Tag: culture/Archives

HV096- Crow Fair I

Crow DancersHearing Voices from NPR®
096 Crow Fair I: Gathering the Tribes
Host: Scott Simon of NPR
Airs week of: 2011-08-10 (Originally: 2010-08-18)

“Crow Fair I” (52:00 mp3):

“Crow Fair: A Portrait in Sound” (52:00) Steve Rathe

Crow Fair logo

A century ago the six Crow Reservation Districts came together for a cultural gathering with other Great Plains tribes. Every third weekend of August the Crow Fair honors that tradition in a “giant family reunion under the Big Sky.” Five days of celebration in southeastern Montana, with a parade, Pow Wow, rodeo, and traditional and fancy dancing.

In 1977 a team of NPR producers and recordists spent a week collecting sounds and interviewing people at this annual event. This early ambient sound-portrait breathes with the arts and activities of the Crow people: the Apsaalooke Nation.

This is part one of a two-hour radio special which ran originally on NPR Folk Festival USA. Producer: Steve Rathe. Interviewers: Scott Simon, Frank Ray Harjo. Mix: David Rapkin. Engineering Supervisor: Jim McEachern. Recordists: David Harris, Ralph Woods. Thanks: Willy Stewart & the Crow Fair Board and the Crow Tribe for their hospitality. For the final hour, listen to part one: HV097- Crow Fair II.

HV084- Place Your Bets

Welcome to Las Vegas signHearing Voices from NPR®
084 Place Your Bets: What Happens in Vegas
Host: Alex Chadwick of Conservation Sound
Airs week of: 2011-01-26 (Originally: 2010-02-17)

“Place Your Bets” (52:00 mp3):

We play keno, cards and craps in Sin City:

“Lost Wages” (6:53) Scott Carrier

Up all night in America’s gambling Mecca: Vegas, baby.

“Casino Suite (3:08 / 4:14 excerpt / 2:47 excerpt) Phillip Kent Bimstein

A classical composition, in three parts, for strings, winds, and an interview with Tom Martinet, who trained to be a priest, but, instead, started working Nevada dice tables. Premiered 1997 in Vegas, performed by Sierra Wind Quintet. Re-released on PKB’s 2006 Larkin Gifford’s Harmonica.

“Poker at the Ox” (9:54) Alex Chadwick

An NPR hosts pits his wits against the regulars at a downtown small-town casino. Guess who wins. Produced by Carolyn Jensen; sound engineer by Michael Schweppe.

“Old Gambler” (7:07) Joe Frank

An excerpt from Joe’s hour “Zen” in his series The Other Side. What happened in Vegas… definitely didn’t stay in Vegas. Getting on the wrong side of Sin City’s collection crew.

“Bass Keno” (8:18)

Jazz bassist Kelly Roberti (David Murray Quintet) lost his bass to the keno machines. He kicked the habit; the scars remain, but the bass is back. Kelly was a 2010 Governor’s Arts Awards winner.

“Lock It Up” (5:56) John Ridley

A radio drama written for Ridley’s 2001 LA Series on NPR Morning Edition. Performers are Bob Wisdom, Yang Chee, and Jim Wallace (script).

Above photo of the Las Vegas sign by Kcferret, June 2005.

HV083- Shortcuts- 21st Century III

Foreclosure sign on houseHearing Voices from NPR®
083 Shortcuts- 21st Century III: Decade One
Host: Peter Bochan of WPKN-Bridgeport CT
Airs week of: 2010-01-27

“Shortcuts- 21st Century III” (52:00 mp3):

The final hour in our three hour-long retrospective of this first decade of the century, and the millennium:

Shortcut Thru the 21st Century, Part Three (52:00) Peter Bochan

We survey selected speech, song, and soundbites of the stories and celebs from 2006 thru 2009: Christ’s passion, planetary climate change, presidential contenders, Ponzi schemes, collapsing economies, Tiger, Michael, Sully, Britney, Bush, Obama, foreclosure, bailout, Bradgelina, Miss USA, You Tube, and the continuing decline of western civilization.

Shortcuts are assembled, mixed and mashed by audio wizard Peter Bochan, of All Mixed Up, WBAI-NYC and WPKN-Bridgeport CT. (All three 21C Shortcuts hours are at PRX.)

SOTU or Stevenote?

