenfranchise poor, black, Hispanic, and student voters in many states deepens the impression that Romney’s remarks about the “forty-seven per cent” were a matter not of “inelegant” expression, as he later protested, but of genuine conviction.
Romney’s conviction is that the broad swath of citizens who do not pay federal income tax—a category that includes pensioners, soldiers, low-income workers, and those who have lost their jobs—are parasites, too far gone in sloth and dependency to be worth the breath one might spend asking for their votes…
But what is most disquieting is Romney’s larger political vision. The Republicans continue to insist on the “Atlas Shrugged” fantasy of the solitary entrepreneurial genius who creates jobs and wealth
with no assistance at all from government or society…
The choice is clear. The Romney-Ryan ticket represents a constricted and backward-looking vision of America: the privatization of the public good. In contrast, the sort of public investment championed by Obama… takes to heart the old civil-rights motto “Lifting as we climb.”
That effort cannot, by itself, reverse the rise of inequality that has been under way for at least three decades. But we’ve already seen the future that Romney represents, and it doesn’t work…
Pop Video and Dance Craze Rocking the Planet (VIRAL VIDEO)
Skippy Massey Humboldt Sentinel
There’s a strange pop song and dance phenomeon breaking big outside the Redwood Curtain.
Gangnam Style.
How big is it? Ridiculously big. The above video had over 500,000 hits on the first day, 500 million hits in the last three months, and Guinness World Records noted it’s the most “liked” video ever in YouTube history with over 1 billion views.
That’s some play. We don’t know why. You try figuring out how the world works. It just is.
South Korean rapper Psy’s (whose real name is Park Jae-Sang) highly-contagious horseriding butt-shaking hit first uploaded back in July. It’s taken off like a rocket ever since. Everywhere.
For the uninitiated, Gangnam Style refers to a lifestyle
associated with the upscale Gangnam district in Seoul,
South Korea, where people are trendy, cool, and hip.
Psy likened the Gangnam District to Beverly Hills, saying he intended a twisted sense of humor by claiming himself to be “Gangnam Style” when everything about the song, dance, looks, and the music video is far from being high class. He also wanted to make a sarcastic jab about mindless consumerism.
“Dress classy and dance cheesy,” he explained.
The Gangnam Style video shows Psy performing his comical and highly-contagious dance moves with a catchy beat at unexpected locations around the Gangnam district.
Psy had said the lyrics are about a perfect girlfriend who knows when to be refined– and when to get wild.
Ouchie-wow-wa. That’s our kind of gal.
To date, there are more than 5,000 parody music videos online. Gangnam Style has been nominated for Best Video for the upcoming 2012 MTV Europe Music Awards in Frankfurt, Germany, on Nov 11.
Everyone’s done a take on the song– ranging from clubs to dance groups to flash mobs to different militias and countries throughout the world. Even North Korea got into the act putting their isolated country onto the same page with their own version.
Indeed, Gangnam Style fever is such a pop phenomenon that United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, a fellow South Korean, hailed Psy as “a force for world peace.”
Perhaps that’s a bit over the top, but folks are certainly enjoying it– while looking ridiculously silly and having fun.
Psy’s response? “I’m glad people have chosen my song and decided to celebrate throughout the world,” he humbly acknowledged.
There more than several thousand versions of Gangnam Style videos out there. We’ll spare you those.
But to give you an idea of what’s happening here, we have the best three videos we liked below:
Like most pop culture fads going the way of the Macarena, this too will pass.
Thank Goodness. But in some strange twisted act of fate, YMCA will stay.
Pass this link on so everyone can stay trendy, cool, and hip. Or at least know what’s been going on lately. That is, after we learn the wickedly stupid dance moves.
We might live behind the Redwood Curtain but we can still see what’s up in the world even if we can’t explain it. Besides, we need the views.
New Record Set From 23 Miles High: 833 MPH in Freefall Jump (VIRAL VIDEO)
Skippy Massey Humboldt Sentinel
He did it.
Austrian daredevil “Fearless Felix” Baumgartner’s supersonic plunge to Earth from the stratosphere was
a record breaking spectacle to behold on Sunday.
