San Juan Mountains Weather Report–Tuesday January 31, 2012–09:40
A short wave trough will pass near the 4-corners this afternoon and bring maybe an “angry inch” of snow to the San Juans. This disturbance departs quickly then a short wave ridge of high pressure moves into western Colorado with clearing skies after midnight.
A more energetic storm system will arrive in the Great Basin tomorrow (Wednesday) and begin to affect eastern Utah/western Colorado by late Wed. evening. With little wind the orographic forcing over the mountains will be minimal so little snow (a few inches) is expected.
The strongest in the series of short waves will push through the Great Basin on Thursday and the trough should split with a closed low pinching off near the 4-corners by late in the afternoon then migrates into the panhandle by Friday. One model has the low, stalling over Kansas keeping wraparound moisture pushing back into Colorado through Sunday morning. (???)
This final storm in several “world views” seems to have all the necessary ingredients; relatively deep moisture, vorticity and cold cloud temperatures producing snow through Saturday morning, but where the low moves and what it does will determine the outcome.
Dry weather and high pressure should return Sunday and Monday.
Folklorist’s Global Jukebox Goes Digital–A Great Historical Piece On Recorded Music
The collection of the folklorist and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax is being digitized for dissemination. Above, a photo he took at a church in Portsmouth, Va., in 1960.
The folklorist and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax was a prodigious collector of traditional music from all over the world and a tireless missionary for that cause. Long before the Internet existed, he envisioned a “global jukebox” to disseminate and analyze the material he had gathered during decades of fieldwork.
Alan Lomax in 1942.
A decade after his death technology has finally caught up to Lomax’s imagination. Just as he dreamed, his vast archive — some 5,000 hours of sound recordings, 400,000 feet of film, 3,000 videotapes, 5,000 photographs and piles of manuscripts, much of it tucked away in forgotten or inaccessible corners — is being digitized so that the collection can be accessed online. About 17,000 music tracks will be available for free streaming by the end of February, and later some of that music may be for sale as CDs or digital downloads.
Starting in the mid-1930s, when he made his first field recordings in the South, Lomax was the foremost music folklorist in the United States. He was the first to record Muddy Waters and Woody Guthrie, and much of what Americans have learned about folk and traditional music stems from his efforts, which were also directly responsible for the folk music and skiffle booms in the United States and Britain that shaped the pop-music revolution of the 1960s and beyond.
Lomax worked both in academic and popular circles, and increased awareness of traditional music by doing radio and television programs, organizing concerts and festivals, and writing books, articles and essays prodigiously. At a time when there was a strict divide between high and low in American culture, and Afro-American and hillbilly music were especially scorned, Lomax argued that such vernacular styles were America’s greatest contribution to music.
“It would be difficult to overstate the importance of what Alan Lomax did over the course of his extraordinary career,” said the writer Tom Piazza, who has written an introductory essay for “The Southern Journey of Alan Lomax,” a book of about 200 of Lomax’s photographs that is to be published in the fall. “He was an epic figure in and of himself, with a musical appetite that was omnivorous and really awe inspiring, who used the new recording technology to go and document musical expression at its most local and least commercial.”
The Male Mystique of Henry Miller
RENEGADE
Henry Miller and the Making of “Tropic of Cancer”
By Frederick Turner
What we write about fiction is never an objective response to a text; it is always part of a bigger mythmaking — the story we are telling ourselves about ourselves. That story changes. George Orwell, writing in 1940 about Henry Miller, has very different preoccupations from Kate Millet writing about Miller in 1970. Orwell doesn’t notice that Miller-women are semihuman sex objects. In fact, his long essay “Inside the Whale” barely mentions women at all. Millet does notice that half the world has been billeted to the whorehouse, and wonders what this tells us about both Henry Miller and the psyche and sexuality of the American male.
It is some 50 years since “Tropic of Cancer” was published in the United States by Grove Press. First published in Paris in 1934 by Obelisk, a soft-porn imprint, it had been banned as obscene in America until a landmark legal victory overturned the ban, allowing Grove to print it legally in 1961. The book became an instant best seller, and Henry Miller stood as the priapic prophet of sexual freedom.
