FREE WHITEWATER

Music

Monday Music: Ben Sommer on Deo Gracias Anglia

by  • 

Ben writes about his latest song Deo Gracias Angliafrom his latest album, a song featured here originally last Friday. One dates oneself to write about liner notes, but there was great value in reading what a musician thought about his or her music that’s been lost without those notes. Commentary like Ben’s restores that additional value – and value it is, I think – to a song. (He adds, too, a kind and teasing mention of this website.) I’ll review the full album after the release of the next, and final, track.

Deo Gracias Anglia

Here’s track #11 off the new album: Deo Gracias Anglia. The most awesome President John Adams features the track over at FreeWhitewater.com.

This is a straight up “cover song,” though the songwriter is unknown and died in the 1400s. Its an ode to Henry V and his victory against the stinky French in the battle of Agincort. Its considered the oldest example of a “carole” in music.

I first encountered the song in graduate school studying Renaissance music. Along with the whacked out rhythmic complexity of the ars subtilior style, tunes like this – or at least the recording I first heard – struck me as completely bad-ass in the way that hard core punk or doom metal did. Turns out this song rocks balls set to a heavy metal rhythm section. It struck me to do this when I was searching for “political” material for my last album america’d. This one got cut from that album, but is included here.

Although my intrepid mastering engineer Chris Roberts heard the solo drum more as a kind of Apache ceremonial drum – its really an irish bodhrán I borrowed. The nasal-sounding horns are shawms – ancient but cool-sounding wind instruments that likely accompanied the song in 15th century performances, too. The break-down in the middle is as authentic a performance of the original as my long-forgotten early music training could muster.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.31.11

by  • 

Good morning,

It’s a partly cloudy Halloween ahead for Whitewater, with a high temperature of fifty-one. Trick or Treat in Whitewater runs from 4 to 7 PM today. It’s one of the traditional and quaint features of life in Whitewater that we’ve kept the celebration of the holiday on the holiday, rather than moving it about to the weekend preceding. Have fun, be safe!

The Wisconsin Historical Society marks today as a memorable day in Bucks franchise history:

1968 – Milwaukee Bucks Win First Game

On this date the Milwaukee Bucks claimed their first victory, a 134-118 win over the Detroit Pistons in the Milwaukee Arena. The Bucks were 0-5 at the time, and Wayne Embry led Milwaukee with 30 points. Embry became the first player in Bucks history to score 30 or more points in a regular season game. [Source: Milwaukee Bucks]

They’ll only have the chance to win more games if there’s a season in which to win them. A recent story in the New York Post offers the latest on the NBA’s ever-shrinking 2011-2012 season.

Economy

Anne Applebaum: Can America survive without its backbone, the middle class?

by  • 

I’ve been reading Anne Applebaum’s essays for years, and she’s invariably sharp and insightful. She typically writes on foreign affairs, but some essays are for a foreign audience, describing aspects of American politics and culture. In a recent essay for the Telegraph, she succinctly describes America’s middle class, and the problems it faces. Applebaum writes of

….the American upper-middle class, a group which is now sociologically and economically very distinct from the lower-middle class, with different politics, different ambitions and different levels of optimism. Thirty years ago, this wasn’t the case. A worker in a Detroit car factory earned about the same as, say, a small-town dentist, and although they might have different taste in films or furniture, their purchasing power wasn’t radically different. Their children would have been able to play together without feeling as if they came from different planets. Now they couldn’t.

Despite all the loud talk of the “1 per cent” of Americans who, according to a recent study, receive about 17 per cent of the income, a percentage which has more than doubled since 1979, the existence of a very small group of very rich people has never bothered Americans. But the fact that some 20 per cent of Americans now receive some 53 per cent of the income is devastating.

I would argue that the growing divisions within the American middle class are far more important than the gap between the very richest and everybody else. They are important because to be “middle class,” in America, has such positive connotations, and because most Americans think they belong in it. The middle class is the “heartland,” the middle class is the “backbone of the country”. In 1970, Time magazine described middle America as people who “sing the national anthem at football games – and mean it”….

This is profoundly true – it’s the anxiety of slipping away from the upper-middle class, and not the rich, that animates recent protests (from Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party). (There’s also the anxiety of some in the upper-middle class of falling from that comfortable group, as some surely have and will, never to return.)

To see the upper-middle class as ‘sociologically and economically very distinct from the lower-middle class,’ is the key insight. They are different, and are becoming only more so.

See Can America survive without its backbone, the middle class?