Baumgartner jumped from an altitude of 128,097 feet over Roswell, New Mexico, reaching a peak speed of about 833 mph. The speed of sound at that altitude is about 690 mph.
Cheers broke out as Felix Baumgartner, 43, jumped from a skateboard-sized shelf outside the 11-by-8-foot fiberglass and acrylic tin-can capsule carried aloft by an enormous 55-story balloon that was one-tenth the thickness of a plastic bag, or roughly as thin as a dry cleaner bag .
It took Baumgartner 2 ½ hours to reach his high altitude destination; it took him 10 minutes of freefall before pulling his parachute cord and reaching the safety of planet Earth, landing on his feet after a few casual skips. He broke the sound barrier doing so, and on the 65th anniversary of legendary American pilot Chuck Yeager’s flight shattering the sound barrier on October 14, 1947.
”This wasn’t just a mild penetration of the sound barrier,” Baumgartner’s doctor, Jonathan Clark, said on Monday as the skydiver and his crew celebrated Sunday’s record-breaking dive from nearly 24 miles up.
“It was Mach 1.24. Our ground recovery teams on four different locations heard the sonic boom,” said Clark, a former high-altitude military parachutist and NASA doctor who worked on escape systems for space shuttle astronauts.
During his skydive, Baumgartner wore a specially made suitsimilar to the orange pressurized flight suits that space shuttle astronauts began using after the Challenger disaster. Until Baumgartner’s jump on Sunday, the suits had never been tested in supersonic flight or certified beyond 100,000 feet.
“Felix demonstrated that you can penetrate the sound barrier,” Clark said. “He didn’t just go transonic, he went supersonic. Going Mach 1.24 is incredible. That is so much further beyond any limit of human endurance. It’s just amazing. We didn’t know if someone could survive breaking the speed of sound until Felix did it.”
Sealed inside his pressurized suit, Baumgartner did not feel himself going through the sound barrier, the skydiver told reporters after landing on Sunday. Nor did he feel the outside temperatures ranging from 70 degrees to 90 degrees below zero.
“It was hard. It was like swimming without touching the water. I was fighting all the way down to regain control,” he said. ”I had a lot of pressure in my head, but I didn’t feel like I was passing out. I felt like I could handle it.”
“I started spinning uncontrollably so I put my hand out. That made it worse. I put my other hand out and it got better. My visor started fogging up. I thought I was going to pass out but recovered.”
Preliminary figures indicate Baumgartner broke a total of three established world records, including the highest altitude skydive, longest freefall without a parachute, and fastest fall achieved during a skydive. The previous world record was held by Joe Kittinger in 1960, until Sunday’s jump. Baumgartner’s dive was four miles higher and 219 miles per hour faster than Kittinger’s.
The recap Mission Control highlights of his jump are in the above YouTube video.
But here’s the simulated Red Bull (Baumgartner’s sponsor) CGI video clip. We would have run it as the feature clip if embedding was allowable. It’s an impressive and dramatic view of the mission that’s done very well– and it’s one video you certainly don’t want to miss. If you liked 2001: A Space Odyssey, you’ll love this short clip.
Young, Pearl Jam, McCartney, Springsteen, Petty, Bowie, and Others at 8 PM
Staff Report Humboldt Sentinel
Organized by musician Neil Young and his wife, Pegi, the Bridge School Benefit Concert is an annual nonprofit charity event held in October to raise funds for the school’s programs for children with severe speech and physical impairments.
On Saturday night, September 15 at 8:00 p.m., the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and local affiliate KEET-TV will have some of the biggest names in music participating in the all-acoustic concert held at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View.
This 25th anniversary concert special includes Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, David Bowie, Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Raitt, Tom Petty, Paul McCartney, Dave Matthews Band, Simon and Garfunkel, and The Pretenders.
It’s free and part of KEET’s annual pledge drive. Watch and enjoy. Make a pledge if you like. It supports public programming for the North Coast and the Bridge School for viewers like you.
You can catch Neil’s broadcast on air, cable, or satellite, on Channel 13 (or Channel 113 for those high-definition cable subscribers).
The Bridge School is a non-profit organization that ensures individuals with severe impairments achieve full participation in their communities through the use of alternative communication, assistive technology, and the development of
innovative life-long educational strategies.
