The weekend, almost, but not quite. To carry us over the Friday line, a triple boost of the music that made this country and can make it again: At 8 p.m. ET, a must-catch livestream of the energizing Detroit-born drummer Gerald Cleaver, joined by the hard-swinging saxophonist Matt Nelson, bassist Brandon Lopez, and guitarist Brandon Seabrook, in performance and conversation from Brooklyn’s Park West Studios. Get the Zoom here.
Second boost: Ornette Coleman. He died five years ago yesterday after a life in which he rewrote the fundamental language of music by revolutionizing harmony, single-handedly inventing “harmolodics.” It’s the musical philosophy and improvisational and compositional method for which he won a 2007 Pulitzer. (Took the Pulitzer committee long enough; justice delayed is justice denied.) The cultural and cosmic freedom of Ornette’s music is indelible. He won the prize for his album Sound Grammar. Brace yourself and spin it.
Third boost: Happy birthday to the timelessly great (and late) Geri Allen, born 63 years ago today. She was a pianist admired and embraced by all corners of her many communities, which can’t be said of all legendary artists. Here she gives us “Lush Life.”
Kayla Davis, 28, and Rasheeda McCallum, 29, are two chefs who met at culinary school. They've started a GoFundMe campaign called the Black Chef Movement to feed the protesters.Molly Schwartz/Mother Jones
Last Saturday, as temperatures soared into the 80s and summer levels of humidity descended upon New York City, waves of protesters crisscrossed Grand Army plaza, a striking explosion of beaux-arts architecture that sits just above Prospect Park in northwest Brooklyn. Pumping signs and chanting for justice, some protesters grabbed water bottles and snacks—granola bars, Ritz crackers, goldfish—as they passed volunteers encircling the plaza.
But other protesters snagged food, from other volunteers, that was straight-up gourmet: roasted vegetable and hummus sandwiches, grilled chicken and ranch pita wraps, spiced rice and beans, fresh fruit salad, vegan protein balls filled with almond butter and granola—all prepared by out-of-work chefs.
Melissa Vigilance, 25, normally works as a chef at a law firm. But since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, she hasn’t been able to go into work. So she teamed up with six of her friends, all chefs in New York City, to feed the movement for racial justice.
“We started Feed the Movement NYC because a lot of chefs are out of a job,” Vigilance explained when I interviewed her for the new episode of the Mother Jones Podcast. “We wanted to provide food that’s nutritious, but also provides comfort for people who are out here spending their day yelling and fighting for us. This is our part to say thank you to them and be with them.”
Hear from Vigilance and her fellow chefs in this edition of the Mother Jones Podcast:
After the protests took off in Brooklyn, Vigilance set up a GoFundMe campaign to collect donations so the meals could be handed out to protesters for free. She and her friends arrived with boxes of provisions, including her homemade protein balls, gourmet sandwiches, water bottles, and energy drinks. “The great part about us being chefs is we’re able to make gourmet things that are portable, healthy, and easy to move around [with], that people will love,” she said. “It came out pretty easily.”
The killing of George Floydhas reignited a centuries-long fight for racial justice in the United States, sending hundreds of thousands of protesters out into the streets in more than 400 cities around the world over the past few weeks. This call for justice is made all the more complicated and crucial by a pandemic that’s disproportionately hit communities of color—and also the hospitality and restaurant industries. An estimated 417,000 restaurant workers lost their jobs in March, when restaurants and bars were first ordered to close. Now, some of New York’s 321,000 food-and-beverage industry workers who are out of work or working from home are channeling their energy and talent into this grassroots movement.
“A lot of us are home right now, not in our restaurants, so we’re able to use our talent to give back, to bring awareness to the cause,” said Kayla Davis, 28, another chef working to feed protesters.
Davis and McCallum were also out in Grand Army plaza this past weekend, handing out roasted vegetable sandwiches, grilled chicken wraps, nut-free cookies, fresh fruit, granola bars—and PPE.Davis is working with Rasheeda McCallum, 29, who she met when they were students at Johnson & Wales University, a culinary school in Providence, Rhode Island. Four days ago they started the Black Chef Movement, another GoFundMe food-centered campaign to sustain local anti-racism protesters. They’ve raised over $8,000 in that time. “We wanted a way to keep everybody nourished and encouraged while they’re out here,” said Davis. “We’re trying to inspire, uplift, and support through food, which is our passion.”
