Shout-out to:
1. Alabama Shakes and their recent album, Sound & Color. Man, that’s some good
music making right there. It’s this blend of Gospel, Southern Rock, and Motown
soul music that is truly unique. This blend doesn’t work well for some of the
songs on here. But for the ones where it does work well (like “Don’t Want to
Fight”) – whew wee!
2. Republica Empanada
in downtown Mesa. I was part of panel
on creative placemaking at the Mesa Arts Center on Monday night, and they
had an after-party at Republica afterwards. Wow, those empandas were great!
Like, seriously savory and tasty. I just might be willing to pack an extra set
of clothes and my passport and make the trip all the way out to Mesa to try
them out again.
3. Dave Pell and his article,
“Control Balt Delete: Five Thoughts About Baltimore Organized Into a List
Because the Last Thing Anyone Needs is Another Thought Piece About Baltimore.”
I appreciate articles that try to give a fuller analysis of
current events. This is especially appreciated with the many recent racially-tinged
events of the last year or so.
Pell notes, for example, that “kids living in violent
neighborhoods don’t want fewer police and less protection, they want more of
both” and that “the police
in our most violent neighborhoods have a difficult, thankless, dangerous job
that often fails to reward those who exhibit the best traits we could hope
for.” Yes, yes, yes! At the same time, we must recognize
that “where the criminal justice system fails to respond vigorously to violent
injury and death, homicide becomes endemic. African Americans have suffered
from just such a lack of effective criminal justice, and this, more than
anything, is the reason for the nation’s long-standing plague of black
homicides … The system’s failure to catch killers effectively made black
lives cheap.”
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