Frederick Turner’s aim in “Renegade” is to explain how “Tropic of Cancer” came to be written, came to be banned and came to be an American Classic.
Latin Roots: The Late Resurgence Of Cumbia–LISTEN–GOOD INTERVIEW/MUSIC JR
Grammy-winning producer and record-label owner Aaron Levinson is in the studio to introduce us to a corner of Latin roots music called cumbia. Affiliated with a number of professional recording academies and societies, this internationally known musician also owns a recording studio in Ardmore, and has consistently received recognition for his work with Latin music. In the studio today, Levinson and host David Dye talk about the origin and evolution of cumbia, including its late resurgence in popularity in New York.
Cumbia, the manifestation of a melding of cultures, originated in Colombia. Mixing the music of native Colombians, slaves from Africa and Spanish colonizers, cumbia first rose to prominence in the 1960s on the coasts of Colombia. It made its way across the continents, evolving for Mexican and Peruvian listeners, and eventually reached the U.S. in the 21st century. Cumbia enthusiasm was rekindled in Colombia as New York artists began to popularize the music. In this interview, Levinson and Dye explore the many forms of cumbia — from the hip-hop elements in today’s cumbia to the geographical understanding of cumbia to traditional cumbia elements of many drums, claves, guitars, clarinet and flute.
Pollock’s Legend Still Splattered On Art World
An artist who abandoned all conventions, Pollock used the separation and marbling of the wet paint enamel to create the dripping patterns in Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist).
Even a century since his birth, American “splatter artist” Jackson Pollock still provokes heated debate about the very definition of art.
Was a man who placed a canvas on the floor and dripped paint straight from the can actually creating a work of art?
“It’s very hard if you try to build the paint up to this extent with this many colors and not achieve mud,” says National Gallery of Art curator Harry Cooper.
“He didn’t achieve mud here — I think he achieved something quite beautiful,” Cooper tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz. “And in the process, he opened up a whole new way of thinking about what a painting could be, how you could make a painting, what it could do in an abstract way.”
The public perception at the time, though, was distinctly different than that of art critics.
“In the popular mind, he was Jack the Dripper,” Cooper says. “I think all of those feelings and associations have remained with the work, no matter how many books and how many retrospectives he has.”
In 2006, one of Pollock’s works sold for $140 million — the most ever paid for a painting. He remains polarizing, a man whose work is as derided as it is desired.
Born in Cody, Wyo., on Jan. 28, 1912, Paul Jackson Pollock trained under the acclaimed American naturalist Thomas Hart Benton.
T.O.P. GROOMING RE”POR
Saturday Jan. 28 / 2012 9 am
Corduroy and one set of classic set.
Get’s a bit “sticky” mid day.
Best to go before 11 or after 3.
Enjoy..but keep an eye out…
Chris H.
How I Make My Wife Laugh….
1st my accounting technique, then my explanation…..
San Juan Mountains Weather Update: Friday January 27, 2012–07:40
HN24/H20
Monument 6″/0.5″
RMP 7″/0.5″
Molas 4″/0.25″
Coal Bank 3.5″/0.3″
mg
In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad
In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.
However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.
Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.
Chinese Forces Move Against Tibetan Protesters–LISTEN
Chinese security forces opened fire on Tibetan demonstrators this week, killing up to four and wounding more than 30, according to Tibetan rights groups. The protests are among the largest against Chinese rule in nearly four years. They were inspired in part by a disturbing new trend in Tibetan dissent: Tibetan people lighting themselves on fire.
San Juan Mountains Weather Report–Thursday January 26, 2012–07:35
The latest storm to affect the San Juan Mountains is taking form in the Pacific NW this morning and has begun pushing clouds into northern Colorado. A fast moving shortwave on NW flow will move across the Great Basin tonight and Friday with deepening moisture bringing some snowfall (3-6″ maybe more…, above 11,000′) to the SJ Mountains.
The disturbance will quickly move east of the San Juans later Friday and residual moisture will probably continue throughout the evening, but with little accumulation. Since this is NW flow the north side of the San Juans, (Uncompahgre Gorge to the top of RMP could see periods of high precipitation rates later tonight, but computer models are not in agreement with this scenario.