“We’re here to be there for our brothers and sisters on the front lines,” McCallum said. “We figured if we show up and we can nourish them, then they’ll keep going, and the things we need done will definitely get done.”
At the same time, to the side of the main plaza, Sebastian Jaramillo, 31, was handing out empanadas. The co-founder of Empanaderia, a Brooklyn-based catering company that normally delivers empanadas throughout the city, Jaramillo was busy earlier in the week providing supplies and food to protesters as they got out of jail. By giving free food to protesters and collecting donations to buy more supplies for the protests, Jaramillo has found a way to use his business to help a cause he cares about. Empanaderia is also matching donations that people make through its website.
“We’ve been out here giving out more than a thousand empanadas,” Jaramillo said. “We’re doing out best to support local businesses, support the protests, and get police to stop killing us.”
He added, “We’re happy to be out here with everybody to fight the good fight.”
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that donations to Empanaderia are being used to buy more supplies for the protests.
Midweek and more to go, which calls for a boost, livestreamed tonight at 8 p.m. ET, when jazz violinist Jason Kao Hwang’s Human Rites Trio performs music rooted in themes of collective justice, compassion, and celebration of life. If “jazz violin” evokes for you the uptempo swing, orchestral blues, and virtuosic bebop of the great Regina Carter, it needn’t; Hwang’s style, equally moving, is marked by wide-open texture, harmonic expansion, and rhythmic looseness, not conventional idioms, but it’s still tethered to melody and beats. This is improvisational music as free as the United States could be, if only we could hear it. Tonight’s livestream marks the release of the trio’s debut album, with bassist Ken Filiano and drummer Andrew Drury. Anytime before the performance, catch Hwang’s reflection on the COVID-19 lockdown, the lives of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, and the source of Hwang’s inspiration and joy.
The 8-foot-tall fence around the White House has been creatively repurposed by the public as a wall of memorial to Black lives lost to police violence. Designed to keep protesters at bay, the fence has become a canvas of voices—a gallery of artwork, photos, posters, and letters of remembrance and petition for police reform. Art and activism have a long intersecting history in the United States, explored in Scott Saul’s Freedom Is, Freedom Ain’t, James Edward Smethurst’s The Black Arts Movement, and countless other books and portraits. See the images here, here, and here. Thanks to my colleague Grace Molteni for the tip.
Bonus boost: On the brink of closure, a Florida cafe was saved by a patron who gave $40,000 to the owner to keep it open and feed hospital workers. The donor handed him envelopes of money and ordered 100 sandwiches to be sent each day to a hospital across the street. And did it anonymously.
If driving the news cycle and the broader media conversation about national security weren’t high-impact enough, you’ll be inspired to know that Mother Jones reporter Dan Friedman did both and much more last week, when his exclusive front-line dispatches and chilling photographs from the protests broke a defining story across America. Shady armed forces, without any badges or name tags, stood menacing watch over protesters in the nation’s capital. Asked who they’re with, they told Friedman opaquely “the Department of Justice” and “the federal government.”
Citing Friedman’s images and alert eye, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut announced, “We cannot tolerate an American secret police.” (COINTELPRO, anyone?) Murphy pledged to introduce legislation that requires “uniformed federal officers…to clearly identify what military branch or agency they represent.” Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon boosted Friedman’s work strongly: “This picture really troubles me. Armed forces in the nation’s capital, appearing to have been stripped of all badges and name tags—making them totally unaccountable to the people—is something I’d expect to see from a dictatorship, not a democracy.”
Newsroomseverywhere shined a collective light on Friedman’s essential work, giving all of us at Mother Jones added indication of the strength across not only our newsroom, but national media, in the search for transparency and truth. I’ll take my Recharge where I can. For those of you who can join me, consider supporting consequential reporting like Friedman’s, and enter the week on a high note.
And an even higher note, once you feast your eyes on Tilda Swinton’s doppelganger in kitten form. H/T to my colleague Nina Liss-Schultz for making Tilda happen.
As our reporters chronicled, protesters in both the Bay Area and New York City violated curfews last night to continue calling for justice and an end to police violence (or maybe just an end to the police, full stop). The photos and videos are heartening. “The scene provided a striking contrast to days of images dominated by police aggression,” we noted of uprisings in New York. (I found particular joy in a dance party that broke out here in Oakland three hours after curfew.)