It is an internationally recognized leader in the education of children who use augmentative and alternative communication, and has developed unique programs and highly skilled trained professionals in the use of state-of-the-art technology.
The school was founded by Neil & Pegi Young. Neil and Pegi’s sons Ben and Zeke both suffer from cerebral palsy.
Did You Ever Grow Anything in the Garden of Your Mind?
Skippy Massey Humboldt Sentinel
Gee, Wally. Wait til the Beav finds out.
You remember him. Mister (Fred) Rogers was a goody two-shoes puppeteer and ordained minister who became the iconic host of the TV program Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood in 1968.
With a degree in music composition, he wrote 200 songs for the 895 popular children shows, including the theme, It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. He was honored with numerous awards and accolades for his dedication to children via television before hanging up his sweater and passing of cancer in 2003.
Now he’s been given a freshly knitted spin. Sort of. The smarmy sweaters are still the same.
The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) network asked MelodySheep “to revisit the extensive video libraries of PBS” and make a few musical tributes to their more well known figures– and this is what they came up with. Mister Rogers goes remix racy with a mildly modern-techno beat. Welcome to the new hood.
Mister Rogers would have been amused. After all, he reportedly enjoyed Eddie Murphy’s Saturday Night Live take ridiculously spoofing him in “Mister Robinson’s Neighborhood.” He also remarked he was glad the children had already been put to bed.
The Price is Right and the Local Filmakers Series is One of Humboldt’s Best-Kept Secrets
Skippy Massey Humboldt Sentinel
HAPPENING TONIGHT At 6:30:
On Friday, September 7, Benjamin Bettenhausen, a local filmmaker and producer, will share selected works with a sneak peek at behind the scenes of the movie FLEA as part of the Local Filmmakers Night series at Eureka High School Lecture Hall.
Bettenhausen, whose works include documentaries, commercials, and industrials, often performs as the writer, director, videographer, and editor mastering all areas of filmmaking.
FLEA is a $300,000-plus production filmed in Humboldt by Suza Lambert Bowser Productions. Location shoots took advantage of striking local scenery including Humboldt’s forests, Arcata Plaza, and the otherworldly back bowels of, say, Arcata Scrap and Salvage. The film taps an astounding amount of local talent: actors, support staff, set designers, make-up artists, grips, gaffers, and many more with the technical skills required to make a full-on motion picture.
Former Humboldt Film Commissioner Mary Cruse said Humboldt County is well-positioned to become a production-friendly film mecca because of productions like FLEA.
“The more quality and creative productions that are made by local filmmakers, the more attractive we are for visiting productions,” Cruse said. She credits Humboldt State’s film program and local high school support for media production with helping develop the area’s abundant moviemaking assets.
“Because of digital media, our locations and our talent, there’s no reason Humboldt County can’t become a premier location for international film productions. For every key film position, we have crew,” Cruse said.
For the simple plot summary of FLEA, the Brady Bunch’s Greg Brady… er, Barry Williams, gives the short synopsis in the above clip. More info can be found at fleamovie.com.
Local Filmmakers Night, a collaboration between Access Humboldt, filmHUMBOLDT and the Eureka High School Media Club, is a screening series that supports and promotes the local film community. Following the screening, attendees can enjoy, Q & A session with the filmmaker, movie trivia, prizes, and a reception at Access Humboldt’s Community Media Center.
Doors open at 6:30. Screening starts at 7 pm. Admission is $5 per person and all are welcome to attend.
The Eureka High School Lecture Hall is located on Humboldt St. & K St. by the EHS Gymnasium.
(Access Humboldt adds: Thanks to the event’s sponsors: La Dolce Video, Brett Shuler, Wildberries, Cassaro’s Catering, Old Town Coffee & Chocolates, Los Bagels, Spotlight Video and Figueiredo’s Video on Harris!)
* * * * * * * * Folks, take it from Skippy: These screenings are a wonderful experience. They rate a full thumbs-up. A good Humboldt crowd of friends and neighbors, the catered eats and treats included in the price are wonderfully good and plentiful, and the cushioned seats are pretty comfy.
At $5 a pop, you won’t find a better value and venue in the County. And you’re supporting our local filmmakers, Eureka High, and Access Humboldt, too.