Technology

A £15 computer to inspire young programmers

by  • 

Admirable innovation:

It’s not much bigger than your finger, it looks like a leftover from an electronics factory, but its makers believe their £15 [$25] computer could help a new generation discover programming.

The games developer David Braben and some colleagues came to the BBC this week to demonstrate something called Raspberry Pi. It’s a whole computer on a tiny circuit board – not much more than an ARM processor, a USB port, and an HDMI connection. They plugged a keyboard into one end, and hooked the other into a TV they had brought with them….

See @ BBC – dot.Rory: A 15 pound computer to inspire young programmers.

Twitter

Recent Tweets, 10.23 – 10.29

by  • 

For how long? Netflix Consumes a Third of America’s Peak-Hours Internet Bandwidth – The Atlantic Wire bit.ly/srXemP
28 Oct

Cap Times sticks up for Joe Biden (someone, somewhere had to): Biden’s populism is right for Wisconsin bit.ly/tEkRfX
26 Oct

GOP rejects Dem-sponsored resolution on free speech rights in Assembly gallery bit.ly/sKTjtQ
26 Oct

Why the world Is surprisingly angry about the end of Google Reader’s sharing features bit.ly/sJ18V0
26 Oct

A Debilitating, Lower Standard Needn’t Be Ours « FREE WHITEWATER bit.ly/tpg4r7
25 Oct

Meet the New Press Release, Same as the Old Press Release « FREE WHITEWATER bit.ly/s1HiNM
25 Oct

Worse at dull papers? Despite tenacious reporting: Journal Communications reports sharply lower profits bit.ly/uHo3cB
25 Oct

‘Officers who run afoul of the law often aren’t fired or prosecuted’ Milwaukee’s lax accountability over policing bit.ly/tgnbHA
25 Oct

Framing the Left – Althouse: At Occupy Madison, the occupation is accomplished not so much with human beings. bit.ly/ohcMPN
24 Oct

Economy, Education, Government Spending, Planning, Wisconsin

Additional State Budget Cuts, Lapse Provisions, and the Failure of State Planning

by  • 

A reader kindly passed along an email from UW President Kevin Reilly to the entire UW System about additional budget cuts proposed for Wisconsin’s public universities. I’ve included the content of Reilly’s message below.

Readers may have different opinions about all this, but even staunch supporters of the Walker Administration should see this as (at least) a partial failure in planning, of a type sure to present itself again and again. State efforts to impose solutions from the center on communities and organizations across Wisconsin are sure to fail, as they rest on flimsy calculations, of the kind that are inevitable at a distance.

Even mere months after a biennial budget, in one Midwestern state, it’s clear that legislators were wrong in estimates of both revenue and expenditures. As they were wrong in this case, they’re likely to be wrong again and again, despite their earlier professions of certainty and assurances of success. Their self-certainty has been nearly boundless.

Similarly, attempts to repair the state budget through blanket changes to collective bargaining, for example, will not work, as they’re centrally imposed. There would have been a time when Republicans would have seen this, and laughed at the idea of a one-size-fits-all approach.

It’s true that the budget accounted for the possibility of gaps through a lapse provision; it’s no more true than saying a papier-mache bottle will tend to leak, and so need constant reinforcement. Failure is endemic to the approach.

The fewer plans from imposed from the center, the better. In the meantime, no one has reason to be confident of success through state-government planning.

Oct. 28, 2011

Dear Faculty, Staff, and Student Colleagues,

These are difficult economic times, and we face many challenges in our efforts to preserve broad access to a high-quality college education and continue groundbreaking research on behalf of Wisconsin citizens.

I want to provide you with up-to-date information about the latest issues – new state budget reductions – and tell you what we’re doing to advocate for UW System institutions, employees, and students.

We learned on Oct. 14 that the Department of Administration (DOA) would implement a $174.3-million ‘lapse,’ as authorized in the 2011-13 state budget. This tool allows the state to withdraw a portion of taxpayer funding already allocated to agencies. As part of that lapse, our colleges, universities, and extension networks have been asked to prepare for the loss of $65.6 million more over two years. This represents 38% of all new reductions to state spending, despite the fact that the UW System represents about 7% of the state’s expenditures.

It comes on top of $250 million in cuts already imposed on the UW System in the biennial budget.

See UW System’s Oct. 18 statement regarding the lapse.

We’re working hard to shine a spotlight on this important public policy discussion. Together with the 14 UW Chancellors and the 13 UW Colleges Deans, I co-authored an editorial in today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about the disproportionate allocation of these new cuts.

