I heard news this weekend that, certainly, put a damper in, if any, holiday spirit hovering around.
That being that the wonderful, and talented, Cape Verdean singer, Cesaria Evoria passed away, at the not-terribly-old-age of 70.
Man ...
Listening to her was such a pleasure, for she carried you off into a world, flooded and filled, with the most beautiful sounds, a world you may not know existed, just floating along, listening to her, lost in the beauty, thinking, hoping, it would never end.
I was fortunate to see her perform, twice, back in the mid and late 1990's, and it was awesome.
Coming out of those shows was like having seen something outside your own understanding, something miraculously divine and good, a refreshing of your soul.
Ms. Évora’s music was in a style called morna, which is sung in taverns on the Cape Verde islands: slow, pensive ballads with an underlying lilt, suffused with sodade, the Cape Verdean creole term for a nostalgic longing that pervades music across Portugal (where the word is saudade) and its former empire.
Ms. Évora sang about love, sorrow and history, including slavery, in a husky, dignified, unhurried contralto that brought warmth and gravity to songs by Cape Verde’s leading poets. She also sang in her country’s more upbeat styles, coladeira and funaná, but her serenely sorrowful mornas were her legacy.
She always performed barefoot, a gesture of solidarity with poor women. A concert review in The New York Times described her as “a Yoda of melancholy” onstage.
Her singing style brought comparisons to American jazz singer Billie Holiday. "She belongs to the aristocracy of bar singers," French newspaper Le Monde said in 1991, adding that Ms. Evora had "a voice to melt the soul."
Ms. Evora's international fame came late in life. Her 1988 album "La Diva Aux Pieds Nus" ("Barefoot Diva"), recorded in France where she first found popularity, launched her international career.
Her 1995 album "Cesaria" was released in more than a dozen countries and brought her first Grammy nomination, leading to a tour of major concert halls around the world and album sales in the millions.
She won a 2003 Grammy in the World Music category for her album "Voz D'Amor."
And, with the recently-completed Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday, today seems to be the unannounced "Justify OccupyWallStreet Day", with the cascading news of;
Seems they have a history of putting out creative, and, at times controversial, advertisements, like the one from about 10-years ago, having a Seeing Eye Dog lead a blind woman into a pole, so the dog could wolf down the Nando's chicken.
Nando's is known in South Africa for its humorous but often controversial adverts. One such television advert from 2000, involved a blind woman being led into a pole intentionally and knocked unconscious by her guide dog, which then proceeded to eat the chicken that the woman had just purchased. This caused an uproar from people who were concerned that the blind would be offended. The South African Advertising Standards Authority called for the withdrawal of the advert. Several blind people were quoted in the media as finding the advert amusing
This much is clear: The campus cops 3,000 miles away have offer a blueprint of what not to do. The swelling tide of police violence against peaceful demonstrators comes after 10 years of citizens’ passive acquiescence toward the Patriot Act and expanded government snooping, waterboarding terror suspects, and giving urban police departments more high-tech firepower than many Third World nations. Now our security-state-on-steroids is being turned against non-violent protesters here in the “homeland.” Talk about blowback!
Sources tell 'The Garlic', that after an all-night session, Pope Benedict XVI is dispatching Archpriest of the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major Bernard Law to Penn State, to offer The Vatican's assistance in the burgeoning sexual abuse scandal.
"Lights were burning all night ... Cars coming-and-going," offered one observer.
In a brief statement, Pope Benedict XVI said he "sympathized" with the Penn State officials, and is offering the Vatican's "complete playbook" on how to obfuscate and deny any knowledge or responsibility for sexual abuse.
Unconfirmed reports say that Law is authorized to offer any, and all, Penn State officials caught up in the sexual abuse scandal, sanctuary at The Vatican, where they can benefit from the lack of Extradition, from any criminal charges that may come from this case.
We speak of the former medical practitioner, the prescription-pad-to-the-stars, Dr. Conrad Murray, who, when receiving his sheepskin from whatever matchbook medical warehouse he come out of, surely couldn't have envisioned he would wind up on the Shit Train running out of Never Never Land.
For all the riffs we've done here on Apple, there was no denying what a visionary, and genius Steve Jobs was ...
Perhaps, an iconic legacy was spilled on the radio program this morning, 'The Take Away'.
As John Hockenberry, and others, struggled to come up with that iconic thing about Jobs, Hockenberry chimed in with a riff, how, when he shows his two-year-old a photograph, a real photograph, the youngster puts their finger on it, like an iPad, or such, to enlarge it, the swipe, the touch ...
Yes, Summer is officially over, and we move into Autumn, with today's Autumnal Equinox
The First Day of Fall.
It seemed like we had a terribly short Summer, and a rain-soaked one as well, so, here's hoping we have a nice, mild (perhaps, occasionally, crisp) Fall season.
And, who better to take us into this, but the great Mile Davis
Funny, in what I read about the proposal, and Obama's stumping, I don't recall seeing anything about a massive, Fortress-of-Solitude-like Afghan Prison, there were no impassioned cries of "Build that Afghan prison now! ..."
As the Obama administration announced plans for hundreds of billions of dollars more in domestic budget cuts, it late last week solicited bids for the construction of a massive new prison in Bagram, Afghanistan. Posted on the aptly named FedBizOps.Gov website which it uses to announce new privatized spending projects, the administration unveiled plans for "the construction of Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP), Bagram, Afghanistan" which includes "detainee housing capability for approximately 2000 detainees."
The U.S. plans to hand over the new Bagram to the Afghan military next January, a demanding target that some think it will be unable or unwilling to meet. Afghan guards are due to start arriving this spring to be trained. This appears to be the reason, officially at least, for expanding the capacity so dramatically, from 600 prisoners at the old site to 1,000 currently and up to 2,300 when the new building is completed.
"This will be the enduring detention facility for the next 50, 60 years. It's world class," said Navy Vice Adm. Robert Harward, who's in charge of U.S. detention programs in Afghanistan and who was visiting Bagram. "For the Afghans, this means that they will immediately be able to separate the insurgents from the criminal population."
"For the next 50, 60 years?"
You mean we'll be housing, and feeding and, otherwise taking care of Afghan prisoners (some who may, or may not, be terrorists - they being held with that "Do Not Pass Go" justice system - secret evidence, no charges, no trial - from the previous war criminal administration, which means Obama has looked in the rearview mirror, at least, once), for decades to come, so, like, who's going to pay for this?
One obstacle is funding, though. It costs $5 million a year to maintain the new facility, plus an additional cost per detainee, Garrity said. That's way beyond the budget of the Afghan authorities for a single jail, so it remains unclear how the new prison will be financed.
Oh, let us count the ways ...
More, from Greenwald;
One last point: recall how many people insisted that the killing of Osama bin Laden would lead to a drawdown in the War on Terror generally and the war in Afghanistan specifically. Since then -- in just four months since bin Laden's corpse was dumped into the ocean -- the U.S. has done the following: renewed the Patriot Act for four years with no reforms; significantly escalated drone attacks in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan; tried to assassinate U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki with no due process; indicted a 24-year-old Muslim for "material support for Terrorism" for uploading an anti-American YouTube clip after he talked to the son of a Terrorist leader; pressured Iraq to keep U.S. troops in that country; argued that it has the virtually unlimited right to kill anyone it wants anywhere in the world; and now finalized plans to build a sprawling new prison in Afghanistan.
And, he finishes most wryly;
If that's winding things down, I sure would hate to see what a redoubling of the American commitment to Endless War looks like.