Combine this with the fact that, in the past few days, the protests have led to change—and things that have long been pushed for—across the country. Confederate statues, as our own Camille Squires wrote, are coming down in the South. Lawmakers are pushing to end qualified immunity.
Former President Obama on a Zoom livestream called for a message of hope when looking at the protesters. “There is a change in mindset that’s taking place,” he said. He spoke to the “broad coalition” we’ve seen in the streets. He cautioned against comparing it to the uprisings in 1968. And perhaps for all of us, even if the former president’s message can feel like it’s coming from a distance, there’s a lesson there.
Look at the dancing. Look at the signs. Look at the togetherness. Do not squeeze your eyes to narrowly view this moment in the way the faux-embattled white intellectuals of the late 1960s saw rebellion. One of the most famous documents of the tumultuous demonstrations in 1968 is Norman Mailer’s bombastic, ambivalent, and hyperbolic Miami and the Siege of Chicago. It has its place. Yet it doesn’t feel like it says enough about what’s happening now. I think the images of last night are a better document about what America—that word Mailer loved to toss around—can be.
Lightning round of Recharge boosts, and back to long-form tomorrow, but today’s drumbeat is too quick, the news cycle too fast, and the pace of our moment too—I’m out of adjectives. You know who is excellent at adjectives and thoughtful descriptions, critical thinking, and powerful storytelling that lifts readers? Someone whose birthday is today. Someone who deserves all the retweets, likes, and digital presents. Her name begins with D and ends with odai Stewart and her birthday revolution will be tweeted @dodaistewart. “On this one day, I accept random good vibes” is not a quote she gave me for this Recharge. It’s not, just like no reader should email me with inspiring, energizing, good-news stories of justice and hope at recharge@motherjones.com. Now make sure not to celebrate with @dodaistewart. Or do. Go ahead!
Elsewhere in the Recharge galaxy, my colleague Sam Van Pykeren shares this story of a Minnesota woman who set out on “her own march” in peaceful solidarity with protesters when friends weren’t able to join her, gaining 1.1 million likes for taking the initiative, her son tweeted: “We walked along the lake for about half a mile. No one even drove by, but my parents wanted to do something and that’s what we did.” She posted a video along with it, to an outpouring of support. “Mom is over the moon and is so grateful to all of you for the overwhelming love and support! Thanks everyone so much you seriously have no idea.”
There are countless parents drawing and providing strength and earned recognition and love at this moment. Send stories to recharge@motherjones.com, even if you’d just like your parents hat-tipped, and spin the daily blog at motherjones.com/recharge.
It’s still only Tuesday? Okay, multiple Recharges. It’s gonna take a lot of boosts to get through this. Let’s stretch a triple:
More than material. When 18-year-old Hafsa Islam saw her family’s Bangladeshi Indian restaurant burned to the ground during protests in Minneapolis, she shared the news on Facebook and posted her father’s thoughts: “Let my building burn…Life is more valuable than anything else. We can rebuild a building, but we cannot give this man [George Floyd] back to his family.” Her posts were met with an outpouring of support so vast and newscoveragesowide that solidarity turned into nationwide pledges to rebuild her restaurant.
Music of a moment. Saving lives is the country’s first order of business. But saving music is a collective project of its own, and encouraging news is in: The famed Bop Street Records announced that it would be forced to close by the pandemic, and 500,000 recordings flushed, but in the final hours, the Internet Archive came through to purchase the entire collection, sight unseen. The archive—a nonprofit library of free books, movies, music, and more—has collected more than 4.5 million audio recordings.
Unlocked. A small bail fund has raised a staggering $20 million in four days of donations to help protesters in Minnesota. A popular DJ, Marea Stamper, known as the Black Madonna, said that any followers who donate to bail funds and send her donation receipts would get added to her shows’ guest lists when touring resumes. “Everyone around the world is ready for justice,” Tonja Honsey, the fund’s executive director, said. “They’re ready for real change, and they’re supporting that.”
