Fascinating. To me, anyway… I just got the results back on my Ancestry DNA test.* I suppose mine are like everybody’s: they confirmed a lot of what I already knew and also threw a couple little curves at me. A slight preface: My family has always been working folks and while official records exist, our oral history was longer on
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Ramona Shelburne’s story on how the much-hyped documentary series on the Chicago Bulls’ final championship season got made (after so many years) is fascinating stuff. But one thing really jumped off the page at me. Apparently a lot of people wanted to make a doc through the years. Andy Thompson had somehow gotten permission to shoot hundreds of hours of
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As my friends know I spent the last 13 years as Publisher of Scholars & Rogues, a team blog covering everything from politics to the arts to climate to sports to music to journalism to … well, whatever was on somebody’s mind. During that time we produced nearly 11,000 posts. We were never big, but we were always smart, thoughtful
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I want to check in and see how people are faring. Times were getting to us before COVID, and I’m guessing that nightmare hasn’t helped. Things here are fine, more or less. Bored as fuck, especially on the days that used to be weekends. Getting together to watch Chelsea with my Rocky Mountain Blues tribe was always something I looked
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We’ve heard a lot lately about how America is finally learning who’s really essential now that we’re deep in a real crisis. I even chipped in. But are we treating our essential workers with the care and respect we should be? I have a good friend who works in an emergency department in a mid-sized Midwestern city hospital as well
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In 2016 Bernie Sanders declared himself a Democratic Socialist, and in doing so assured he’d never be president. The issue, then as now, was the “S-word.” Why would you label yourself a Socialist if you want to run for office in America? Especially – and this part is key – if you aren’t one? There are two terms to understand
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NOTE: I penned this a few months ago but never posted it. I’m now in deep enough to see some of the warts, and COVID certainly does northing to make you feel secure. But I was right. And that feels really good. _____ Finally, I’m off the merry-go-round. “Surely you’re not happy now you no longer play the game…” A
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At 8pm we step outside. On the balcony, the porch, the stoop, the sidewalk. Or maybe we just hang our heads out the window. And we howl. The nightly howl started in Denver, apparently, although it has its roots in California. The person who first explained it to me said it was to honor healthcare workers who are risking their
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I announced a couple weeks ago that we’ll be closing Scholars & Rogues on the 16th. That decision is a heavy one, given how much it meant to those of us on the staff. But at the same time it represents fresh opportunity. I first launched the Lullaby Pit on April 1, 1994. Best I can tell, this makes me
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Stuff you know, stuff you don’t know yet. Stuff you love and stuff you’re going to love. And stuff you won’t love, so hit the skip button. It’s over 24 hours and growing. So hit play and stay the fuck at home.
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The COVID-19 pandemic is the defining moment of our generation. The last global crisis of this magnitude was World War II, and with any luck we won’t see anything this dire again for decades. That’s probably wishful thinking, for a variety of reasons (climate, for instance), but we can hope. We’re living in History – with a capital H.As in,
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It’s inevitable that we all want to get back to normal. But when we do, it won’t be “back.” It’s going to be a very different normal. But… We keep hearing this phrase: “the new normal.” I suspect the people who use it the most are the ones who really get it the least. Their “new normal” wisdom seems to
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For a long time there I stopped calling myself a photographer, opting instead for some iteration of “digital photoartist.” The issue was that my work was so heavily reliant on processing that even thought it may have started as a photo, it really wasn’t one by the end. Pixels were added, subtracted, multiplied, divided, contorted and riven by various and
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