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"every body hollerin' goat"

Othar Turner lived in the small Mississippi community of Gravel Springs, located not too far from the nearby towns of Senatobia and Como, about an hour south of Memphis. He spent most of his life within these same few miles, working his farm and playing his music. He was born in Rankin County, Mississippi in 1908. His parents had separated prior to his birth and it wasn't until he was nearly four years old that he met his father. Othar always held an interest in music. As a young child he played the harmonica and would beat on a 50-gallon lard can for a drum.

He first heard the sound of a fife at age 16 from a neighbor named R.E. Williams and was enchanted from his very first listen. The neighbor gave Othar his first fife and the boy would practice it constantly. His mother disapproved and told him to stop, but Othar continued whenever she was away from home. When she discovered that he had kept up the fife, she broke the instrument. Othar had studied the fife so intently, he was able to remember where the finger-hole positioning was and began to make his own fifes from the cane he found near his home, using a fireplace poker to burn the holes. Othar continued creating his own homemade fifes throughout his entire life.

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realtor dot com is a good resource for looking at pictures of vernacular architecture for sale all over the country. it also serves as an instant appraisal of local markets. i was wondering how NO would fair after the flood but im not familiar with how the market was prior to the flood. what is apparent is how bottom heavy the housing market is. the houses for sale only show up on page 83. thats after 82 pages of rental listings and empty lots for sale.


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Levee failure reason for 'complete destruction' of St. Bernard Parish
posted: 09-13-2005


NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Officials say the "complete destruction" of St. Bernard Parish apparently was caused by levee failure along the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a 76-mile-long shipping channel.

Army Col. Duane Gapinski, who is in charge of pumping out the area, said the levee built in 1963 is 17-and-a-half feet high.

The Army Corps of Engineers believes up to 90 percent of the levee is damaged. That levee is in front of St. Bernard Parish.

The parish president estimates no one will be allowed to return to that parish for four months and it could be next summer before some people can go back to where they used to live. There is damage from oil as well as water.

26,000 homes - a total loss - here we go...


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Scanlonville Cemetery, which dates to 1870, is a public graveyard that was never formally abandoned, wrote Mikell Scarborough, the Charleston County master-in-equity, in his Sept. 6 order. According to South Carolina law, abandoned cemeteries can be relocated to make way for development.

"From a preservation standpoint, this is an exceptional victory," says Michael Trinkley, director of the Columbia-based Chicora Foundation, Inc., who testified at a weeklong trial in June. "This is the first time we have had such a significant victory in cemetery preservation, particularly for African American cemeteries."

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Modern Ironies: Notes on Losing the Bunshaft's Travertine House (1963)


For me, a Californian who grew up in a builder ranch house, the floor plan of the Bunshaft house, as it appeared in Architectural Record Houses of 1966, challenged the whole concept of what a house was. A rectangle with a living room at the center, only two bedrooms, few internal doors, and no windows on the front elevation? How could this be a house?

Its beauty was its daring simplicity; I was captivated by the rhythms and abstract composition. Sensitively, instead of turning all the views to the water, Bunshaft had oriented the two bedrooms out to the landscape, because all water all the time would have been too much. He had masterfully translated the large scale of his experience as design partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill into a house of less than 3,000 square feet.

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It is ironic that Maharam would tear down a mid-century modern landmark, when the textile company that bears his family name owes its recent revival to mid-century modern design. Maharam’s sons have reissued fabric designs by icons such as Anni Albers, Ray and Charles Eames, Alexander Girard, Arne Jacobsen, Vernon Panton, and Gio Ponti, and they have been honored by the Russel Wright Design Center for their “Textiles of the 20th Century.”

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Certainly the Museum of Modern Art, which received the house as a gift from the Bunshafts, knew who they were selling the house to. Might MoMA be the real villain because it sold the property without concern for its cultural value? Isn’t the museum in the business of cultural values? Why didn’t it preserve the home or make preservation a condition of sale? Or, one hates to say it, why didn’t the Bunshafts give the house to the museum with more restrictions?
not to mention vulture martha stewarts stewardship :
And the August issue of Vanity Fair reports that much of the house’s former travertine floor now paves the kitchen of Martha Stewart’s new home in Bedford New York, a clapboard compound that also features an Amish-built barn and a century-old fence brought from Canada.
they're letting vulture martha skate!? "Perhaps there are no individual villains, just a sequence of unfortunate or misguided decisions." b.s., me thinks theres too much punch pulling in this story but well keep it for the neato photos. and as record of this despicible patch of architecturaly historical record.


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nice thread on toms page engaging the subject of artistic quotation. in sum, the beatsie boys raise the status of a whole bunch of found licks to maxims of universal truth though a (now) illegal practice on their under appreciated paul's boutique album. burn a copy for a friend.


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i have serious concerns with the likelihood of a federal agency declaring vast poor new orleans neighborhoods toxic superfund-sites and commandering them under eminent domain. then bulldozing historic (the whole damn place is historic) neighborhoods and turning them over to developer buddies for [social] redevelopment.

from pandagon :

Two shaky House incumbents, Democrat Melancon and Republican Boustany, hope response to hurricane rallies voters behind them. House Republican campaign chief Reynolds touts chance to market conservative social-policy solutions; Rep. Baker of Baton Rouge is overheard telling lobbyists: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."
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Who knew the GOP listened to the Dead Kennedys?

The sun beams down on a brand new day,
No more welfare tax to pay,
Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light!
Jobless millions whisked away
At last we have more room to play!
All systems go to kill the poor tonight!





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m-ch


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