Seems we’re approaching a “Who’s your favorite beatle?”* moment when both Steve Jobs and Bacark Obama address planet Earth. This Wednesday (Jan 27) there’s a POTUSA State of the Union speech and an Apple “Come see our latest creation” event.

Who’s talk will you pay most attention; which will likely most affect your life? Your answer reveals much about you.

So what’s it gonna be: SOTU or Stevenote?

*Bernard Mickey Wrangle had developed a psychological test of his own. It was short, simple, and infallible. To administer the test, merely ask the subject to name his or her favorite Beatle. If you are at all familiar with the distinct separate public images of the four Beatles, then you’ll recognize that the one chosen reveals as much about the subject’s personality as most of us will ever hope to know.
Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker (1980).

HV081- Shortcuts- 21st Century I

World Trade Center towers, NYCHearing Voices from NPR®
081 Shortcuts- 21st Century I: The First Decade
Host: Peter Bochan of WPKN-Bridgeport CN
Airs week of: 2010-01-13

“Shortcuts- 21st Century I” (52:00 mp3):

The first of a three hour-long retrospective of the first decade, of the century, of the millennium:

Shortcut Thru the 21st Century, Part One (52:00) Peter Bochan

After a quick 2009 intro, we survey selected speech, song, and soundbites from 2000 thru 2002; from the 2000 election and recounts, with Bush, Gore, Bill and Hill, thru 911, Homeland Security, and Afghanistan.

Shortcuts are assembled, mixed and mashed by audio wizard Peter Bochan, of All Mixed Up, WBAI-NYC and WPDK-Bridgeport CT. Next week, part two: 2003-2005 (all three at PRX).

FU FB Group

FU FB Group logoThere’s a new Group on Facebook called FU FB:

For taking our time and our bandwidth, for making “friend” a verb while devaluing it as a noun, and for lotsa otra evils we’ll add later: FU FB, a new Facebook Group

I Seem to Be a Verb

We at HV are now twits, but with a twist. Most tweets are rapid and vapid. We’re experimenting with another approach: slow and substantive: twitticisms. Every morn we add enter another line from R. Buckminster Fuller’s I Seem to Be a Verb, delivering discrete daily doses of philosophically  dense data.

Running along the footer of that book’s pages is a continuing line of text. The book’s out-of-print so we’re resurrecting these Bucky bits in 140-character chucks. Follow us @hearvox or read the whole below.

I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process — an integral function of the universe.
–R. Buckminster Fuller, I Seem to Be a Verb (1970)

New Yorker: “Dymaxion Man” | “Weird Science” (slides)
“Starting with the Universe:” Whitney (NYC) | MCA (Chicago)
Whole Earth: “God is a Verb” | “2025, If…” | “Thoughts
Films: “Thinking Out Loud” | Everything I Know
Bucky Fuller: Institute | Wikiquotes | Dome | Challenge
Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth

This text is the footer of Bucky Fuller’s I Seem to Be a Verb:

Society neither hears nor sees the great changes going on.

Either man is obsolete or war is. War is the ultimate tool of politics. Political leaders look out only for their own side.

Politicians are always realistically maneuvering for the next election. They are obsolete as fundamental problem-solvers.

Half-century of subconsciously developing world revolution is crossing threshold into human consciousness and ultimate popular support.

Today’s students, reared by television, “the third parent,” think world.

They think and demand justice for all humanity with no exceptions.

Theirs will be the most powerful constructive revolution in history. Earth is a very small spaceship. We are all astronauts.

Each human is a whole universe. We have 28,000 pounds of explosives for each human being on earth.

Weaponry has always been accorded priority over livingry. Only two alternatives — Utopia or Oblivion.

All the fundamental problems are world problems. Man knows so much does so little.

Greatest fact of century: We can make life on earth general success for all people.

World’s prime vital problem: How to triple swiftly safely satisfyingly overall performance realizations per pounds kilowatts manhours of world’s comprehensive resources, rendering those resources capable of supporting one hundred per cent of humanity’s increasing population at ever higher standards of living than any human minority single individual has known or dreamed of.

War over population hunger disease would cease to exist if “haves” devoted larger share of their industrial budget to world livingry.

Malthus is wrong. There is enough to go around.

Basic you-or-me-not-enough-for-both-ergo-someone-must-die tenets of class warfaring are extinct.

Real wealth — indestructible, without practical limits — is combination of physical energy and human intellect.

