Where the trees are (and arent')

This map reveals the state of the remaining forests in the U.S. Go to the NASA website and click on the map to enlarge it and you can take a close look at Maine (my native state) and the Pacific Northwest, where forests are heavily fragmented by industrial clearcutting. Compare most of the Northwest to the dense, unbroken forest canopy of Olympic National Park, which shows those forests in their natural state.

Trailer: "Heaven Adores You (An Elliott Smith Project)"

Here's the trailer for a work in progress on the legacy of my friend Elliott Smith, singer, songwriter and musician extraordinaire. The director/cinematographer and co-producer is Nicholas Rossi.

Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash - "Girl from the North Country"

This Dylan classic first appeared as a track on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963) and then again in a duet with Johnny Cash on "Nashville Skyline" (1969). This version is from the Johnny Cash Show (1969-71). It's a bit tentative (as it is on Nashville Skyline itself), but still charming four decades later.

Was Suze Rotolo (who appears with Dylan in the famous cover photo for Freewheelin) the "girl" in question? She's arguably from the "north country" (New York City), but not "where the winds hit heavy on the borderline." It seems more likely that the "borderline" is in Minnesota, where Dylan lived before he moved to New York in 1961.

The lyrics are on Dylan's website.

Maybe one of these days I'll stop reposting and write a new blog entry...

Revolver covers Steven Stills' "Helplessly Hoping"

Revolver is a French band that formed in Paris in 2006. In the Wikipedia entry, their music is ungrammatically described as "a bridge between pop and classical music or even the Renaissance or the Baroque and [their] influence everything from Beatles to Bach, from Benjamin Britten to Elliott Smith."

Old-fashioned newspaper journalism lives! (In Athens, GA, at least)

Ignore the first few seconds (and the weird scream)...

The Colbert Report
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"The Daily Show" on class warfare

These two segments from "The Daily Show" (August 18th) reveal Jon Stewart and a band of excellent research staffers at their very best:
                       

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
World of Class Warfare - Warren Buffett vs. Wealthy Conservatives
www.thedailyshow.com
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And Part II, from the same show:
                       

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
World of Class Warfare - The Poor's Free Ride Is Over
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on FacebookFacebookFacebookFacebookFacebookFacebookFacebook

                       
                                                                                                                                                   

Blues break: Mississippi Fred McDowell - "All The Way From East St. Louis"

Another fine performance by a blues master. I had the great good fortune of seeing him at work in Portland in 1972, a few months before he died at the age of 68.

A modern masterpiece: the Dude and his courtesans

Invitation to art historians:  If you can identify the painter and find a poster, please let me know -- and you'll get full credit on this blog.

The rich get richer (and ever whiter)

From an Associated Press article by Hope Yen (July 26th):

The wealth gaps between whites and minorities have grown to their widest levels since the U.S began tracking more than 25 years ago. The recession and uneven recovery have erased decades of minority gains, leaving whites on average with 20 times the net worth of blacks and 18 times that of Hispanics, according to an analysis of new Census data...

The median wealth of white U.S. households in 2009 was $113,149, compared with $6,325 for Hispanics and $5,677 for blacks, according to the analysis released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center. Those ratios, roughly 20 to 1 for blacks and 18 to 1 for Hispanics, far exceed the low mark of 7 to 1 for both groups reached in 1995, when the nation's economic expansion lifted many low-income groups to the middle class...

Other findings include:

• About 35 percent of black households and 31 percent of Hispanic households had zero or negative net worth in 2009, compared with 15 percent of white households. In 2005, the comparable shares were 29 percent for blacks, 23 percent for Hispanics and 11 percent for whites...
• Across all race and ethnic groups, the wealth gap between rich and poor widened. The share of wealth held by the top 10 percent of U.S. households increased from 49 percent in 2005 to 56 percent in 2009. The threshold for entry into the wealthiest top 10 percent, however, dipped lower: from $646,327 in 2005 to $598,435.

Strangely, the story fails to mention the effects of the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest, which clearly benefited white elites more than any other group. The expiration of that tax cut, or an unlikely budget deal that accelerates that date, would be a small step towards reversing a trend that is revealed in the following chart.

The class disparities in wealth distribution are even greater than the glaring ethnic differences. The lower four quintiles (bottom 80%) of the U.S. population control only 7% of the nation's financial wealth. The top 1% controls 43%.  This is easily the greatest concentration of wealth in an economic elite since the 1920's. That elite, of course, is almost exclusively white.  While desperate negotiations and posturing continue over the debt ceiling crisis, neither party is proposing any steps to seriously address it.

This indifference is not surprising: as of 2010, 245 of the 535 members of Congress were millionaires. That’s 46% percent, compared to about 1 percent of Americans overall.

Dog Mtn trail - Columbia River Gorge, Oregon/Washington

A grueling trail (6.6 miles / 11 km, about 3,000 vertical ft. / 950 m.), but hikers are abundantly rewarded for their effort.

Bridge / No Bridge

This is approved design for the Columbia  River Crossing, the replacement for the Interstate Bridge that now connects Interstate 5 from  Oregon to Washington.  It really doesn't qualify as a bridge:  it's simply the place where the freeway crosses the river. The sole criterion for the decision was the $3.6 billion price tag, even though there were far better alternatives that didn't cost much more.

It will be a suitable monument to a culture that aspires to nothing -- the product of a political process that "knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."  [Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, 1893]

While mediocrity rules and infrastructure decays at home, the U.S. will spend $4.4 trillion on post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. The noneconomic human cost -- including such "externalities" as 225,000 deaths, nearly 8 million refugees and generalized misery -- is incalculable. The cost of a lost opportunity, such as an iconic bridge on the Columbia, hardly deserves mention in this context, but it will exact its own toll over time.