In the wake of George Floyd’s death and in solidarity with protesters across the country, city bus drivers are taking a stand, banding together against police violence by refusing to transport arrested protesters to jail. “[We] do not work for the NYPD. We transport the working families of NYC,” tweeted a drivers union. “All [of our] operators should refuse to transport arrested protestors,” an affirmation echoed by a wave of drivers in Minneapolis who pledged, “We are willing to do what we can to ensure our labor is not used to help the Minneapolis Police Department shut down calls for justice.”
Another driver stepped off peacefully and refused to drive when NYPD commandeered his bus for transporting arrested protesters, to the cheers of the crowd.
If you see or hear of bus drivers going above and beyond with acts of kindness, generosity, decency, and safe, strong shows of support related (or not) to protests, drop a line to recharge@motherjones.com. And bookmark the blog at motherjones.com/recharge.
30 for 30. Commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act is all the more challenging and consequential in a pandemic, and encouraging news is in from the National Center on Disability and Journalism. The center announced a major campaign yesterday to spark more thoughtfully framed news coverage of disability communities by suggesting 30 story tips for journalists’ consideration, one tweeted (#NCDJ30for30) and shared to Facebook (@ASUNCDJ) every other day through July 26, the act’s anniversary. Stories range from COVID-19’s impact to tech’s role in transforming lives, all archived on NCDJ’s site. H/T to Kristin Gilger, the center’s executive director and senior associate dean at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, and graduate student Molly Duerig, who helped create the campaign.
Pressing on. While printing presses cool off as newspapers slow or shutter across the country, a group of independent artists is hitting the printers, creating T-shirts for pandemic relief: “Unionize the Minors” shirts are on sale, with all proceeds going to minor leaguers and their families affected by COVID-19 in light of news about teams cutting off the minors. The brains, brawn, and creativity behind the shirts belong to Alex Bazeley and Bobby Wagner, who host Tipping Pitches, a podcast they started as NYU students and that’s evolved into a popular series about baseball, labor relations, and socioeconomics.
Say what? No description; just enjoy this bite. Thanks to my colleague Daniel Moattar for alerting me to it.
How to spend your weekend? By emailing recharge@motherjones.com with story ideas that highlight solutions, justice, goodness, and greatness, and spinning the daily blog at motherjones.com/recharge.
Bakery owner Bill Hanisch knew what to do when his old high school’s graduation ceremonies were called off: He announced that he’d bake hundreds of free personalized cakes, and appreciation came so fast that parents and administrators offered donations if he’d bake for their schools too. He’s taken almost 1,000 orders from towns along the Mississippi River in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
School colors decorate the cakes, with mini diplomas, “Congrats,” and student names. “It’s really taken off and we’re all loving it,” Hanisch said. Any way you slice it, cake news right now is like icing on the devastation and challenges that mark the pandemic, and stories of sweetness don’t always sit right when pain is growing. But acts of generosity, creative compassion, and community strength are rising. Recharge salutes Hanisch Bakery and the Washington Post’s Cathy Free for highlighting it.
Back to business:
We asked, you answered.Recharge asked yesterday if you think President Trump deserves immunity on Twitter because he’s a powerful world figure whose lies, harassment, and abuse we need to record regardless of violations. Reader James McKendry of Petersburg, Virginia, writes: “Twitter should remove access…Enough people can make a difference. Mitch McConnell said no more relief money and it looks like he felt pressure to rethink his position. Taking on the president may sound big, but he is truly a little man. Let’s do this.”
More fight left. The first woman to earn the title of chess grandmaster while playing for the United States, and a seven-time US champion, Irina Krush is crushing more than the competition: She’s beating back the coronavirus. The world learned that she’d contracted the virus and was suffering badly—admitted to the hospital twice—weeks later. She’d kept it to herself, sharing it only when she started to feel better. She’s back to demolishing humans. (I was one of Krush’s fallen, defeated when we were kids in a matchup on board four, with former world champion Anatoly Karpov on board one. Krush eviscerated me; her opening attack was strategic, sacrificing a pawn for positional advantage in a queen’s gambit. And no I’m not the Daniel King who’s an international chess champion, live broadcaster, and author of 15 books.) What Krush sees, she destroys. The virus stood no chance.
H/T to Krush’s longtime friend and chess rival, and poker star, Jennifer Shahade for organizing the online women’s tournament Isolated Queens II in response to the pandemic.
