by David Burn | Jun 18, 2005 | Music
I’m pleased to report the Leftover Cheese stream trickles again, thanks to Last.fm. It’s a new stream from a new provider. Our focus was live and unrelased material from bands in and around the jam scene. You can see the original playlist here, and download select MP3s from that list. And if you happen to be a Live 365 preferred member, you can still listen to the stream and hear it commercial-free.
Our new stream is compiled from albums I’ve pre-selected at Last.fm. Since any track might be played from the disc at any one time (Shuffle play), there’s more discovery involved for the listener. This new internet radio model has a lot in common with photo sharing site, Flickr, where users share their personal photo albums with friends and strangers alike. Last.fm enables users to share their playlists with the world.
I’m kind of surprised iTunes hasn’t moved forward with a service of this sort. Perhaps they will, after absorbing the impact of being beat to the punch. Maybe the British chaps behind Last.fm will sell to Apple and forever more reside in country castles, where they spend their time gardening and riding horses. Whatever happens, Last.fm is a bold new entry on the geek freak scene. I welcome it with open arms.
Here’s more good news. Our Last.fm stream is available at 128K. The old stream was 56K, barely passing for high fi. Plus, I didn’t need to spend countless hours loading song files to a remote server. I’m not paying through the nose either. In fact, Last.fm is free to join. In order to make this stream available, I had to make a donation. At Live 365 I was paying $65 a month to make the stream available.
Labels, if you’re listening, deliver your entire library to Last.fm at once. The longer the tail, the better.
by David Burn | Jun 17, 2005 | Digital culture
Meg Hourihan, co-creator of the personal publishing application Blogger, was recently profiled by the alumni magazine at Tufts, her alma mater.
Having founded two pioneering high-tech companies in the past five years, Hourihan’s English degree may seem a bit incongruous. But she doesn’t think so.
“My career path in technology is not at all an aberration,” she explains. “Many women in technology come to technology later and don’t come through traditional academic, undergraduate degrees.”
She is a strong advocate of creating an educational environment where women are encouraged to enter the math, science and technology fields.
“For me, when I was growing up, I felt there was a stigma of computers and being a nerd,” she recalls. “I went to computer camp in sixth grade. I told people when I got back to school that I went to computer camp and I was just mocked. That definitely had an impact on me.”
by David Burn | Jun 16, 2005 | Lowcountry
Bluffton Today is runing a spread in today’s paper about an historic building in Beaufort that faces demolition, in order to make way for an expanding Inn. The Tom’s Shoe Repair building on the corners of Port Republic and West streets once housed the offices of Edmund Rhett, a lawyer and three-time Beaufort mayor, who along his brother Robert, was a leader of the “fire-eating” secessionists. The Articles of Sesession were drafted in this office, and later signed at Edmund Rhett’s house at 1113 Craven Street, a home which enjoys some preservationist protections.
According to the article, the structure could move to another location in downtown Beaufort or to a city-owned lot in historic Bluffton, provided a generous donor arranges for the transfer.
Bluffton’s ties to the building date back to July 31, 1844, the day the “Bluffton Movement” was born under the Secession Oak. On that day, as many as 500 people gathered to hear Congressman Robert Barnwell Rhett espouse his belief that the South could gain economic freedom only by breaking away from the union.
by David Burn | Jun 16, 2005 | Lowcountry
When you’re from the West, or Midwest, as I am, it can be difficult to properly conceive of the multi-layered histories that wind through American families on the eastern seaboard. Here in Beaufort County, there are many peolpe–black and white–named Pinckney. So, I did some research and it turns out the Pinckney’s have been prominent in this area for over three hundred years.
Planter, soldier and statesman, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, may be the most well-known member of this family, but his mother, Eliza Lucas Pinckney, has quite the storied past, as well. She took over her father’s plantations at 16, after he was called to serve as governor of Antigua. Eliza introduced indigo to the Carolina economy, which sustained the colony for 30 years. She also worked with silk, hemp and flax.
According to the U.S. Army web site, “Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who represented South Carolina at the Constitutional Convention, was an American aristocrat. Like other first families of South Carolina, whose wealth and social prominence could be traced to the seventeenth century, the Pinckneys maintained close ties with the mother country and actively participated in the Royal colonial government. Nevertheless, when armed conflict threatened, Pinckney rejected Loyalist appeals and embraced the Patriot cause. Pragmatically, his decision represented an act of allegiance to the mercantile-planter class of South Carolina’s seaboard, which deeply resented Parliament’s attempt to institute political and economic control over the colonies. Yet Pinckney’s choice also had a philosophical dimension. It placed him among a small group of wealthy and powerful southerners whose profound sense of public duty obliged them to risk everything in defense of their state and the rights of its citizens.”
by David Burn | Jun 14, 2005 | Music
from WhiteStripes.com, 6.2.05
Karen Elson and Jack White were married yesterday on the confluence of three rivers–the Rio Negro, the Solimones, and the Amazon–in the Amazon basin in the city of Manaus, Brazil. They were married by a traditional Shaman priest in a canoe at the exact point where the three rivers meet. The bride and groom were accompanied by a small party of close friends. The best man was Ian Montone. Meg White was the maid of honor. The ceremony was immediately followed by a blessing by a priest at a Catholic Cathedral called Igreja Matriz in the historical city of Manaus. This was the first marriage for both newlyweds (even though other news reports claim Meg and Jack are in fact divorced from one another).
by David Burn | Jun 14, 2005 | Digital culture, Lowcountry, Place
Heather and Jon (two Utahns I do not know, except through their respective blogs) attended a wedding in Beaufort recently. Here’s some of what they reported.