Quiet returns to the mountains through the weekend then the new week begins with a more progressive pattern that may bring another shortwave or two into the area.
In The Music Box, New Orleans Residents Hear Hope
The sound sculptures that make up The Music Box were constructed from the materials of an 18th-century Creolecottage that stood on this site in New Orleans’ 9th War
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, it left behind a city full of destroyed homes. Despite ongoing rebuilding efforts, thousands of blighted properties remain. Now, a group of artists is creating a structure that is part home, part musical instrument and part inspiration of what can be made of these damaged properties.
These structures are an experimental first step toward building a fully functional musical house — named “Dithyrambalina” — that will be the headquarters and residency space for the New Orleans Airlift. The organization was created in the aftermath of Katrina to raise the profile of local artists, often through collaborations with more famous creators.
T.O.P. Grooming Re’por Wednesday January, 25, 2012—09:21
T.O.P. is almost starting to look like a cross
country ski touring area. 4″ new. I madethree passes of corduroy….still a little thin
to drop the classic tracks…maybe next time.
Chris H.
San Juan Mountains Snow Update: Jan. 24, 2012–09:00
Not much snow out of this storm especially on the N. side, but with the backside of the trough currently passing over us, the winds and remains of the storm on NW flow will be out of here by the end of the day if not sooner. JR
Current on Passes: Molas 2”, Coal Bank 4”, Red Mtn Pass 1.5”, Gorge < 1” so far but light snow currently.
sh
BUDDHIST ROAD PATROL by Peter Shelton, Silverton Mountain Journal, Jan. 18, 2002
Avalanche forecaster Jerry Roberts and I are riding in his orange welfare rig. We’re on our way to check storm boards for recent snow accumulation totals. It’s the middle of the night. Our tires leave tracks several inches deep. Snowflakes in the air stop, eerily, strobe-like, in each sweep of the yellow flossing light on the roof…..
“3-Mary-14, this is 3-Mary 51. Come in Doug.” ”Ya, Jerry, this is 14. I’m over in Ironton Park on my way up. It’s snowing pretty hard. Visibility is pretty poor. See you on the pass.”
“I’ve got a lot of respect for the plow drivers,” Jerry says working the defroster to keep the wipers from icing up completely. ”Man, that’s a lonely, hateful job. Ninety percent boredom and 10 percent terror.”
San Juan Mountains Weather Report Monday, January 23, 2012–13:30
My last forecast posted 2 days go ended with the conundrum of three computer models lacking agreement in solution. Now with the clarity of the immediate future it looks like the last model that called for a split flow, combined with the first model which called for snow beginning tonight has become today’s forecast. By late afternoon we should see snow flurries beginning and increasing throughout tonight and early tomorrow with up to a foot of new powder for the mountains above 11,000′.
There was good upstream moisture in the low pressure trough when it moved onshore at daybreak. As it moves through the Great Basin it will split with a southern low over SE New Mexico on Tuesday, but will remain whole enough as it travels into the forecast area to bring much needed precipitation, but without the power of the last storm. Lacking strong winds, orographics and weakness because of the splitting, it will favor the southern portion of the San Juans as the southern branch passes near the 4-corners. Remember SW flow does not favor the N side of the SJ’s unless it’s a Major storm….
Because of warm air temperatures there will be rain/snow mix early especially in the lower valleys then with elevation and cooling evening temperatures snow will kick in. SSW facing slopes will see the highest amounts in the San Juans. The snow will begin to diminish from the west early on Tuesday as the flow splits and a drier ridge of high pressure develops with NWesterlies. Clearing and stable atmosphere will remain in place until the next wave enters the area by Friday with a chance of precipitation, but right now doesn’t look very juicy. The future looks to be drying out again with shortwave ridging into the weekend. Temperatures want to remain above seasonal norms for the period.
San Juan Mountains Weather Update: Sunday January 22, 2012–08:30
Red Mtn Pass and Molas/Coal Bank are closed for avalanche mitigation. We have not been able to get updated snow totals but surely pushing past 15” to 16+” at the passes. With a little clearing we are seeing widespread slab activity below treeline. No vis above treeline.
