Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue

Something/Someone Old
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My Something Old today is not all that Old--only 17 years. I figure nearly twenty years ago can count as Old.

It's Guy Ritchie's movie Snatch.

Ritchie is a British filmmaker whose wheelhouse is farcical crime films that, to me, look closer to traditional American screwball comedies than anything else: improbability stacks on improbability, crazy shit on top of more crazy shit, with great comedic effect, until it all improbably ties together and resolves. It's Bringing Up Baby with a body count. Ritchie has combined the screwball comedy with gangster films.

Debuting with Lock, Stock, and Smoking Barrel, a movie which introduced him to his future wife, Madonna, (because they released the soundtrack on her label, not because she was involved in the film), Ritchie went on to create the much more wonderful movie Snatch. If every filmmaker gets to make one perfect movie (Kevin Smith's Clerks, John Huston's The Maltese Falcon, Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers), this is Guy Ritchie's. It is, as far as I can tell, without flaw.

But then, I'm a sucker for narratives that play with time and perspective, and, in Snatch, Ritchie tells his crime story in bits and bobs, from different perspectives, and not in the right order. Of course, this is not new; Quentin Tarantino did the same thing in Pulp Fiction. But I like Ritchie's film better. It's a lot funnier, for one thing.

So why is this my Something Old?

Because of one scene. It features the character Bullet-Tooth Tony, played by former footballer (and tough guy) Vinnie Jones. Here's a clip just to introduce him to you (those who dislike foul language shouldn't partake):

And here's the actual scene:

It's comedy gold to watch the hardened assassin reach a moral limit.

It's also a really good metaphor for my response to the state of the world.

That's a bit strong, innit?

Something New
Try_Something_New_for_30_Days.jpg

In truth, this New thing isn't New, but possibly billions of years old; it's only new to us.

The first RECORDED interstellar asteroid--as distinct from comet-- sailed through our solar system this fall, making such a perfect arc around the sun it kinda looked like the Enterprise deployed a probe. The most notable thing about it, though, was its incredible speed:

the object is about 1,300 feet wide and is most likely an asteroid. It came from the direction of the constellation Lyra. Which doesn’t mean it came from there, just that it came from that general direction. It was traveling at a speed of about 57,000 mph and it crossed the plane of our solar system at a perpendicular angle. Which is a little odd because most objects in our solar system orbit the Sun on roughly the same plane. It passed through inside the orbit on Mercury and then took a sharp turn, because of the Sun's gravity. After making this turn it passed within 15 million miles of Earth and exited our system and is now headed in the direction of the constellation Pegasus.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinanderton/2017/10/28/3-things-you-need-...

Almost like it used the Sun to make a sharp right turn. (Yes, I know it's just a space rock. Let me have my science fiction moment).

Omuamua--a name given the object by the first observatory to spot it, in Hawaii--apparently picked even more speed as it approached and then slingshotted around the sun:

'Oumuamua slingshotted around the sun on September 9 at a speed of 315,000 kilometers an hour (196,000 mph) and is now traveling out of the solar system. As of Monday, its speed was 138,000 kilometers an hour (85,700 mph).

http://www.businessinsider.com/interstellar-object-oumuamua-sped-past-ea...

196,000 mph? Holy acceleration, Batman!

Other unusual things about the space rock include its variation in brightness, so far unique among recorded objects:

Combining images from the various telescopes, an international team found that the asteroid varies in brightness by a factor of about 10 every 7.3 hours, matching its spin about its axis. No other comet or asteroid in the solar system varies so widely in brightness.

http://www.businessinsider.com/interstellar-object-oumuamua-sped-past-ea...

This variation that Oumuamua possesses indicates that it has a long, somewhat convoluted, cigar shape. We've never seen an asteroid with that shape before. Most space rocks are failed attempts at a sphere. Insufficient gravity leaves them not spherical like planets, but rather like big rough boulders.

This is pretty cool, even though what's actually New is almost certainly our ability to see such things, not the event itself.

Oumuamua means "messenger from afar who arrives first." Or, more reductively, "scout."