Heather: While on vacation in South Carolina we took a leisurely (HA! Jon has scars from all my nagging TO GET A MOVE ON) trip to Fripp Island, a private beach where rich white people roam around in golf carts. We had packed swimsuits and thought that we could pick up sunscreen on the 20 mile drive out, but the gas station we picked had none in stock. They did, however, have four-foot-wide barrels of ice and beer sitting at the end of each aisle, you know, in case anyone got thirsty on their long drive. I HAVE BEEN IN UTAH WAY TOO LONG.
Jon: I’ve been to Austin, I’ve been to Memphis, I’ve been to Talahassee, I’ve been to Apalachicola and I’ve even been to Charleston. However, I’d have to say that our recent trip to Beaufort, South Carolina was the south I’d always heard about. It is the most southern city I’ve ever visited.
This couple likes to take photos and they’re not shy about sharing them. Here’s Jon’s Flickr set from the trip, and here’s Heather’s.
by David Burn | Jun 14, 2005 | Literature
Subjective Substance, an online journal of poetry, published my post on William Stafford’s poem, “Ask Me.” What appeared here as a blog post is offered as an essay, which is kind of nice. Is that what blog posts are? Little essays? In some cases, yes. In others, no.
Subjective Substance publisher, Omar Azam, found my site and asked if he could publish the piece. A far cry from sending out manuscripts to countless anonymous small press editors—a task that almost always results in a pile of colorful rejection slips.
Subjective Substance also published an abbreviated version of my essay on place, “Reading The Internal Compass,” in their April issue.
by David Burn | Jun 13, 2005 | Architecture
Fine architecture is usually reserved for wealthy patrons or grand civic spaces. But in 1993, Auburn University Professor Samuel Mockbee set out to change that. He founded The Rural Studio, which guides students in the design and construction of homes and community spaces in economically depressed Hale County, Alabama.
Here is some of the Mockbee’s good thinking:
“The professional challenge, whether one is an architect in the rural American South or elsewhere in the world, is how to avoid being so stunned by the power of modern technology and economic affluence that one does not lose sight of the fact that people and place matter….
For me, these small (Rural Studio) projects have in them the architectural essence to enchant us, to inspire us, and ultimately, to elevate our profession. But more importantly, they remind us of what it means to have an American architecture without pretense. They remind us that we can be as awed by the simple as by the complex and that if we pay attention, this will offer us a glimpse into what is essential to the future of American Architecture: Its honesty. ‘ Love your neighbor as yourself.’
This is the most important thing because nothing else matters. In doing so, an architect will act on a foundation of decency which can be built upon. Go above and beyond the call of a ‘smoothly functioning conscience’; help those who aren’t likely to help you in return, and do so even if nobody is watching!‘
by David Burn | Jun 12, 2005 | Music
“These songs were written in Boston between 1986 and 1990– before I moved to Nashville. I found my “voice,” as a writer, in these songs. It was my first time to recognize that voice in a whole song, then a batch of whole songs. I got a big record deal with these songs. I recorded them and gave it everything I had. When the record was finished and delivered to the record company, my fate was decided in a 5 minute meeting to not release the record.
11 years later, the songs will have their release. They have served their time in solitary confinement-eyes blinking as theyre led to the sun. I recorded and worked on this album in my living room with the help of true masters of music, voice and sound—–friends.
Rather than righting some wrong from my past, I prefer to believe that this record exists now because I have grown, that these songs were bigger than I was as an artist eleven years ago, and that, now, I can stand up to them, and share them with you.”
–Darrell Scott
Eterwater, Cambria, England – June 25, 2003
by David Burn | Jun 12, 2005 | Food & Beverage, Lowcountry
Diana Olken is a California paralegal, consumer activist and former school teacher looking to retire in Bluffton. She hopes to bring her favorite grocery store–Trader Joe’s–with her. Having regularly shopped the store at Chicago’s Lakeview location, I can relate to Olken’s passionate mission and I support her quest to bring a TJ’s to the Lowcountry.
Olken began her grassroots initiative, that has since caught the attention of the store’s management, by posting on Bluffton Today’s new blog site. Now, she’s carrying the torch even further by offering to fill mail order requests for Bluffton residents from her local California store. Since dry goods are one of the store’s strong points, this could be an attractive hold-over option (until TJ’s builds a store here).
In the meantime, World Market has a smattering of what one might find at Trader Joe’s, including craft beers and nice wines.
