Hearing Voices- Multimedia
We present a more realistic approach to spiritual awareness: how updated yogic breathing and stretching exercises might help relieve stress for office worker bees and corporate clones… or not. Audio by author  Rebecca Flowers from an NPR story she produced. Animation by Max Darham. “Office Yoga:”
For a recent This American Life, “The Inauguration Show,” I was among several producers TAL asked “all over the country to go out and talk to people about what they’re thinking as Barack Obama gets ready to take office.” From the dozens of hours of interviews, they crafted another fine TAL hour.
I went to our state capital, Helena MT, to talk to citizens, and to the “citizen-legislators” now in session. (The Montana legislature meets only 90 days every two years, so our reps are real folk most of the time and only part-time pols.)
I’m posting a few of the more fascinating MTÂ voices which couldn’t fit in the TAL episode. Each offers a singular vision of political history:
State Representative Brady Wiseman
(D– Bozeman MT)
“They have eaten out our essence…” (1:38 mp3):
State Senator Jonathan Windy Boy
(D– Box Elder MT)
“Natural Law” (1:20 mp3):
State Representative Janna Taylor
(R– Dayton MT)
“Not Substance, Appearance” (1:19 mp3):
Bishop David Eslick
Worship House of the Rockies, Helena MT
“Jesus Is Coming” (1:19 mp3):
(more) Rep. Brady Wiseman
“Jubiliee” (1:03 mp3):
Brady is a friend and a real big-picture person. We’ll be posting a longer vers of his interview soon, with transcript, cuz I think people should hear what this guy has to say.
[Today is the final broadcast of NPR Day to Day. The show, which has aired so much HV stuff and been a pleasure to work with, has been canceled.]
Much of our news today is like much of our food today. Heavily processed. Raised in cages, fed hormones and antibiotics. It makes us sick, maybe causes cancer. At least it doesn’t seem unreasonable that you could get cancer from the news.
But we need news, just like we need food. In order to maintain a civil society we need to stay well informed of the issues at hand, and the news is how we do this. So what we need is news that isn’t processed, we need more organic news.
In my opinion as a news connoisseur and critic, Day to Day was the cleanest, most ‘wild caught’ program produced by NPR. Sometimes after listening to the program I actually felt better. I had more energy and eagerness to go about my life. I wondered what would be on the show tomorrow. More than anything Day to Day gave me hope of hearing something really fresh and true. If anything suffers in processing, it’s the truth.
Faced with alleged budget shortfalls last Fall, some of NPR’s 17 vice presidents decided to cut Day to Day from it’s schedule and fire everyone who worked there. Personally, I would have erased all vice presidents. When was the last time you heard of a vice president in a news room? There are people called editors and producers and engineers in a news room but nobody goes by vice president, let alone 17 people who go by vice president all making around a quarter million a year. Not to mention their secretaries and assistants. Maybe some country club memberships.
This class of NPR employee apparently doesn’t mind producing and consuming processed news. They’ve done tests and conducted studies that show the news they produce is made from the best ingredients, assembled by trained professionals, all approved by the Columbia School of Journalism, and brought to you at a surprisingly inexpensive price. They are marketers and lawyers, and I say they should be gathered together and marched out onto the downtown Washington street on a snowy day and made strip down to their underwear, and then every single one of them should be fired and forced to eat nothing but Big Macs for the rest of their lives.
What a Kroc of shit!
–Scott Carrier
A Charles Bowden essay, with etched artwork by Alice Leora Briggs: “Juárez: Killing Is Fun.”
We’ve posted a new photo-essay by Scott Carrier and Julián Cardona, “Ciudad Juárez: Murders, Messages…” 
(Part 3 of 3) When people in Juarez, Mexico say ‘drug cartel,’ they mean not only street gangs, but also the government, the military, big business, small business, the upper, middle, and lower classes, the justice system, and the media. Aired on NPR Day to Day; by producer Scott Carrier, “Juarez: Crime More Powerful Than Government” (7:46 mp3):
This Hearing Voices series was produced by Julian Cardona, Scott Carrier and Lisa Miller; Edited by Deborah George; Translation and Research by Molly Molloy, research librarian at New Mexico State University- Las Cruces; Additional assistance from Erin Almeranti, Elaine Clark.
(Part 1 of 3) Murders in Juarez, Mexico now number thousands per year. Photojournalists docuemnt each one. Is it true that “God has a purpose for this city?”. Aired on NPR Day to Day; by producer Scott Carrier, “Juarez: Shooting Crime Scenes” (7:47 mp3):
This Hearing Voices series was produced by Julian Cardona, Scott Carrier and Lisa Miller; Edited by Deborah George; Translation and Research by Molly Molloy, research librarian at New Mexico State University- Las Cruces; Additional assistance from Erin Almeranti, Elaine Clark.