Here's to Scout!

cheers_0.jpg

Something Borrowed
student_handing_book_2.JPG

Maybe I should call this section "Something Stolen" today, because anything brought into the culture by African slaves was not exactly borrowed, was it? But I really want to tell the story of how rice arrived on this continent. I had no idea how early that happened, and I thought it came from the East, not the West. Wrong on all counts! I've been learning the history of rice as I write this section:

During slavery, people were plucked from rice-producing regions. Casamance, a region in the South of Senegal where my parents are from originally, is one of them. There were several raids there to find slaves who knew how to cultivate rice and they were shipped to the Carolinas or Mexico.

http://www.un.org/africarenewal/web-features/slave-trade-how-african-foo...

There's something a little weird about slavers going after people for their rice-growing abilities, but I suppose agriculture--of a sort--was the main driver of the slave trade, so it actually makes sense. I guess they had figured out they could make rice into a cash crop.

Hmm, turns out that was an understatement:

By 1700, rice was established as a major crop for the colonists. That year 300 tons of American rice, referred to as "Carolina Golde Rice," was shipped to England. Colonists were producing more rice than there were ships to carry it...By 1726, the Port of Charleston was exporting about 4,500 metric tons of "Carolina Golde," which later became the standard of high-quality rice throughout the world. When America gained independence 50 years later, rice had become one of her major agricultural businesses.

http://www.foodreference.com/html/art-rice-history.html

This is a bit of a bombshell for me:

Rice farming’s extremely high hand-labor requirements is credited with having started the plantation era of the Southern States. Even with ox and mule-drawn equipment of those years, rice "farms" or plantations of only a few hundred acres required from 100 to 300 laborers to prepare the soil, plant, harvest and thresh their production—all by hand.

http://www.foodreference.com/html/art-rice-history.html

Holy shit. Rice farming, by itself, started the plantation system in the continental U.S.? Is this true?

Well, rice certainly made the Carolinas and Georgia a lot of money. And it's undeniable that the entire rice trade collapsed after the Civil War, indicating that rice was economically unfeasible--at least for the purposes of amassing fortunes--without slave labor, and lots of it.

Inadequate food, housing, and clothing, malaria, yellow fever, venomous snakes, alligators, hard labour, and brutal treatment killed up to a third of Low Country slaves within a year. Not one child in ten lived to age sixteen. However, in the 1770s, a slave could produce rice worth more than six times his or her own market value in a year, so this high death rate was not uneconomical for their owners. Rice plantations could produce profits of up to 26 percent per year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_production_in_the_United_States

Emancipation in 1863 freed rice workers. East-coast rice farming required hard, skilled work under extremely unhealthy conditions, and without slave labour, profits fell. Increasing automation in response came too late, and a series of hurricanes that hit Carolina in the late 1800s and damaged levees put an end to the industry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_production_in_the_United_States

Profits fell. Gee, that's too bad.

How is it that I've always known the history of cotton, but never the history of rice?

Borrowed grain, stolen labor.

Chef Pierre Thiam was my inspiration for this section. This is an interview with him:

What was your contribution to this year’s commemoration of the International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade?

I presented a menu that showed just how much the eating habits of African slaves influenced the food culture in the US and the Americas in general. The ingredients and recipes came from Africa during the transatlantic slave trade. I served five dishes that were inspired from that tragic moment in our history – slavery. One of the dishes is called “rice pudding” by the Haitians but in my native country Senegal we call it sombi.

Why specifically the rice pudding?

The rice pudding is symbolic. I chose it because many do not acknowledge Africa’s contribution to the American cuisine. Can you imagine America without rice? Most of North Carolina’s economy is based on rice production. This grain used to be called the “Carolina Gold” but the real story of how it arrived in the Americas is very interesting. During slavery, people were plucked from rice-producing regions. Casamance, a region in the South of Senegal where my parents are from originally, is one of them. There were several raids there to find slaves who knew how to cultivate rice and they were shipped to the Carolinas or Mexico. The grain never existed in these regions before the arrival of slaves.

http://www.un.org/africarenewal/web-features/slave-trade-how-african-foo...

Something Blue
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Well, after that this should be a welcome relief. Meet Jodhpur, India's Blue City:

More of this. Less opening of dogs.

