Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 7:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Hey! Good Evening!
Time to wake you all up with Magic Sam’s Boogie.
Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that you can make anything happen”
-- Wolfgang Von Goethe
Photos From Joe on the Road
A note and photos from joe on Tuesday night.
howdy! we landed tonight in austin, minnesota.
today we started out in mitchell, south dakota, home of the corn palace - whose annual decorations were just being completed as we arrived. every year the building is covered with murals and decorations made entirely from the corn plant.
here are some pictures:
we hit the road and headed for the pipestone national monument in pipestone, minnesota. the monument is the location of a sacred site for many bands of native americans from which they quarried the red stone from which the traditional "peace pipes" are made. the quarrying of the stone has been done by natives at pipestone for thousands of years and artifacts made from the stone have shown up far and wide. by the 1700's the sioux controlled the quarries and retained their rights to quarry at the site under treaty, though during the period when the us government made native spiritual practices illegal - http://en.wikipedia.org/... - it became difficult for the natives to visit the quarries from the reservations that they had been removed to. in 1928 the sioux's right to quarry at the site were terminated with a settlement, but were restored in 1937 when congress established the national monument which provides quarrying rights for natives.
the monument site is quite an interesting place to visit, it is a natural tall-grass prairie which supports a much greater biological diversity than the heavily agricultural (monocropped) lands that surround the park. the rock walls are quite beautifully colored with layers of quartzite on top of the red pipestone layer. the pipestone feels like a heavily compressed, fine-grained clay that can be cut with a hacksaw and worked with woodworking tools.
you can see some examples of this stone that has been worked into peace pipes in this shot i took with my cellphone at the buffalo bill museum in cody, wyoming:
and here are a bunch of shots from the pipestone national monument:
pipestone quarry:
a visitor to the quarry before me:
the oracle (look for a face in the rock):
minniwissa waterfall:
below the falls:
a break in the rock wall near the falls:
tall grass prairie:
leadplant:
uncooperative monarch butterfly:
wild garlic?
[ Editor's Note: joanneleon and KBO will be holding down the Evening Blues fort while joe shikspack is on his roadtrip vacation. When we can, we'll post photos and messages that he sends in and put them in this section of the diary. He'll be checking in regularly when he has connectivity, so feel free to leave him some greetings in the comments. Also, we would love to have your help with ideas for Evening Blues topics while he is gone, so feel free to lend your Blues and Roots music expertise and ideas in the comments! ]
News
(h/t to Agathena)
What is the value of this?
-65,000 acres of land, 46,000 in Plumas and Lassen National Forests
-15,million trees on pubilc land alone, some trees were 400 years old
-critical habitat reserved for California spotted owl, the Northern goshawk, the American martin
-among many other species.
would this be enough?
$55 million cash and a conveyance of 22,500 acres of land in California owned by Sierra Pacific.
U.S. Attorney's office reaches $122.5 million settlement for the 2007 Moonlight Fire
The Moonlight Fire ignited on the 2007 Labor Day holiday as a result of logging operations by industry giant Sierra Pacific Industries and its contractor. Two employees operated bulldozers in a remote area on a red flag warning day — a condition of high fire danger declared by the National Weather Service. The fire ignited when the track or blade of one of the bulldozers struck a rock and created sparks that ignited the surrounding dry ground fuels. [...] the designated fire watch left the work area and drove 30 minutes away to get a soda. When he returned over an hour later, there was a 100-foot wall of smoke billowing from the work area.
Research backs up claims of medical marijuana's benefits
Over a dozen years, California's historic experiment in medical marijuana research brought new science to the debate on marijuana's place in medicine. State-funded studies - costing $8.7 million - found pot may offer broad benefits for pain from nerve damage from injuries, HIV, strokes and other conditions.
From the U.S. with love - burrowing owls go to Canada
The program is helping. In 2008 there were just four known pairs of the burrowing owls left from the species that had flourished there decades earlier.
But this year, 65 known pairs have been counted on the depot's sage and grass lands
Landmark Family Farmers Lawsuit Grows
Prominent Allies Join Effort to Reinstate Challenge to Monsanto Patents
WASHINGTON - July 18 - Eleven prominent law professors and fourteen renowned organic, Biodynamic®, food safety and consumer non-profit organizations have filed separate briefs with the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit arguing farmers have the right to protect themselves from being accused of patent infringement by agricultural giant Monsanto. The brief by the law professors and the brief by the non-profit organizations were filed in support of the seventy-five family farmers, seed businesses, and agricultural organizations representing over 300,000 individuals and 4,500 farms that last year brought a protective legal action seeking a ruling that Monsanto could never sue them for patent infringement if they became contaminated by Monsanto's genetically modified seed.
Drone News
US Families of Drone Victims, Rights Groups File Lawsuit
"Illegal, out of control, and must end”
The lawsuit contends that the authorization of drone strikes which lead to the death of the three US citizens violated the US Constitution and international law.
The ACLU and the CCR contend that the drone strikes were part of a broader practice of extrajudicial “targeted killing” by the US and an assault on constitutional rights and due process.
ACLU to Obama: You Can't Just Vaporize Americans Without Judicial Process
"This suit is an effort to enforce the Constitution's most fundamental guarantee, the guarantee of due process," said Jamil Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU on a conference call with reporters. "Ten years ago extrajudicial killing by the United States was exceptional. Now it's routine."
Blog Posts of Interest
What's Happenin'? 7.19.2012 by Agathena on DailyKos
President Obama, Mitt Romney, and Congress: Fiscal Cliffs, Deficit Terrorism, and Homeless Children by priceman on DailyKos
Bernanke Lies To Congress by DSWright on DailyKos
The Great Housing Swindle: Shadow REO Artificially Boosting Prices by David Dayen on FDL News
CIA “Command and Control” in Syria by emptywheel
A Little Night Music
Back with Sam for “I Don’t Want no Woman” from 1967
Here’s “Easy Baby”
And now “All Your Love”
“I Wanna Boogie”
Now “Stop! You’re Hurting Me’
“I have the Same Old Blues”
“Sweet Home Chicago”
“She Belongs to Me”
And finishing up with “21 Days in Jail”
Envision… a cyber home with a bold vision of a better world, and a determination to create it.
Another world is possible.
We will investigate strategies for building personal and community empowerment as a means of lessening the influence of corporate power and increasing equality.
"There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?"
~ Robert F. Kennedy
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