Profile of entomologist extraordinaire, John Rawlins, in the new Carnegie Magazine – I think the layout of this on paper is really beautiful, but even online you can see how great Josh Franzos’ photos are (in particular the one in the header at the top – again, better in print…).
This week’s City Paper includes my “review” (of sorts) of the in-progress, workshop performance of El Camino - the play based on the lives and stories of Milton and Stephany Mejia (as detailed in the cover story a few weeks ago).
Been a while since I did a proper round-up-date with published stuff. A list of links to things I’ve done for PASTE – pieces that are on their website, that is… Hopefully someone will find this a tiny bit interesting – it’ll definitely be useful for me…
PASTE MAGAZINE REVIEWS, FEATURES, ARTICLES, WHATEVES:
The list of top-100 songwriters includes my blurb on #96, Jimmy Cliff. Here’s a review of an album by Irish singer-songwriter Paddy Casey. This one’s a piece on the influence of Eastern European and Balkan music on a bunch’a rock bands ‘n’at, called Eastern Bloc Party. I’m sure this is linked here already, but, a review of Billy Bragg’s book. A piece on the influence of disco disguised as an obituary for the great Mel Cheren, which I think worked out nicely. A review of English folk-songstress Kate Rusby’s big album from a few years back. Definitely happy with this verbally-nasty review of the Grinderman album by Nick Cave & Co. An oddly decent review of LCD Soundsystem’s NIKE album. Echo & the Bunnymen review. A big-ol’ review of a Citizen Cope album that I’d completely and utterly forgotten about. Here’s yet another link to my brief but important-to-me Rachel Unthank review. And finally, this dude Brett Dennen apparently made an album once.
It’s a bit late, as the NEW issue of Carnegie Magazine is almost out, but here’s my piece on the WARHOL LIVE exhibit that’s currently showing at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
Boundless Love is a story about Milton Mejia – a young undocumented immigrant from Honduras living in Pittsburgh – his wife Stephany, and the new theater production being created in Pittsburgh about their harrowing times together as Milton was shuffled around the Byzantine immigration detention system.
Milton’s journey – his camino - is a pretty amazing, if all-too-common, story, from a truly amazing young man.
Fortuitously, the day this story hit the stands, the Obama administration announced a complete review and overhaul of the strange, wasteful, and inhuman system used to detain undocumented immigrants.
In a few days I’ll post up the original version of this story – it had to be cut severely because, well, because I write too damn long and there’s only so much space. So I’ll put that up for my personal satisfaction, and the three or four people who’d ever like to read it. 
My first radio piece – hooray! – from this week’s Allegheny Front environmental journalism program: A profile of 91-year-old naturalist (and mega-sweetheart) Esther Allen.
Norman Strike, one of the many heroes of the 1984 UK Miners strike (and a good quotable chunk of my story on that subject from earlier this year, if you read that thang), has published his strike diary from 1984-85.
From the beginnings of the labor action, through running battles like at Orgreave, to Strike’s multiple arrests and journeys around England with socialist soul-Oi band The Redskins, and the disastrous end to the strike, Norman was a part of one of Britain’s most cataclysmic historical events of the past 40 years.
So, ya know, go to the Bookmarks Bookshop website and order a copy, son!
A while back, I ’started’ another blog to serve as a sort-of open notebook regarding my long-in-progress book regarding what I quite vainly call the Old Weird Albion.
I put ’started’ in scare-quotes, because it’s never been used for its proper purpose – I keep thinking, “oh, no, it’ll be THIS… or THAT…” and then never using it at all.
Well, as of today, the pretension goes down the drain: The damn thing’s a frickin’ notebook, and that’s all there is to it. So check it out on a continuing basis for links to articles – and occasionally stuff I write – about psychogeography, the South Downs, hiking England, crop circles, romantically rebellious britons both old and new, folk music, megalithic sites, mods, rockers, Quatermass and the Pit, suicide at Beachy Head, magick in Steyning, Brighton & Hove Albion F.C., and whatever the hell else seems to cross the drover’s trail.
It’ll probably be updated more than this site, as this is really just for new published and unpublished stuff ‘n’at.
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s Opera for a Small Room is still showing at the Carnegie Museum of Art, at least for a few weeks. Definitely worth checking out – a beautiful and fantastical piece.
But at least read the damn review in the damn Pittsburgh City Paper, right?
This week, the Poetry Foundation’s “Poetry Off the Shelf” podcast is an interview with me regarding Mark Nowak and his Coal Mountain Elementary book and performances, in response to the PF article on the same subject. You can check it out on their website, or download it off The iTunes. But damn if I know how to link to iTunes…