“Winter Soldiers”- Iraq Veterans Against the War testimony (warning: includes picture of the dead):
Boots-on-the-ground soldiers and marines testify in March 2008 “giving an accurate account of what is really happening day in and day out.” Winter Soldiers is a project of Iraq Veterans Against the War.
Winter Soldiers Testimony from former Marines: Jon Turner and Michael LeDuc and former Army Soldiers: Clifton Hicks, Garrett Reppenhagen.
Photos and video from veterans: Jon Turner, Scott Ewing, Kristofer Goldsmith, Daniel Fanning, Lars Ekstrom, Mike Totten, Andrew Duffy, Hart Viges, Clifton Hicks, Steven Casey, Steve Mortillo, Jesse Hamilton, Adam Kokesh, Abby Hiser.
Video produced by Max Darham, audio produced by Scott Carrier & Barrett Golding for Hearing Voices. Music by Jeff Arntsen. More Winter Soldiers audio…
[Carmen Delzell lives in Mexico, travels to India, and does occasional audio essays for us. Here’s the first of what we hope will be a series of posts & pix she’s calling the Bag Lady’s Guide to What’s Left of the Planet. This one’s from India…]
Today I took my regular rickshaw to Mother Theresa’s house to see if there was anything I could do to help or just see the poorest of the poor. I was expecting to be horrified by all the suffering but it wasn’t really as bad as I had expected. When I say it wasn’t as bad I mean it wasn’t as bad as the miserable beggars I see everyday on the streets of Delhi and Jaipur. At least at Mother Theresa the people I sat with were clean, comfortable and most of all smiling.
Years ago when I was at Mother Theresa in Calcutta a traveler girl told me that the ladies loved to be touched and hugged and patted. So I did that and I sang to them and I started to dance my version of Bollywood style movements waving my arms and undulating my hips. They were delighted… all of them old ladies or very brain damaged young women. More…
Exodus/Éxodo is a new book (Amazon) with words by Charles Bowden and photographs by Julián Cardona . Excerpt:
Consider this: you get up at 5 a.m. You live in a one-room shack and pay $59 a month in rent. Your address is on the outskirts of the world’s second largest megalopolis, México City. You share this shack with your woman, a niece and your child. At 5:30 a.m. you’re on the bus, a ninety-minute ride for $2.45 a day roundtrip. You work in a tortilla shop for $1.64 an hour, eleven hours a day, six days a week. A gallon of milk at the store, the electricity that lights your shack, the fuel running the bus, all these things cost more than in the United States. Basically, everything costs more than in the United States — except labor.
…
Mexican civilization existed before the American people were even a thought. Americans have come to the game very recently, and like so many new arrivals believe they possess all the answers. At the moment, human beings are moving all over the planet to save their hides. Things have been upended, the moon rises at a strange hour, it is blood red, and dripping with hunger.
Scott Carrier and videographer Lisa Miller visit “El Pastor.” José Antonio Galván is a born-again preacher in Juárez, Mexico, who cares for homeless drug-addicted, mentally ill street people with no place to live but El Pastor’s shelter (Albergue Para Discapacitaros Mentales), out in the desert just south of the U.S. border.
“El Pastor” (Part 1 of 2)
“El Pastor” (Part 2 of 2)
More from Juárez: NPR blog-post and story:
[More from Mexico. This is last story by slain newspaper journalist Armando Rodriguez, of El Diario de Juárez , translated by Molly Molloy, research librarian at New Mexico State University- Las Cruces…]
The man assassinated
Tuesday night in the Diaz Ordaz viaduct
was
a street clown,
according to the state authority.
Nevertheless, this person has not been identified,
but it was reported
that he was between 25 and 30 years old,
1.77 meters tall,
delicate,
light brown complexion,
short black hair.
The victim’s face was painted as a clown,
green with a red nose,
reported the State Prosecutor’s office.
He wore a red polo shirt,
a navy blue sweatshirt, blue jeans,
white underwear,
gray socks labeled USA,
gray and white Converse tennis
and a dark beret.
The body was found in the Diaz Ordaz viaduct,
at Norzagaray Blvd in the colonia Bellavista, on November 11 at 9:40 pm.
The body was found on its side,
with bullet wounds in the right side,
chest and head.
At this time, the motive for the murder is unknown as well as the
identities of the murderers.
We’ve updated our ever-popular Sarah Vowell page with new mp3s and a link to her new book, “Sarah’s Consonant Vowells…“
[Scott Carrier is working on an HV Hour about the murders in Juárez, Mexico, starting with his NPR series, then moving onto the current much, much worse situation. The following are some emails from Scott…]
Yesterday Armando Rodriguez, the journalist who’d written most of the stories (901) on this year’s executions in Juárez Mexico, was himself executed:
Juarez journalist slain
El Pasa Times staff report 11/13/2008
A Juarez journalist known for his work as a crime reporter for El Diario de Juarez was gunned down Thursday morning in front of his home, the newsapaper’s Web site reported.