More later. sh
After a lull late overnight, heavy snow has resumed on the passes. Plows report poor visibility, but the radar looks like some of the intensities may let up soon. Periods of heavy, 2”/hr snowfall overnight and another surge this morning have caused small slides in the Gorge and near Red Mtn Pass. Spot avalanche mitigation is planned for this morning.
Currently in Silverton: Snowing 2”/hr; HN24 – 14″; Winds have eased here; Temp 22F.
Current on Passes: At 0300 Molas & Coal Bank Snotels showing 12”-13”/1.5”
sh
T.O.P. GROOMING RE’POR January 22, 2012
6″ of new powder….with virtually no base.
meadow is windblown w/ icy spots
North 40 trail a bit thin.
Basically survival skiing, but still fun.
Be careful out there.
C Haaland
Leonard Cohen’s “Going Home”
In a recent public conversation with fellow rock bard Jarvis Cocker about the new recording Old Ideas, Leonard Cohen answered the younger man’s suggestion that his songs are “penitential hymns” (a phrase Cohen himself employs in his new song “Come Healing”) with jocular humility. “I’m not sure what that means, to be honest,” Cohen reportedly replied. He continued, “Who’s to blame in this catastrophe? I never figured that out.”
The catastrophe he mentions is life itself — a description Cohen probably picked up from a fictional character he admires, Zorba the Greek, who embraced the “full catastrophe” of a well-connected, joyfully physical existence. The Buddhist teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn has also borrowed it for a book title, which is relevant, since Cohen’s writing is famously philosophical, connecting his Jewish heritage to years of Zen meditation and an enduring existentialist bent.
Leonard Cohen Gearing Up for First Album of New Material in Seven Years-Rolling Stone
‘Old Ideas’ to be released on January 31st
Leonard Cohen has been working on a new album for years, but it’s finally hitting shelves on January 31st. Speaking to the press in Oviedo, Spain while in town to accept an award, Cohen said that the disc will be called Old Ideas. “I’ve played it for a few people and they seem to like it,” Cohen said, adding that he still struggles with songwriting. “When you’re writing, you’re always an absolute beginner. Each time you take up your guitar or sit by a blank page, you start from scratch. It’s a struggle.”
Cohen hasn’t released an album of new material since 2004′s Dear Heather, but he went an epic world tour between 2008 and 2010 where previewed new material onstage, including “Darkness,” “Lullaby,” “Born In Chains” and “Feels So Good.” According to a post on his official online forum, only “Darkness” made the final cut for the disc. (Watch a video of Cohen performing “Darkness” at a 2009 concert below.)
In June of 2010, Cohen spoke with Rolling Stone about his new album. “I’m producing it,” he said. ”One song was written on tour, the rest were written before.” He also said that the disc will contain 10 or 11 songs, and some of them were written with his longtime collaborator Sharon Robinson and his companion Anjani.
The last tour was far and away the longest of Cohen’s career, but the 77-year-old singer said he may hit the road yet again. “God willing,” he said. “I never quite know whether there’s going to be a tour or not.”
READ MORE: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/leonard-cohen-gearing-up-for-first-album-of-new-material-in-seven-years-20111025#ixzz1kP82OrgN
Feeding The World Gets Short Shrift In The Climate Change Debate
Food is getting elbowed out of the discussion on climate change, which could spell disaster for the 1 billion people who will be added to the world’s population in the next 15 years. That’s the word today from scientists wondering why food and sustainability get such short shrift when it comes to thinking about how humans will adapt to climate change.
In the past year, we’ve seen drought in Texas, floods in Australia and massive drought and wildfires in Russia, all of which have had a big impact on global food supply and prices. Those are good examples of the extreme weather events and changes in weather patterns that scientists expect to see with climate change.
“Agriculture is going to be a critically important part of the conversation,” says Molly Jahn, a professor of genetics and agronomy at the University of Wisconsin who works on agriculture’s impact on climate change. “We rely on agriculture to to feed ourselves. And we know that agriculture is and can be a better form of planetary care, particularly when in management of greenhouse gas emissions.”
Last month, when nations met at the United Nations-sponsored climate change meeting in South Africa, the bulk of the effort went into trying to come up with a plan to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. But the many questions surrounding how agriculture and food production will adapt to climate change were left largely unanswered.
Jerry Roberts