Twitter added fact-check warnings yesterday to two Trump tweets for the first time in history, a major move to curb his spread of lies and conspiracy babble, which could be the most encouraging news all…week? The world’s largest ego and lyingest president is being brought to size or at least facing efforts to do so. But should we rejoice? Or keep pressing Jack Dorsey on why he hasn’t banned or suspended Trump for repeated violations of terms applied to everyone else who abuses, harasses, and threatens users? Listen to Dorsey weigh that question and tell me if you think he’s right at recharge@motherjones.com: Should Trump get a hall pass because he’s a powerful world figure whose lies we need to record regardless of violations? Take cheer where you can: Fact-check tags begin.
Brushing up. Murals are popping up on boarded-up restaurants in Oakland and San Francisco in an organized effort to create canvases for artists. Check out Paint the Void’s Helice Wen.
Calling all kindness-doers: Remember the good landlord who canceled rent for three months and told tenants to keep the cash or spend it at local businesses? Here’s a pledge: Send your stories in this vein to recharge@motherjones.com and you’ll get a Mother Jones shout-out.
Start the presses. Newspapers are on financial life support, but a community turned up to keep one going: A librarian launched a weekly paper in Weare, New Hampshire, and when the librarian died and the library where it was printed closed, six residents stepped up to keep the paper humming. H/T to Recharge reader Dave Beard for the inspiring bite.
This string of days in late May includes the birthdays of two of the greatest musicians of their times: Bob Dylan (born Robert Zimmerman on May 24, 1941) and Sun Ra (arriving from Saturn, he says, on May 22, 1914).
Both are pseudo-gods, with excellent hagiographies worth indulging in. No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese’s documentary on Dylan, is on Netflix; Sun Ra: A Joyful Noiseis on iTunes and surprisingly easy to piece together from YouTube clips. Sun Ra has passed. Bob Dylan has not. In fact, we’re blessed to know, as our own Abigail Weinberg wrote when Dylan started releasing his newest project—which began with a nearly 17-minute song about John F. Kennedy’s assassination—that Bob Dylan is not dead yet.
I took a long bike ride over the weekend, digging into Dylan’s late-career, often bemoaned, material. (“Wiggle Wiggle” is still awful, I’m sorry to report, but don’t sleep on “Mississippi,” or, dare I say it, “Froggie Went a-Courtin’,” and I’m fully onboard that the gospel phase from Dylan was actually rad as hell.) After the ride, I sat around after and tried to find a “bad” Sun Ra album. No dice. But I would recommend the sneaky beauty of Solo Keyboards, Minnesota 1978; in particular, “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child (Crumar synth).”
Both Sun Ra and Dylan felt frenetic enough to have potentially collaborated. So, the astute researcher I am, I googled “Bob Dylan Sun Ra.” A name popped up: Tom Wilson.
The record producer who shepherded Dylan’s work had also worked on Sun Ra’s debut album. News to me, making me fully not the music nerd, I hope. I knew Wilson vaguely but was sort of astounded he isn’t more widely known. Other credits for him? Oh, nothing big, just the Velvet Underground’s White Light, White Heat, the Mother of Invention’s Freak Out!, and Simon and Garfunkel’s Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. Wilson also produced one of my favorite gems of that era, the psych-pop work of Harumi.
Catch the Sun Ra Arkestra’s Songs of Justice performance in limited viewing here—final chance is 11:59 p.m. ET Tuesday.
This post has been edited since appearing in the newsletter to reflect the musicians’ and producer’s birth dates.
Today is a twofer: Memorial Day and Geek Pride Day. Geek day originated 14 years ago when Spanish blogger Germán Martínez wanted to celebrate geekness and pull together a community, so he chose the anniversary of the first Star Wars release as the date. About 300 geeks turned out in Madrid that day to play human Pac-Man, and a geeks’ bill of rights was written. The manifesto included “the right not to like football or any other sport” and “the right not to be ‘in style.’”
If you need a boost today, watch a cult classic; dust off an arcane video game; play too many Chess.com games; overuse semicolons; or help me solve a grammatical puzzle: Is “global pandemic” redundant? “Pan-” means all. The Associated Press says it’s redundant, but Merriam-Webster says it’s not, defining pandemic as “occurring over a wide geographic area,” not necessarily the world, so “global” enlarges it. Weigh in at recharge@motherjones.com. Bonus points if you know what a pleonasm is.
