I was happy but happy is an adult word. You don’t have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about it is the same as trying to catch the wind. Much easier to let it blow all over you. This is where I disagree with the philosophers. They talk about passionate things but there is no passion in them. Never talk happiness with a philosopher.
— The Passion, Jeanette Winterson
1.
Are you familiar with Pati Jinich, host of the 3x James Beard Award-winning PBS television series “Pati's Mexican Table” and the PBS primetime docuseries “La Frontera?” In a recent episode of La Frontera, Pati travels to Tucson and meets up with Ayla Kapahi, the first female head brewer in Arizona, at Borderlands Brewing Company to be exact. You can view the 4 minute video on the PBS site linked above.
Kapahi is part of a larger organization of women brewers from both sides of the United States-Mexico border who came together in 2022 to create Las Hermanas (The Sisters), a pale IPA with hints of citrus, which is widely available now. And in 2021, she started the local chapter of the Pink Boots Society, an organization that aims to assist, inspire and encourage women and non-binary individuals in the fermented/alcoholic beverage industry to advance their careers through education. In an interview in The Manual she says, “We wanted to be part of a structured and reputable organization that could allow for better professional and networking opportunities. It’s given international exposure to women in the craft beer industry. Recognition and change for any minority group starts with exposure. Awareness is the first step. Women in the industry benefit from having a structured networking platform.”
2.
Watching CBS morning news yesterday there was a piece on the western Arizona water imbroglio. I’m glad this is finally getting national attention as our new Attorney General, democrat Kris Mayes, is trying to do something about this travesty that was put in place when Republicans ruled the nest. I wrote about this in August of 2022 as
Esquire’s Charles Pierce uncovered that a Saudi water company leases pieces of Arizona, and at cut-rate prices. So the Saudi water company can grow alfalfa for Saudi cows while draining the aquifers that serve Arizonans. The Saudi water company is raiding Arizona’s groundwater because Saudi Arabia has nearly exhausted its own supply—an exchange that ought to put other states on high alert. Arizona is leasing farmland to a Saudi water company, straining aquifers, and threatening future water supply in Phoenix. Fondomonte, a Saudi company, exports the alfalfa to feed its cows in the Middle East. The country has practically exhausted its own underground aquifers there. In Arizona, Fondomonte can pump as much water as it wants at no cost. Groundwater is unregulated in most rural areas of the state. Fondomonte pays only $25 per acre annually. The State Land Department says the market rate is $50 dollars per acre and it provides a 50% discount because it doesn’t pay for improvements. But the $25 per acre price is about one-sixth of the market price for unimproved farmland with flood irrigation today, according to Charlie Havranek, a Realtor at Southwest Land Associates.
Unfortunately, democratic Governor Katie Hobbs has said, “It’s a very complex issue, and not something that the AG (Mayes) has the authority to, frankly, do on her own. It’s a complicated lease that we can’t just end. Simply breaking the lease could put the state at risk of violating its contract with the Saudis and it needs to be done in a comprehensive way that doesn’t put the state in jeopardy of violating a legal contract. There’s also a huge amount of land over and above the lease that they actually own, so the impact of just ending that lease is not going to decrease their use of water by that much.”
Stay tuned, folks…
3.
If you aren’t hip to Jake Feinberg, read on. Jake lives in Tucson but has a worldwide reach in his interviews with hundreds of musicians all over the musical map. Not only does he have an extensive podcast series he has also released three books — The Cats!: Volumes 1, 2, and 3.
Feinberg has said, When I first started, people were saying, “Oh, he’s a jazz journalist.” I don’t like labels like that, so just for the record, I want to say that the show has been about all kinds of music. I’ve sought out musicians from all genres; I’ve interviewed all sorts of folk musicians, bluegrass musicians, and soundtrack pioneers like Lalo Schifrin and Bill Conti.
I first met Jake when he stumbled into a Sunday Session at Borderlands pre-pandemic. We got to talking about our mutual admiration for Mike Finnigan whom he had interviewed a few times. And because of his relationship with the great drummer George Marsh, George and I became Facebook friends. I used to say (when the two people who ever asked me) who my drumming influences were coming up that the top three were Levon Helm, Richie Hayward, and George Marsh. Who’s George Marsh, you ask? I was first exposed to his drumming with Finnigan in the Jerry Hahn Brotherhood, an ensemble that only released one album (1970), but way ahead of its time. Marsh went on to play with the likes of Mose Allison, Joe Henderson, John Abercrombie, and many more. But back to Finnigan. Here’s an interview Feinberg did with Mike in his home in 2018.