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in my district. He is running as a Democrat. He was interested in getting some names, doing some networking.
He then insisted on telling me who he was, what he intended to do.
He worked for decades in the oil patch. He said his expertise was safe fracking. He said the discussion we should be having is to educate the regulators who should then know which chemicals to use.
I interrupted him, told him his goal was to poison the water and kill us all more slowly and with more subtlety than the Republicans.
So, I wished him luck, told him I would be too busy to have dinner with him this week.
Texas.
Should be named Exxon-Mobile.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

enhydra lutris's picture

@on the cusp
"The Texas Company" - it shortened its name to Texaco.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

I always feel a special bond with Texans, because you're the only ones who understand what we went through, having a Bush as governor.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

mhagle's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

And I received an email from a climate group endorsing a candidate for that spot. Hope it's true.

Thanks again for wonderful (but grim too) OT. Next time I have a movie day, I'll be sure to watch "Snatch." Love the blue city in India. So ancient looking.

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

mhagle's picture

@mhagle

I just got an email from her. Looks hopeful.

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@mhagle Isn't that marvelous? I wish I could see it in person.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@mhagle Yeah, I didn't know when I decided on rice that it was going to uncover that realm of horrors.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Lookout's picture

The rise of "King Cotton" as the defining feature of southern life revitalized slavery. The promise of cotton profits encouraged a spectacular rise in the direct importation of African slaves in the years before the trans-Atlantic trade was made illegal in 1808. 250,000 new slaves arrived in the United States from 1787 to 1808, a number equal to the entire slave importation of the colonial period. After 1808, the internal slave trade forced African Americans from the border states and Chesapeake into the new cotton belt, which ultimately stretched from upcountry Georgia to eastern Texas. In fact, more than half of the Americans who moved to the Southwest after 1815 were enslaved blacks.

http://www.ushistory.org/us/22b.asp

In 1791, U.S. cotton production was small, at only 900,000 kilograms. Several factors contributed to the growth of the cotton industry in the U.S.: the increasing British demand; innovations in spinning, weaving, and steam power; inexpensive land; and a slave labour force. The modern cotton gin, invented in 1793 by Eli Whitney, enormously grew the American cotton industry, which was previously limited by the speed of manual removal of seeds from the fibre, and helped cotton to surpass tobacco as the primary cash crop of the South.[38] By 1801 the annual production of cotton had reached over 22 million kilograms, and by the early 1830s the United States produced the majority of the world's cotton. Cotton also exceeded the value of all other United States exports combined. The need for fertile land conducive to its cultivation lead to the expansion of slavery in the United States and an early 19th-century land rush known as Alabama Fever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cotton

Cotton is an interesting crop. There are both old world and new world (Western hemisphere) genotypes. Because of the long time cultivation and ancient breeding programs the history has largely been lost. Cotton gets a bad rep as a soil depleter, however it isn't a heavy feeder, but it is a long season crop. Historically they planted the rows 3 foot wide to allow mules through to plow weeds. This was ideal for soil erosion and that's how cotton degraded the soils of the South. Today they have bred colored cotton that doesn't need to be dyed.

Mochica Indians have be attributed with growing naturally colored cotton of myriad hues, which they maintained for over the last two millenniums on the northern coast of Peru. Naturally colored cotton is cotton that has been bred to have colors other than the yellowish off-white typical of modern commercial cotton fibres. Colors grown include red, green and several shades of brown. The cotton's natural color does not fade. Yields are typically lower and the fiber is shorter and weaker but has a softer feel than the more commonly available "white" cotton.

[edit to add picture]

blue cotton.jpg

naturally blue cotton

I didn't mean to hijack the topic of rice and make it into cotton, but I thought you might find it interesting...although cotton may not have initially promoted slavery, it is the crop I most associate with owning people for profit. (I guess in our time sex slavery is the most common profit motive).

Old, blue, or new I hope you all have a good day!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Lookout It's the crop I most associate with it, too. That's why I was surprised about the rice--in my mind, cotton is the slavery crop here in the States, while in points south it would be sugar or indigo or coffee. I genuinely didn't know about rice.

Apparently, chocolate is a slavery crop now, which I just found out.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Lookout's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

"Early Americans such as General Oglethorpe hoped to establish the silk industry in the American debtor colonies, but the project was destined for failure for many reasons..."
https://www.silkwormshop.com/resources/mulberry_history.html

I guess there were several false starts in how to best use the agricultural potential of America. Rice production sounds particularly brutal...