WKYC - Police and the county sheriff visited Ariel Castro's Seymour Avenue home five times in the 10 years that Gina DeJesus, Amanda Berry and Michelle Knight were held hostage.Dominion East Ohio Gas installed automated meters between 2007 and last year, during the time the women were held captive.Photos:Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight fo […]
The Review has argued for years that pro-gentrification policies would push the poor into the suburbs where they would find it hard to find jobs, transportation and social services. It seems to have happened big time. LA Times - More poor people now live in the nation's suburbs than in urban areas, according to a new analysis.As poverty mounted throug […]
Progressive Review, 2000 - The Review intends to resist as long as possible the unruly and repugnant trend towards Germanization and cyberization of the English language. If for no other reason than it makes spell-checking more tedious, TPR will continue to frown upon compound words and excessive capitalization (especially in the middle of words). TPR believ […]
Democracy Now - After months of protest, teachers, students and parents in Seattle, Washington, have won their campaign to reject standardized tests in reading and math. In January, teachers at Garfield High School began a boycott of the test, saying it was wasteful and being used unfairly to assess their performance. The boycott spread to other schools, wi […]
Torrent Freak - After years of anticipation, The Pirate Bay documentary TPB-AFK was finally released to the public in February. It is no secret that Hollywood is trying to take down as many pirated movies as they can, but their targeting of a Creative Commons Pirate Bay documentary is something new. Viacom, Paramount, Fox and Lionsgate have all asked Google […]
Quotes I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" […]
Financial Times - In the face of China's rapid economic expansion and growing presence on the global stage, it is often forgotten that the country is running out of water. In per capita terms, China's water resources are just a quarter of the world average. Eight of China's 28 provinces are as parched as countries in the Middle East such as Jo […]
Truth Dig - Pentagon officials said during a Senate hearing on Authorization for the Use of Military Force, enacted by Congress in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks, that the global war on terror could last up to 20 more years, and that its legal mandate gives the president the power to wage war anywhere on the globe for as long as he deems necessary.Sen. Angus Ki […]
Christopher B. Daley - A shield law for reporters? Thanks, but no thanks!First, the Obama administration antagonized the news media by seizing the phone records of The Associated Press. Now, in an effort to make up, the president has thrown his support behind a Senate bill that would create a federal “shield law” that would allow journalists to legally prote […]
Al Jazeera - Texas has joined the crowd of Gulf of Mexico states to file suit against BP Plc, Halliburton Co and others for their role in one of the worst oil spills in US history.The complaint, filed on Friday in US District Court in Beaumont, Texas, alleges that the companies and others "engaged in wilful and wanton misconduct" for their role in […]
Glenn Greenwald, Guardian, UK - That the Obama administration is now repeatedly declaring that the "war on terror" will last at least another decade (or two) is vastly more significant than all three of this week's big media controversies (Benghazi, IRS, and AP/DOJ) combined. The military historian Andrew Bacevich has spent years warning that […]
Hit & Run - In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed New London officials to seize an entire neighborhood via eminent domain on the basis that the city had a "carefully considered" plan to boost economic development.After the initial plan—a corporate campus with hotels, condos, and office space—fell apart, officials selected a new developer to […]
Alternet - For the past 30 years, police departments throughout the United States have benefited from the government’s largesse in the form of military weaponry and training, incentives offered in the ongoing “war on drugs.” For the average citizen watching events such as the intense pursuit of the Tsarnaev brothers on television, it would be difficult to di […]
CNN, MARCH 1998 - Democratic fund-raiser Johnny Chung has agreed to plead guilty to election law violations and cooperate in the ongoing Justice Department investigation into illegal campaign fund-raising in the 1996 elections. . . Chung became a major figure in the Democratic fund-raising scandal when it was learned he made almost 50 visits to the White Hou […]
Long before we were around, Africa was joined to the other continents in a massive continent called Pangaea. Over millions of years this huge continent broke apart, shaping the landscape as we know it today.
Africa has the longest river in the world, the Nile, meandering along for 4,132 miles. The world’s largest desert, the Sahara, is almost the size of the United States. Victoria Falls, Africa’s largest waterfall, is 355 feet high and one mile wide.
We were curious about this subject and looked into it a bit more.
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