Hammer Mill Days

Are you sure it's July? Absolutely sure? How is that even possible? All right, Jesus . Where did the freaking Spring go? No, no ... not THAT spring. I meant the SEASON spring! God almighty. Yes, here we are ... three months after posting the last episode of our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, and we're still short of posting the next episode. Sure, it's summer, but this is about wading in the water at the nearest beach resort. God, no! This is about the wheels coming off. This is about a leak in the hull. This is about a seized engine, smoke drifting lazily skyward from its molten husk. (Do engines have husks? Well .. ours does.) This is about production delays that are not voluntary, but ultimately necessary. Brother Matt is our show editor. I think it's common knowledge that he has been caught up with fledgling Peregrine Falcons for the past three months in particular. Aside from that, his computer imploded, taking many of his work files with it. Not a good circumst...

Another black person is dead as a result of wrongful arrest. That in itself is not remarkable, unfortunately. And while there appears to be some social media debate as to who was in the right and who was in the wrong in this case, a look at the police dash-cam video is as unambiguous as, well, the one featuring Eric Garner's summary execution. Sandra Bland, pulled over for not signalling a lane change (for Christ's sake!), is arrested for not being sufficiently subservient to a Texas State Trooper with a chip on his shoulder. "I will light you up," the trooper threatens when Bland resists his order to leave the car - a demand issued because the young woman declined to extinguish her cigarette when asked. (Yes, asked , if somewhat testily.) The video of this incident is chilling, and instructive. It is a window into the mentality of entrenched white domination of black people; nothing less than this. Irritation should not be sufficient cause for arrest, whether it...

Run that one again. Yeah, that's right. Hmmmmm .... I forgot about that part. Okay, rewind it and let's hear it from the top. Yep, yep. Heard that before. Oh, hi. Joe of Big Green here. Just listening back to some old tracks. Every time we're in-between projects or waiting for something to happen, the amateur archivist begins to take hold within me and I start pulling out the old stuff. Some of it's on reel to reel, some on cassette, some on DAT, some just written on an old sheet of note paper. When you've been doing something for 30+ years, you have a lot of leave-behinds. While I've been waiting for Matt to finish the latest episode of Ned Trek (now in the works), I thought it might be a good time to back up the masters for Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick , our 2013 album about cousin Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, 2012 presidential candidate, and once again a member of the Republican electoral field. Our Roland 2480, which we used to record that al...

The draft agreement with Iran represents a step away from yet another war in the greater Middle East / Southwest Asia region, but it is being presented and discussed squarely within the same imperial context that has defined our relationship with the Islamic Republic for my entire adult life. It is a little hard to see how Obama can inch this country away from its delusions about Iran without departing from them himself, at least in a small way. He has always been an incrementalist when it comes to human progress. Often, as the drones fly, I feel like we're moving incrementally in entirely the wrong direction, but even where I agree that we should have this kind of agreement with Iran, it is with the realization that we are still reaching substantially beyond anything that should be considered our legitimate concern. Before anyone accuses me of it, I am not a fan of the clerical regime in Iran. The Iranian people have, however, been subjected to sustained attack by the United Stat...

I'm sorry - that's as soft as a piano will go. The very word "piano" means soft, for chrissake. (Sure, piano is short for pianoforte , which means "soft - loud/strong", implying dynamics, but that's beside the point!) Just get some freaking earplugs already! Neighbors. I guess you have to have them, even when you're living in an abandoned hammer mill. I like to think that we make every effort to be good neighbors. I like to think it because, well, it isn't true, and thinking things that aren't true is something of a hobby of mine. Actually, we are crappy neighbors - up until all hours of the night, banging on noisy instruments, tooting on sousaphones, launching rockets, creating energy dampening fields that affect entire continents (note: those last two are down to our mad science adviser, Mitch Macaphee). Our neighbor to the north, a guy named Wilson, has been leaving subtle hints that we are making too much noise. Today, for instance, ...

We're watching as the richest country in Europe (a.k.a. Germany) is pressuring one of the poorest countries in Europe (a.k.a. Greece) to accept an even deeper regime of austerity than what they have endured up to now, with massive unemployment, economic contraction, and increasing (not decreasing) debt. This is a political effort, not an economic one. Economically it makes no sense; crushing the Greek economy will only harm the Eurozone. The German chancellor is playing to a domestic constituency convinced that Greeks deserve more punishment because they are bad, lazy, corrupt, etc. That's a deeply nationalist attitude, and I don't know about you, but German nationalism makes me a little nervous. The irony, of course, is astounding. When it faced crisis in the early 1950s, Germany's creditors - including Greece - agreed to write off 50% of its debt and postpone the other half, allowing Germany to pay it back on a 30-year schedule. Pretty decent terms, considering how...

Step one: fill the little box with letters. It's a letter box! Step two, check your work on step one. Step three: press "publish" and watch the blue smoke come out. You are now a "blogger", Charlie! All you need now are decipherable opinions. Well, here we are at the mill, still waiting for the next episode of our Podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN to roll off the back of a truck. Late again. Must be short on key ingredient this month. Actually, as I pointed out last week, the main ingredient is work on our parts, which is rare indeed. A jem of great price ... that price being the sweat off of our collective brows. Work, work, work ... that's what a podcast is all about. The internet is a slave-driver! Small wonder we chose to outsource its production to some nameless third world country. Working through a social media broker, we have been assured of a good and reliable product, voiced by people who sound exactly like Matt and I, their Indonesian accents just bare...