Enslaved Africans cleared the land, diked the marshes and built the irrigation system, skimming the freshwater layer off the high tide, flushing the fields, and adjusting the water level to the development stage of the rice. Rice was planted, hoed, and harvested with hand tools; plows and harvest wains could be pulled by mules or oxen wearing special shoes.[6] At first rice was milled by hand with wooden paddles, then winnowed in sweetgrass baskets (the making of which was another skill brought by slaves from Africa). The invention of the rice mill increased profitability of the crop, and the addition of water power for the mills in 1787 by American millwright Jonathan Lucas was another step forward.

Rice production was not merely unhealthy but lethal. One 18th-century writer wrote:[6]

If a work could be imagined peculiarly unwholesome and even fatal to health, it must be that of standing like the negroes, ankle and mid-leg deep in water which floats an ouzy mud, and exposed all the while to a burning sun which makes the air they breathe hotter than the human blood; these poor wretches are then in a furness of stinking putrid effluvia.

Inadequate food, housing, and clothing, malaria, yellow fever, venomous snakes, alligators, hard labour, and brutal treatment killed up to a third of Low Country slaves within a year. Not one child in ten lived to age sixteen. However, in the 1770s, a slave could produce rice worth more than six times his or her own market value in a year, so this high death rate was not uneconomical for their owners. Rice plantations could produce profits of up to 26 percent per year. Runaways, on the other hand, were a problem:[6]

I gave them a hundred lashes more than a dozen times; but they never quit running away, till I chained them together, with iron collars round their necks, and chained them to spades, and made them do nothing but dig ditches to drain the rice swamps. They could not run away then, unless they went together, and carried their chains and spades with them. I kept them in this way two years....

— one overseer's method of controlling slaves, reported by fugitive slave Charles Ball

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_production_in_the_United_States

Thanks for the insight on rice....interesting.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Lookout Horrific. I didn't know what I was getting into when I Googled it.

I thought rice production here was a much later development, like a twentieth-century development, perhaps brought originally to the States by immigrants from Asia; had no idea that rice also came from Africa or that it was a pre-revolutionary slave crop.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Lookout That thing about traditional colored cotton is really cool! I'd never heard of that.

Nor about the farming practices which were actually the reason for Southern soil degradation.

I've heard that the explosion of the United States cotton trade was responsible not just for the explosion of slavery here, but also the wreckage of the Irish fiber trade--I don't know if that's true.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal @Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal That's after the cottage version of the Irish fiber industry already had died, and been transformed into industrial factory capitalism.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Lookout's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

Thanks for the clip. Here's Tim O'Brien and friends playing another version (which is the Green Fields Of America that I know) It is the second tune after the tune "first Snow". 3 min
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGmFFqeMBF0]

All the best!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Lookout I just found out that the Chieftains' version of Green Fields of America was recorded in Frank Zappa's house and played at his funeral, at his request.

Interesting fact; I had no idea Zappa was interested in trad.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Lookout Great music. Much cheerier than my version, but then, it's a reel. Meant for dancing.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Lundgren Edit: (sorta glad was wrong about the brand, brands are for cattle) Lundberg Organic Brown Short Grain, without it I'd be even grouchier (hungrier) it was a five week month just ended.
California Rice Farming below Oroville Dam

"Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."
Horticulture not Agriculture! (raises fist)
I also consumed a pound of millet from Bob's Red Mill, a worker-owned coop.

Which grain was first farmed nearly 10,000 years ago? Which grain was revered as one of five sacred crops in ancient China? Which grain is mentioned in the Old Testament, the writings of Herodotus, and the journals of Marco Polo? The answer is millet! Create nutritious, gluten-free dishes with millet, an ancient grain from the Far East. Millet has a mild, sweet flavor and quick cooking time, making it a tasty, convenient, whole grain addition to any meal of the day.

---
OPOL's essay about radical self care changed my feelings about going hungry a little bit, now when I run out I just think of it like fasting is good for me. Same thing with meds, taking a "holiday" from medicine, instead of painfully "running out". All up in my head.
---
This essay scored 53.77 on Flesch reading ease chart.

I'm not smart, every day I approach the computer and ask myself "Am I smart enough for Slackware?". Nope, but "fake it 'til you make it", keep going. I have to read and comprehend a lot of text to understand how the software works, it's all good.

Happy Hump Day the 13th

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@eyo Hey, 4 billion people in Asia and 1.2 billion people in Africa can't be wrong.

