Saturday Night Fish Fry: What I'm Listening To

From WREK yesterday morning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1QfXQakX2w

Maybe Tobacco Wasn't First

So perhaps industry efforts to influence science and perception of science started back in the 1950's . . . . . .
https://www.npr.org/2016/09/13/493801090/sugar-industry-manipulated-research-about-health-effects-study-finds

https://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/sugar-papers-reveal-industry-role-in1970s-dental-program.html

https://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/suppressed-evidence-of-health-risks-of-sucrose.html

The War in Afghanistan is Approaching Its Eighteenth Birthday.

I haven't written this before. I'll save the tearjerking details of "where I was" and "the moment my child saw the video" for some other time. What is on my mind this morning is the night of the eleventh. My memory is this: I'm in the bedroom with my wife, we're both exhausted by that day.

I know that memory is tricky, but what I recall is telling her "I'm afraid our country's response is going to be bombing a bunch of brown people." Probably about the same time (if not earlier), Dick Cheney was in a meeting and wondered aloud whether the attacks could be our pretext for "doing" Iraq.

Shaving Horse in Action: Hungary 1940

I found this on Fortepan. A man cuts stovewood (or something like it) with a bent-wood bowsaw, using a shaving horse to hold the wood still, or so he can cut wood while sitting down:

Source: www.fortepan.hu, Rosta László, tags: "barefoot," "pillow," "saw."

Georgia Music Show on WRAS

Last night on the way home from class, I had the radio tuned to WRAS, because they still let the college kids run it at night.

Tuesday from 8 - 10 is the Georgia Music Show. Last night, for the first time I know of, they featured some jazz by Georgia artists. Here are two I think are worth sharing:

Larry Wilson:  Our Thing

Stephen Cox: Transitions


The name I give in each case above is the album name; track names linked to vary.

The track played on WRAS following the Larry Wilson number is also worth sharing, and I didn't catch the name. If I learn that, I'll edit the post to include it.

The story of WRAS is . . . complicated. When I arrived in Georgia 21 years ago, Album 88 was one of my first signs that I could make a home here. It seemed to be the only place on the radio dial that wasn't fully corporatized and programmed into utterly uniform blandness. (WREK's signal didn't make it out that far back then, and WRFG was just talk, talk, talk.) Then Georgia State helped Georgia Public Broadcasting take it away from the students. There was wailing, gnashing of teeth, protesting, etc. but in the end . . . let me just say Bill Nigut has a lot to answer for.

Dolly Rathebe: Good Stuff (What I'm Listening To)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro5QkFLMZ7Y

Hungarian Photo Archive

Thanks to Hyperallergic (an arts e-newsletter), I have discovered Fortepan. Fortepan is a treasure trove of photos taken in Hungary (or by Hungarians) in the 20th century. 

---minnow traps, 1941


The photos can simply be looked at in simple chronological order, or searched by subject. Use Google Translate to find the Hungarian word for your subject. Usually this results in awkward half-fitting results, but you can go from there. I found the above image by searching for "halasz," which Google Translate tells me is Hungarian for "fisherman."

Rib Lake Sounds

The link below is to a folder on my Google Drive called "Rib Lake Sounds."

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1iKH5Vi3ExCCtMrtgmKeunqWvG3_Mal0j

The files in the folder are all .wav files. If you can't play them on the folder, you'll have to download them. Maybe I need to use Soundcloud or a similar audio file hosting service.

For a long time I've wanted to make my own recordings of nature sounds in places I love. This past winter, I bought a digital recorder for working on videos for Highland Woodworking. I usually use this recorder with an external microphone, for voiceovers. But it also has a pair of built-in mics that do pretty well, so I decided to give it a try, even though when I looked at various sites devoted to recording nature sounds, I was led to believe the result would be of low quality.

During a May trip to my place in Wisconsin, I set up the recorder on a tripod, started it recording, and walked away for an hour or so. I had to experiment a bit with the recording level, and once I came home I snipped off the bits where you can hear me walk away at the beginning, and then walk back up to the recorder at the end. You might hear a car in the distance. You might hear an airplane, or a dog. To be honest, they bother me far less than I expected.

Track Notes

"Marsh Morning of May 4th" is a typo, it was recorded May 14th. I left the recorder near the edge of a pond full of cattails, mostly hoping for blackbird song. I got that and more. This track is the only one in which wind noise is an issue - - even though the mic was covered with a wind sock. So picture a sunny, breezy morning overlooking a pond.

"May 15 Dawn" is my favorite so far. How many species of birds can you count? How many can you identify? I'll start you off with ovenbirds and veerys. Perhaps you'll need good earphones, or speakers with good bass to catch it, but there's a ruffed grouse drumming most of the way through. There is also the sound of occasional drops of water falling off the trees and onto my deck; the night before it had rained. I rolled out of bed at 5 am and set up the recorder on the deck to make this one, so imagine the light slowly rising as you listen.

"Frogs at Pond" is was taken just after sunset on May 14th. Sorry for the volume! They were quite loud. In fact, they hurt my ears. As I set up to record, when I put on the headphones and listened through the microphones, I was able to reduce the levels so they weren't painful. Wood frogs, spring peepers, chorus frogs - - - and is that the elusive mink frog?

"Afternoon Breeze in Pines" is the recording I wanted to make when I first thought of this project. There is a high spot on my land where most of the trees are red pines about 50 years old. I love to sling a hammock between two of them and listen to the wind in the pine needles. Probably the first sound in nature that made an impression on me, certainly before Kindergarten. I think I captured it, though you can also hear running water down below; spring runoff was near its peak when I visited.

A general note on "why": Anyone who knows me well won't be surprised to hear I spend lots of time daydreaming about being in the woods of northern Wisconsin. This has motivated a lot of photography and a few videos over the years. But at work, and in the car, I can't be gazing lovingly at photos. On the other hand, I can have the sounds of home in the background. And, obviously, sound recordings tap into a whole other emotional dimension.

ps) there are several "unreleased" tracks in the vault, including one recording made where two small streams meet. That one is of very high quality, but when it plays I have to pee every 7 minutes. The world isn't ready for it.

Videos Worth Watching: Smelting Iron in Burkina Faso

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuCnZClWwpQ

This video is worth watching for many reasons. It's basic knowledge if you want to re-start civilization from scratch.

A Bakhtinian Hell (or, Where We Are Living Today)

Today I read a post on the Lost Art Press blog about a recent memorial gathering for Jennie Alexander.

It struck me that when he writes about

Homemade Timber Inventory Tools

This is a good collection of simple, homemade tools for do-it-yourself timber inventory.

http://cru.cahe.wsu.edu/CEPublications/EM038E/EM038E.pdf

I found it in the process of seeking a way to estimate basal area at 10 selected points on my land, partly for my ongoing project of keeping specific data on what's going on in my woods, and partly for a before & after study of what happens when we log the land, hopefully this year.

REVISION (2019/01/08)
Here are stocking tables and some more timber inventory information from the Wisconsin DNR. Very good stuff. I'll be printing this out and incorporating it into my personal file of data I've collected on my land. 
http://learningstore.uwex.edu/assets/pdfs/G3362.PDF

REVISION (2019/01/09)
More on the theory behind the tools: 
https://dnr.wi.gov/files/PDF/pubs/ss/SS0023.pdf