Armando Rodriguez was preparing to take his daughter to school in Juarez when a gunman approached his car and fired several shots at point-blank range, according to accounts provided by the newspaper. Rodriguez reportedly died at the scene.
The assailant then fled to a waiting car carrying other men and sped off in an unknown direction.
Rodriguez was the police beat reporter for El Diario de Juarez and had become an expert on the brutal drug cartel violence that has gripped Juarez for the last several years.
“He was a good person and a good reporter,” said KINT-TV (Univision Ch. 26) reporter Pedro Villagrana, who has worked closely with Rodriguez for more than a decade.
Word of Rodriguez’ slaying quickly spread throughout the Juarez and El Paso journalism community. Some members of the Juarez media including his colleagues at El Diario de Juarez gathered at the crime scene to mourn his death, according to the newspaper Web site.
Juárez has always been a violent place. No rule of law. People get killed and nobody is arrested, not even an investigation. What’s new now is the rate of murders. There are more than 100 executions each month in Juárez, 1300 this year alone. Last year there were about 300.
Paula Flores attends the burial of her daughter Sagrario Gonzalez,
a maquiladora worker abducted and killed in April 1998.
(Photo © Julián Cardona)
A photo-audio-essay gallery of Scott Carrier’s story on Mount Kailash in Tibet, one of the world’s most venerated holy sites.
Barron’s this week interviewed an institutional money manger named Jeremy Grantham.
They asked “Do you think we will learn anything from all of this turmoil?”
His answer:
We will learn an enormous amount
in a very short time
Quite a bit
in the medium term
And absolutely nothing
in the long run.
That would be the historical precedent.
We’re all looking forward to this week’s economic news.
No, not what Congress does; I’m talking about the upcoming This American Life episode: “Another Frightening Show About the Economy.”
It’s by TAL’s Alex Blumberg and NPR’s Adam Davidson of TAL “Giant Pool of Money” fame.
Listening to the two’s work on the new NPR Planet Money podcast and blog reminded me how damn good they are. AdamD‘s the econ extraordinaire guy for NPR. And AlexB of TAL and NPR, well, I gotta ask…
Is Alex Blumberg the best reporter on the planet?
His little asides make a story, like from this report on SEC Chair Chris Cox and the stock-trading practice of Naked Short-Selling:
“It gets confusing, as it often does, when you get to the naked part.”
“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, despite having names a child might give a puppy, are… well, were…”
Planet Money “Naked Short Selling, Meet Moral Hazard” (27:27 mp3):
And there’s this AlexB blockbuster: “What’s In A Number?” The TAL topic was a report on Iraq civilian casualties. Alex transformed it into an insightful portrait of both the science and humanity in statistics.
A recent NY Times article, “Daring to Say Loans Made No Sense,” is devoted to TAL’s “Giant Pool:”
“One of the remarkable things about the report is the absence of evildoers…”
“Market appetites for anything that resembled a mortgage pushed loan standards down: ‘No income, no asset. You don’t have to state anything. Just have a credit score and a pulse.’ (Mr. Blumberg pointed out that the pulse thing was optional: 23 dead people in Ohio were also approved.)”
Alex/Adam also just offered this cheerily titled story:
Last week’s Bernake/Paulson/Cox C-Span Congressional Extravaganza left me impressed w/:
• SEC’s Cox’s extremely educational testimony on what his agency can/can’t regulate (according to current law).
• FedRez’s Bernake’s insight on foreign banks are intertwining w/ those in USA.
• Congressional questioning, whether from D or R, seeking some/any clarification on procedures for the “proposed purchase of troubled assets”.
• Was particularly proud of my own Junior Sen. Jon Testor’s (D-MT) understanding of the implications and history of this year’s gov bailouts, and his pointing out how in past, the Fed/TreasDept has said all $X-Billion of the loan appropriation might not be used (as they’re saying now), but in fact every penny was.
Sec. of $s Paulson, otoh, met every request for clarity w/ a variation of: “We want the money and we want it now.” Heard no evidence this guy has any clue what he’s doing, what he’s going to do, or even what he did.
I gave him the benefit of doubt, tho — maybe he was hiding details in hopes of expediency. So I looked elsewhere for some sign this guy’s even mildly competent.
Found none. But along the way did run into lotsa illuminating info. What follows is an audio and url annotated travelogue of my trip thru the web. More…
We’ve updated and link-checked our list of tools, talks, guides and other online radio how-to’s: HV Learn Radio- Links.