And below is an excerpt from his interview with the late Ahmad Jamal from 2016. Jamal died on April 16 at the age of 92. Trained in both traditional jazz ("American classical music", as he preferred to call it) and European classical style, Jamal was praised as one of the greatest jazz innovators over the course of his exceptionally long career.
I was fortunate to have extraordinary drummers. Most of them were from New Orleans, beginning with Vernel Fournier. He’s one of the most innovative drummers in the world. You can’t patent the things he did, and if you could, he would have been a multi-millionaire. The things he did on “Poinciana,” for example, are heard in every sector of drumming.
There are only four or five cities that have a parallel development to New Orleans: Pittsburgh, Memphis, Detroit, Kansas City, and East St Louis. These cities created the Sidney Bechets or produced the Louis Armstrongs,the Billie Strayhorns, the Miles Davises—if I may say the Jamals, and Johnny Costa, who was the pianist on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
In Chicago, Leonard Chess also owned a night club called the Macambo. He was not only an entrepreneur record producer, he was also a nightclub owner. That’s where I met Vernel Fournier. Took a long time for me to get him to join my group. Most of us, we migrated to Chicago to find our place in society. All these people who are connected with Chicago are not Chicago natives. Chicago’s a melting pot, if I may. George Coleman traveled from Memphis. I traveled from Pittsburgh. Vernel Fournier traveled from New Orleans.
There may be revolutionaries in the future, but they’re nonexistent right now. We have a lot of technology, but who’s making a statement that’s enduring? The Dizzy Gillespie–Charlie Parker era was so influential and revolutionary. Who’s making “Take the A Train,” or “Lush Life,” or John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things”? These masters took these songs and interpreted them beyond the wildest dreams of their composers. That’s what makes up the American classical music sometimes referred to as jazz.
4.
The Hand Me Up online shop is a fabulous way to recycle children’s clothing that might otherwise go to the landfill. Owners Kara Livingston and Nicole Boynton are working out of their garage in San Antonio to help prevent overconsumption by curating secondhand kids clothes and putting them into mix-and-match bundles for families. According to an article in Scripps News, Livingston said, "Some of the sizes on our website are in months. There's a time period where they're growing really, really fast and the crazy thing about waste and overconsumption is like they're not being worn but like three to six months. So there's more life in those textiles, like they can still be used." And Boynton added, "Our whole goal is to give families a safe space where they can, like send their clothes and know that we're going to do the best we can to get them to somebody that needs them and not into a trash can.”
It’s the American entrepreneurial spirit in action!
5.
Here’s a very interesting take on AI-generated imagery by 52-year-old German artist Boris Eldagsen after he won the prize for the creative open category at the Sony world photography awards with such an image. He said he “applied as a cheeky monkey” to find out if competitions would be prepared for AI images to enter. “They are not,” he added.
He also said “My approach to photography was psychological and philosophical. It was a journey inside; it was not depicting what everybody sees in front of them. Having that background, AI fascinated me. It was built from the collective unconscious. I also saw that the way it works can be related to Plato’s theory of ideas [also known as the theory of forms].”
And he emphatically doesn’t see the process of building an AI image as dehumanised, or even one in which the human is sidelined. “I don’t see it as a threat to creativity. For me, it really is setting me free. All the boundaries I had in the past – material boundaries, budgets – no longer matter. And for the first time in history, the older generation has an advantage, because AI is a knowledge accelerator. Two thirds of the prompts are only good if you have knowledge and skills, when you know how photography works, when you know art history. This is something that a 20-year-old can’t do.”
There ya go. Painters and printmakers were in an uproar when daguerreotypes came about. On the other hand, since photography could depict the world more accurately than painting, the latter had to reinvent itself. For this reason, the focus of painters shifted from representing reality to portraying emotions and impressions. Photography can, for this reason, be seen as a great drive for the reinvention of painting that occurred in the late 19th and throughout the 20th century.
Maybe we should wait and see how this new way of generating images will bolster other art forms.
And now…
Outstanding post filled with embarrassing riches. I have so much to say, I’ll say (almost) nothing.
Regarding the AI I would add that printmakers have been up in arms about every tiny advance in technology since Goya started scratching on a metal plate. Printmaking is built on the basis of new technologies. I can’t say I embrace what AI is doing so far but remain open and curious. Thanks for a great read from top to bottom. Gonna put on some Mose Alison and continue with my day.