I love rice, actually; it's my favorite modern grain (modern in the sense of: has been continuously eaten, as opposed to grains like quinoa and millet that fell out of use for a long while).

It has a much better effect on my metabolism than other grains.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

(over coffee) to Jodhpur, the blue city.

I like Indian cuisine and the spice combinations they use. I have been trying my hand at cooking some of their dishes for a while now. Since Jodhpur is in the state of Rajasthan, here is a recipe for Rajasthani-style garam masala:
3 dried whole chili pods
4 black cardamom pods
1 1/3 cups cumin seeds
1/2 cup coriander seeds
1 teaspoon ajwain seeds
Before you grind the whole seeds, toast them to release the flavor. Pass them through a fine sieve, cool, and store in sealed container away from light and heat.
Garam Masala is generally added towards the end of cooking.

I didn't know that bit of the history of rice production in the U.S. I know a small bit about the equally horrific history of sugar production and how it was responsible for some huge fortunes for a few families and, once again, their fortune was only possible because of their willingness to use other people for slave labor.

Interesting about Omuamua, I like the name and wow... can't imagine the speed and distance that it travels. It's mind boggling.

Thanks for the OT, good day to all.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@randtntx Thank you so much for the recipe! I'm gonna make note of it and maybe try it out in the new year.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

riverlover's picture

is now involved in developing new strains of barley, a pairing with NY hops. For the burgeoning beer industry in NY.

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

on Rajasthani folk music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNQtKIC7Q-4
Jodhpur is on the edge of the Thar desert and has (or had) a significant number of nomadic groups around the city. They are called Banjare in Hindi. You can see the influence in the dance, dress, and music in the Romani tradition.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@randtntx Seems like most European nomadic peoples passed through some part of India at some time, but maybe that's generalizing too much!

Going to listen to the music now...

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

enhydra lutris's picture

Hi. I'll have to finish reading later.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@enhydra lutris Hi, enhydra!

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Deja's picture

I love okra. Never cared for it pickled or boiled as a kid, but I love it any way I can get it now. In gumbo, especially at this time of year, over some rice - soooo good!

Louisiana has lots of dishes with rice. For lunch today, I'll be having crawfish etouffee in the frozen pre-packaged form, but from an actual facility near Lafayette, between Lake Charles and Baton Rouge - called Richard's (pronounced Rih-shod's). Mighty impressed with their quality, and easy for quick work lunch.
http://www.richardscajunfoods.com/ready-to-eat/

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Deja I wish I could visit Louisiana again. The food is amazing.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

mimi's picture

from St. Nikolaus in Germany.

Richard D. Wolff on "What Is Required: Reform or Revolution?"
[video:https://youtu.be/WuEd0dI0fQk]

If you are committed to reform, you have to be a revolutionary.

All set now. No more discussions about that, Big Al.

I feel a bit nostalgic and sad today and I hear these songs in my mind:

Talking about a Revolution

Don't you know you're talking about a revolution
It sounds like a whisper
Don't you know they're talking about a revolution
It sounds like a whisper

While they're standing in the welfare lines
Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation
Wasting time in unemployment lines
Sitting around waiting for a promotion

Don't you know you're talking about a revolution
It sounds like a whisper

Poor people are gonna rise up
And get their share
Poor people are gonna rise up
And take what's theirs

Don't you know you better run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run
Oh I said you better run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run

Cause Finally the tables are starting to turn
Talking about a revolution
Yes, Finally the tables are starting to turn
Talking about a revolution oh no
Talking about a revolution oh no

While they're standing in the welfare lines
Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation
Wasting time in unemployment lines
Sitting around waiting for a promotion

Don't you know you're talking about a revolution
It sounds like a whisper

And finally the tables are starting to turn
Talking about a revolution
Yes, Finally the tables are starting to turn
Talking about a revolution oh no
Talking about a revolution oh no
Talking about a revolution oh no

Knock, knock ...
Knocking on Heaven's Door (2005)

Mama, put my guns in the ground
I can't shoot them anymore.
That long black cloud is comin' down
I feel like I'm knockin' on heaven's door.

Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door

Mama, take this badge off of me
I can't use it anymore.
It's gettin' dark, too dark for me to see
I feel like I'm knockin' on heaven's door.

Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door

Have a good one, all.

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