That editorial states that “We are working to get answers to these concerns through civil and constructive dialogue. We are also reiterating the UW System’s role as an economic engine, and asking state leaders to develop a fairer plan – one that protects UW students.” To that end, we provided DOA budget staff with a detailed memo that outlines a more equitable approach.

We are doing everything we can to encourage a more proportionate lapse amount, so we can preserve the high-quality teaching, research, and outreach that people both need and expect from the UW.

The lapse proposed by DOA is subject to review by the legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance, so there is still time for our voices to have an impact.

Thank you for your attention to this important topic. I encourage you to work collaboratively with your shared governance groups, your chancellors, and other campus/institutional leaders to advocate for the UW System’s vital educational mission. In the midst of the economic restructuring our country faces, your work is more important than ever, and it’s worth fighting for.
Thank you.

Kevin P. Reilly
President
University of Wisconsin System

Law, Laws/Regulations, Liberty

Winona, MN faces lawsuit over ban on renting one’s own home

by  • 

The Institute of Justice, a civil rights public-interest law firm, is challenging municipal regulations that prevent people from renting out their own homes:

“The rule is a rental ban on renting out your home,” said Anthony Sanders, an attorney with the Minnesota Chapter of the Institute of Justice, a libertarian non-profit based in Virginia.

Sanders and co-counsel Katelynn McBride are representing four homeowners in Winona for free, in a lawsuit challenging Winona’s rental cap. The rule prevents homeowners from converting their houses to rental units if there’s already a concentration of 30 percent rentals on that city block.

Under a rule like this, any renting might be prevented, even if one were hoping to rent to a single tenant. It is, in effect, a law against the rental of private property triggered only after others have lawfully rented their private property.

These restrictions hurt both owners hoping to rent (they’re denied an otherwise lawful use of property they own, for income) and renters (there’s a reduced supply of available places to live, leaving remaining options more expensive).

Via KARE 11.

Comment Forum

Friday Poll and Comment Forum: Texas or St. Louis in 2011 World Series?

by  • 

One game’s left in the World Series, after which winter begins. Having arrived at a seventh game in the most improbable way, how will this series end?

Fan video from Game 6, bottom of ninth:

Below is a poll that will remain open until game time, and a form for comments that will stay up through Sunday morning (for predictions now, and post-Series observations thereafter).

I’ll say Cardinals 7, Rangers 5, leaving Texas close yet again, but not close enough.


Comments will be moderated against profanity and trolls; otherwise, have at it.

Music

Premiere of Ben Sommer’s Deo Gracias Anglia from Super Brain

by  • 

The best moments of blogging aren’t in the writing, but in reading of others; not in saying, but in listening. It’s more than a treat to discover, and now to premiere, the sharp and compelling — here’s the FW premiere of Ben Sommer’s Deo Gracias Anglia from his latest album, Super Brain.

Readers know and have enjoyed songs from reviewed (highly recommended) Ben Sommer’s first album, america’d. If you’re new to this blog, and are yet unfamiliar with Ben’s work, there’s no better time to become acquainted than now. Ben’s as a prog rock composer, performer, writer, and in his words, a “pent-up curmudgeon.” His music combines political and social commentary from an edgy, libertarian angle.

I have embedded Deo Gracias Anglia below. Enjoy!

Afterward — visit Ben’s official website at BenSommer.com, and the album page for Super Brain for more great music.


Deo Gracias Anglia
more >>

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.28.11

by  • 

Good morning –

It’s a day of afternoon showers ahead for Whitewater, with a high temperature in the mid-fifties.

Today at 9 AM, a genuine and special treat, no tricks involved – the premiere here on FW of Deo Gracias Anglia from Ben Sommer’s second album, Super Brain.

It’s Halloween season, and on Halloween morning 10/31, I’ll offer FW’s Boo! Scariest Things in Whitewater (2011), a fifth edition. This year, time for expansion, too: I’ve had requests for a Wisconsin or national version of the list, and so the Whitewater edition will have a companion this year.

The Wisconsin Historical Society recalls a Milwaukee tragedy, on this day in 1892:

Disastrous Fire in Milwaukee’s Third Ward

On this date an exploding oil barrel started a small fire in Milwaukee. It spread rapidly and by morning four people had died, 440 buildings were destroyed, and more than 1,900 people in the Irish neighborhood were left homeless. It was the most disastrous fire in Milwaukee’s history.[Source: Historic Third Ward]