Recharge returns tomorrow with surprisingly good news for the week ahead.
Over the past few weeks (wait, has it been months?), we’ve been running a series of pieces called Plague Comforts, writing about what’s been getting us through these strange times. I recommend all of them if you need a boost. We will occasionally highlight them here.
After we published the piece, Matt’s inbox turned into a small B-movie horror convention: an actor from Friday the 13th Part III emailed; a makeup artist got in touch.
And we got a bit of a behind-the-scenes look.
Perhaps you do not love horror movies like Matt does. But how could you not enjoy this photo from the set of Demond Wind?
The caption sent along: “Jeff Farley prepares Dan Koko as the Master Demon.”
If you’re like me and can’t carry a tune to save your life, so you speak or mouth the lyrics to “Happy Birthday” instead of spoiling a perfectly good singalong, there are other ways to celebrate someone’s birthday. Ask them questions, and truly hear the answers. Happy birthday today to our outstanding Mother Jones environmental reporter Rebecca Leber, who reluctantly agreed to a Q&A:
You tweeted “It’s my birthday soon and I am very alone. All the presents.” Have all the presents come in? What’s on your climate wishlist?
I live on my own, so it’s been a weird time, but the chain reaction of that tweet was hearing really kind words from some readers!
Tips for those of us living alone during the pandemic?
None, but I am determined to get through this without baking bread.
Top wish?
There’s a lot of talk about returning to normal, but “normal” means a heavy pollution footprint from transportation. We could be thinking bigger in redesigning cities—less for cars and more for walkability and resilience.
Send Rebecca the presents and watch in awe as she tracks the ways the administration is racing to roll back environmental protections while no one is looking. But Rebecca is looking and she’s compelling officials to take notice and take action. Happy birthday, RL.
Today’s Recharge menu continues with a seasonal selection of immunity boosts:
Delivered. Despite the ruthless, bloodsucking practices at GrubHub that siphon profits from independent restaurants during the pandemic—well documented by the New Yorker’s Helen Rosner and TechCrunch’s Jon Evans—one restaurant has a creative workaround. A dish on its Grubhub menu is called “Please help us reduce our fees by ordering through our website. $0.00.” Ingredients: “During this time of crisis, I ask for your little help—please place your order through our website.” Order up and send all pro-worker justice stories to recharge@motherjones.com.
Solving it. A coding teen took matters into her own hands after seeing “firsthand how flawed our system is for survivors” of sexual assault by designing an app “to help you, free of judgment,” access emergency resources. “This is why we need more women in STEM!” she says in her vastly popular TikTok video, set to inspiring music.
Never-before-seen Trump photo. No one can safely get a haircut in a salon right now, including the president. Here’s proof, a photo of his overgrown pandemic hair, sent to me by a senior White House official and verified by a second administration source. “The hair is his real hair from quarantining and not being able to get a haircut,” the first official tells me.
Hawking hope. An Atlanta boy got a surprise from his skating idol, Tony Hawk, thanks to a FedEx driver who made the 8-year-old’s day when the kid ran up to his truck shouting, “Excuse me! Can you mail something for me?” The boy handed the driver his skateboard to send to Hawk, but not knowing Hawk’s address, the driver posted a video. Hawk responded with a video of his own, flashing a skateboard he’d send the 8-year-old in return: “Thanks buddy. I hope to meet you sometime.” Watch here (sound on, upper right).
Competition.Recharge is America’s top-rated solutions-driven column of good news, but we have competition: a 16-year-old in Fairfield, Connecticut, launched his own good-news newsletter, SunShow. Congratulations to Kush Maisuria. Recharge salutes you. “There’s just so many people doing good everywhere and I wanted to contribute to that,” he says.
Yesterday, we published a nice piece about Big Freedia’s new album, Louder, by Sam Van Pykeren. Reading it should give you a bit of a happy jolt—we hope—and lift you out of your seat to dance.
If, after reading, you’re looking for more bounce hits, I would (of course) recommend checking out Freedia’s back catalog.
But there’s so much more! This bang from 1994—a reference to the Times-Picayune and all—calls back to when bounce was more heavingly regional. You can listen to more, if you’d like, and start to notice the beats repeating. There are lists aplenty online, including from Rolling Stone, with classics to get you started.