Every time we use real wealth it increases. Intellect must increase wealth to eliminate poverty.

Design science, invention revolution could elevate poverty to haveness.

(If you can produce it, you can afford it. If you can’t produce it, you can’t afford it.)

Intelligence should be recognized as a global resource. Brain stores retrieves special case experiences.

Mind discovery generalized patterns apparently governing all special case experiences.

Thinking is the consciously disciplined separation of relevant feedback from irrelevant feedback.

Greatest single revolution in human affairs has been ascendancy of intellect’s intuitive mastery over the physical but all the important critical events realizing that revolution just happens.

Only the impossible happens. Probability unreliable. To each of us environment is everything that isn’t “me.”

New, physically uncompromised metaphysical initiative of unbiased integrity could unify world.

It could and probably will be provided by the utterly impersonal problem solutions of man’s antibody, the computer.

Only to their computer’s superhuman range of calculative capabilities can and may all political scientific religious leaders face-savingly acquiesce.

Evolution is apparently intent that man fulfill a much greater destiny than that of being simple muscle and reflex machine, a slave automaton.

(By 1975 China may be most impressively modern nation, highly automated.)

Automation can produce wealth beyond all our needs and dreams.

(We’ve always had automation. What’s happening to your lunch?)

Automation has made man obsolete as physical production and control specialist — just in time.

Specialization is only a fancy form of slavery wherein the “expert” is fooled into accepting his slavery by making him feel that in return he is in a socially culturally preferred, ergo, highly-secure, life-long position.

Nature always does things in simplest most efficient way. All nature is based on triangles.

Nature doesn’t have separate departments of physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics.

World society is operating almost exclusively in inaudible nonvisible area of physical universe.

We are living in a world where change is normal.

Because prime evolutionary transformations are invisible, it is approximately impossible for world society to comprehend that changes in next 30 years will be far greater than in last 100 years. It is approximately impossible for world society to comprehend that.

Artists are now being recognized as extraordinarily important to human society.

Scientist are utterly irresponsible regarding pro-vs.-anti social disposition of “eggs” they lay in the laboratories.

Every child is born a genius: Ninety-nine percent are degeniused by early post-natal circumstances.

Human being has great potentiality, but many wires get disconnected.

Ages 0 to 4 are biggest “school” opportunity. Child is trim tab of the future.

Least favorable environment for study is schoolroom and closely-packed desk prisons.

Real schoolhouse is in the home and outdoors.

Within 10 years anything reasonably think-upable by science fiction will probably have been realized.

Possession is becoming progressively burdensome, wasteful, and therefore obsolete, total man may be going through a total wave of transformation into an entirely new relationship with the universe.

Man freed of special case superstition by intellect has had survival potentials multiplied millionsfold.

Humans can now whisper in one another’s ear from anywhere around the world. (Be sure to entertain all your emotions.)

Intellectual integrity will win tomorrow’s battles with accelerating inexorability.

Political commercial sham false premise institutions will vanish with startling rapidity.

Man, as designed, is obviously intended to be a success. Success: not a bad thing to have “hanging over your head.”

Experiment is always valuable. You can’t learn less. You can always get nearer to the truth.

(Language can be a block to reality.) Coping with the totality of Spaceship Earth and Universe is ahead for all of us.

(Man was designed with legs — not roots.) Man can do anything he wants.

—R. Buckminster Fuller

HV045- Shortcut Thru 2008

George CarlinHearing Voices from NPR®:
045 Shortcut Thru 2008—
The Year in Speeches, Songs, and Soundbites
Host— Peter Bochan of WBAI-FM
Airs week of— 1/07/200901-07

“Shortcut Thru 2008” (52:00 mp3):

An hour-long audio scan of Year 2008, from the the Olympics to oil prices, from the elections to the economy. A memorial to those who passed, including Studs Turkel, Eartha Kitt, George Carlin, Bo Diddley, and Paul Newman. And a tribute to the changing of the presidential guard. (Produced by Peter Bochan of All Mixed Up).

The retrospective includes the collapse of Wall Street, financial and political scandals, the wild fires, the ice storms, and one of most memorable political campaigns in history, ending with a personal tour of the White House (conducted by past, present and future Presidents) all mixed up with answers to the question… “What will you remember about 2008?”
More…

Rainbow Rerun

Photo by Chad Harder of Rainbow womanThis Weekend America reran our Rainbox Family feature (10:00):

be, impressive, be, be, impressive . . .

