Hammer Mill Days

You know, any other band would be talking about a summer tour right about now. But that's what "normal" bands do. They play in front of actual people and stuff. Big Green? Not so much. Here's the thing about Big Green. We are not a "normal" band. We are a musical collective, a band of brothers, a loose association of critters, a gaggle of organisms, a ... I don't know, something else that implies more than one of us. And weird. The very suggestion of a "summer tour" brings to mind something quite different from what most people picture. We're not rolling into Akron or Missoula, playing in a urine-soaked noise cave, and sleeping on someone's floor. No, sir - typically, we're sleeping in the urine-soaked cave. That cave? It's called the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home. Okay, so we never, ever do normal tours. I'm not saying we never will, but everyone ELSE is saying it, so who am I to argue? No, sir ... whe...

There's more news of drone deaths, this time including western hostages. "Mistakes can occur", president Obama says, employing the passive voice as his predecessor Ronald Reagan often did. The American captive, aid worker Warren Weinstein, had asked his government to work toward negotiating his release, to no avail. We do not make deals with "terrorists". Unlike during practically every war our country has been involved in previously, in the context of the "Global War on Terror", prisoner release negotiations have been barred, whether on the part of the United States government or by private parties, such as the families of the captives. Thus, no release, and ultimately, death by drone. What brought this policy about? Perhaps it's the experience of, again, Reagan and the fallout from the Iran-Contra scandal. The official line at that time was, "we will not negotiate with terrorists", but the effort towards back-channel negotiations beca...