Just want more Freedia though? While you’re on YouTube, take a peek at the stuff she’s been uploading in quarantine—it ranges from a music video to calming cooking.
Today marks 95 years since Malcolm X first touched the planet and did all he could to reimagine and strengthen it, and a daylong tribute is livestreaming right now with Angela Davis—reason alone to scrap any plans you’d made and tune in—Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Ilyasah Shabazz (Malcolm’s daughter), Al Sharpton, and music from Robert Glasper (here with Mos Def for a boost), Common, Stevie Wonder, and Pete Rock.
Stamina and solidarity-building are on the lineup, but however you view Malcolm’s impact, don’t overlook that of Yuri Kochiyama, also born today, 99 years ago, a Japanese American civil rights pioneer and close friend of Malcolm’s; she was at his side the moment his life was taken. A life that continues here in “A Tribute in Word and Sound,” streaming from the Shabazz Center. After the celebration, let me know how you see Malcolm’s and Yuri’s legacies at recharge@motherjones.com.
Results. Our colleague Samantha Michaels broke a staggering story earlier this month about New York prisoners sewing face masks for correctional officers, hospital workers, and quarantined inmates, but being forbidden to wear the masks themselves in their housing units. Hours after her reporting published, officials announced to a local news agency that they’d distribute the masks to all inmates within a few days. Applause to Samantha. And for those of you who can, consider pitching in to support more high-impact reporting like it at Mother Jones, and start the week strong. (Our CEO explains what the coronavirus has meant for our reporting here.)
Touchdown. A postcard sent 33 years ago just arrived, thanks to a post office’s deep cleaning. Anne Lovell had mailed the card in 1987 to her brother, Paul Willis, who received it this week, with the original message: “A picture is worth a thousand words. Happy Holidays!” “We were both really excited about it,” Willis said. [Editor’s note: A similar surprise came my way when a DVD of photos I’d mailed to my father took a year to reach New York from San Francisco, torn and tattered on the outside, spotless on the inside.]
Changeup. A Boston Red Sox reporter with a rare collection of autographed cards auctioned them off and raised $57,000 for coronavirus charities. Hat tip to Chris Cotillo, even if he is a Red Sox fan. To all my fellow Yankee fans out there, can you match the deed? Let me know at recharge@motherjones.com.
Rare breed. Friday was National Endangered Species Day, so let’s recognize two additions to the list: the 55-foot-long, 90,000-pound Gulf of Mexico Bryde’s whale, and the Accountable President, a rare human, roughly 5 to 6 feet tall, of even temperament, takes responsibility, doesn’t lie pathologically.
Flowing. The good news about alcohol distilleries converting to hand-sanitizer manufacturers continues, thanks to E-40, the Bay Area rapper who transformed his brand’s tequila distilleries to produce sanitizer and donate it to prisons.
Voices are back. The once-disappearing phone call is making a comeback, with call volume and call duration up. The best part: JustCalledToSay.com, a new website for anyone to leave voicemails starting “I just called to say…” (anything on your mind), created by independent podcasters. Start with Zac Lee Rigg’s excellent whales voicemail.
Thanksgiving already. Today marks the 84th anniversary of Louis Armstrong’s powerful recording of “Thankful.” Give it a spin and tell me what’s on your week-ahead playlist at recharge@motherjones.com.
One hundred thirty years ago, on May 15, 1890, Katherine Anne Porter—Texan, journalist, novelist—was born.
Her generation lived through many things, and yet American fiction from her peers—perhaps a bit exhausted from having to chronicle World War I—does not mention (at least explicitly) the 1918 influenza epidemic much. Her collection of three short novels, Pale Horse, Pale Rider, is the most famous example. For some readers, ordering books might be a challenge. Or maybe your local library and stores are simply out of stock. Way back in 2006, Alice McDermott bemoaned the lack of Porter, and the “low demand” sticker taped to a copy of one of her books.
Don’t fret. The New York Review of Books has helpfully uploaded an excerpt to its website. It even has a nice paragraph introduction from Elizabeth Hardwick on Porter’s “clear, fluent, almost untroubled” style. Oh, also don’t fret: The excerpt ends on a chipper note. The last paragraph begins, “No more war, no more plague…”
Perhaps put on the tunes of another birthday haver: Brian Eno. I recommend sinking into Porter’s writing with his heavenly, ambient “Reflection.”
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