“Basketball is a wonderful thing for a community because it is a warm place where everyone can go and it isn’t a church or a bar.” – Phil Jackson

thumb_classc4.jpg

Apathy was thick as I approached the theater for a screening of Class C. Five minutes in, I was completely converted. Class C, a documentary film produced by Bozemanite Mark Zetler, follows 5 Montana Class C girls basketball teams as they make their way to the State tournament. Instantly engaging and entertaining, it’s a beautifully crafted story about Montana and basketball; an interview with coaching legend and Montana native Phil Jackson is deftly intertwined. Go out of your way to see it!

Free screening at the Alberta Bair Theater in Billings on February 23rd at 8pm.
Airs on MontanaPBS:
Wednesday February 27th at 8pm
Monday March 3rd at 7pm
More on Class C

rattle cans

If art/beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder then this guy can tag my building anytime. Learn more at http://www.banksy.co.uk

Banksy’s Wet Dog
Wet Dog by Banksy

Banksy’s Ratapult
Ratapult by Banksy

New Bansky book: Wall and Piece.

Closer to home the City of Bozeman has finally had ENOUGH (they became very interested in graffiti after one of their own buildings was damn near wrecked by rattle can vandals)

Tomorrow night (1/28) at their regular meeting the Bozeman City Commission will respond to this:
The Old Bozeman Library, tagged

With this:
*Consider creating and staffing a Vandalism and Graffiti Task Force consisting of one staff liaison, one representative of the Downtown Partnership, one representative of the Bozeman Police Department, one representative of the local business community, one representative of the INC, and one representative of the Bozeman School District to direct and perform public outreach and education, study possible mitigation measures and long-term solutions, and make future recommendations to the City Commission.

Kara Walker Silhouette Exhibition

Usually when you think of silhouettes, the images conjured up consist of rabbit heads on the wall or the quaint illustrations in old historical novels. That’s not the case with this exhibition at the Whitney:


“…a danse infernal of sex, slavery and chitlin-circuit comedy.”

Pinky- Ant POV

The Pinky Show, “Ant- Light Pollution:”

Storytelling — How Toons

[ How Toons ] Digg turned this up today:

How Toons

a collection of science- and engineering-related web comics.

I’m a bit partial to the form, my long-standing affair probably started about the time I got my first Dr. Seuss book. This struck me as particularly infectious — possibly because I’ve been re-immersing myself lately: novelized pastiches such as geoffrey woods’ Leaper and Austin Grossman’s Soon I Will Be Invincible; Moore and Gibson’s The Watchmen, Alex Ross and Mark Waid’s Kingdom Come, Frank Miller’s irrepressible Dark Knight and nearly everything Brian Woods has done; films such as Unbreakable, Sin City, Superman Returns, Batman Begins, and, of course Heroes.

What impresses me most, I suppose, is the resilience and versatility — how and why comics have persisted…

Where Does a Militant Shop for a Good Ski Mask?

Slate’s Explainer has the skinny on the fashion ins and outs of buying a good one that reps your clan, creed or splinter group. See the video.

The only time I was able to ever wear one was while actually skiing…while it was below zero. I even had (briefly) a neoprene model that worked rather well at 30 below but felt slimy inside after a few runs. (The skis wouldn’t work well anyway since it was too cold to create the micro-thin layer of melt water that you actually glide on). So, in a way, I’ve gotta hand it to these wild ‘n’ crazy guys with their AK-47s and a desire for anonymity/clan identity/scary-looking-motherf’erness. That is badass when the average high for July and August is 91 F. (But the humidity is low, my friend).

6 billion Others

Dozens of faces6 milliards dAutres, 6 billion Others, 6 miliardi di Altri– a global vox-pop project by Yann Arthus-Bertrand:

In 2008 you will be able to listen to the thousands of testimonies which have been collected, and add your own testimony to the site. In the meantime, take a look at the project, the team, and some interviews that have already been made.

Sent by Kerry Seed via Lu Olkowski.

HV- NEA Award

NEA logo with textOur npo, Tundra Club, just got another grant from the National Endowment for the Arts via their Arts on Radio and Television program. The $15K supports our series of HV Specials. The NEA, along with CPB, have been a huge HV supporters. More than that, really, without NEA, HV wouldn’t exist; many HV producers likely would never have been able to develop without NEA grants.