“What’s Wrong and How to Fix It”: Woody Guthrie and the Maintenance of Folk Music
Intro In September 1940, Oklahoma-born musician, writer, artist and activist Woody Guthrie wrote to Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress, laying out his philosophy of folk music. “A folk song,” he wrote “is what’s wrong and how to fix it,” as clear a statement of what maintenance is and does as any you’ll hear this conference.1 I argue that Guthrie’s understanding of folk music as maintenance is manifested in two ways. First, it can...
Archives as Sites of Resistance, Liberation and Creativity
Following is the text of a talk I delivered at The Word is Action: Engaging the Bible and Social Justice in memory of Walter Wink, a conference celebrating the fifth anniversary of The Center and Library for the Bible and Social Justice. As I was writing this talk, my colleague Jarrett Drake delivered a co-keynote address at a Community Archives Forum hosted at UCLA. His talk covers all that I wanted to say and more,...
Archivists have an invisibility problem. Our work is misunderstood, undervalued, and often taken for granted. At the same time, we are complicit in making others - both inside and outside of the profession - invisible. We need to fix those things. Over the past year, I’ve been introduced to maintenance theory, an avenue of inquiry that I think can help us address these problems. In putting together this talk, I’ve developed a list of of...
The Burning of Paper Instead of Children: the Symbolic Destruction of Records
This is the text of a talk I gave in 2012 at the Society of American Archivists’ Annual Conference in San Diego as part of a panel on religion and archives. Yesterday’s passing of Daniel Berrigan reminded me that I never got around to publishing this work so, warts and all, here it is. I’ve added a few links here and there, but otherwise the text is largely unchanged. The bibliography for this talk is...
Introducing staticAid: A Static Site Generator for Archival Description
A recent trend in web development (first brought to my attention at this year’s edUI conference) is a renewed interest in building static websites because they’re faster, more secure, allow for more transparent versioning of content, and are more maintainable over time than CMS-backed systems. With staticAid, I’ve tried to apply those ideas to archival description: JSON files generated via ArchivesSpace’s REST API are rendered as HTML with Jekyll.1 What are static websites? Static websites...
Following is the text for a talk I gave at the 2014 edUi conference in beautiful Richmond, Virginia. Slides for the talk are available here. If you like this talk, you’ll also probaby like an interview with my boss Sibyl Schaefer in “The Signal,” which covers much of the same territory, although from a more holistic perspective. Good morning! My name is Hillel, and I’ll be talking to you about a project I’ve been involved...
Growing up, I never thought about whether or not I could sing. Everyone around me did, and I did too. My family sang before and after every meal; that was our way of saying grace. Whether or not I had a “good voice” was not something I ever thought about. Imagine my surprise, when I found myself immersed in popular American culture some years later, and discovered that not having a good voice was considered...
I am a songwriter. I write because I want to talk about things that matter to me in ways I think other people can understand. I want my songs to mean something (and something different) to everyone who hears them. I write verses, choruses, bridges, rhyme schemes and melodies. I steal ideas, words and melodies from other people; sometimes I use them as-is, more often I change them a little or a lot. Although I...
I’m sitting at O’Hare, waiting for my return flight from this year’s Code4lib conference. Code4lib always gets me to think about things - code, community, craft and creativity, to name a few - but most of all it gets me thinking about my identity. It gets me to ask “who am I?” in subtle, complex and unexpected ways. This year at Code4lib, there was a lot of talk about “hacker epistemology,” which got me to...
A couple of months ago, I decided it was time to redo my website. So, in an exercise to learn something new in the process, I’ve redone my site using Octopress, a simple blogging framework built on Jekyll. Although you can use a number of services to power it, Github works really well (plus it’s free). Since I’d already implemented a site for my song lyrics using Github Pages, I wanted to dig into this...
A few months ago, I posted that I was trying to gauge interest level in a open jam at this year’s All-Attendee Reception at the SAA Annual Meeting in San Diego. I’m pleased to announce that there was sufficient interest and enthusiasm for the idea and the event will indeed be happening! A special thank you to SAA Executive Director Nancy Beaumont for her support. A small group of musicians has come together as a...
In conversations with a number of my more creative colleagues, we came up with idea to have some sort of an open jam session, song circle or hootenanny (or whatever else you want to call it) at this year’s SAA Annual Meeting in recognition of the fact that many of us archivists are also musicians. The admittedly vague plan, as it stands now, is that a group of interested folks would bring their voices and/or...
This morning, David McClure’s blog post titled “The anxious keystroke” came across my Twitter feed. For a variety of reasons, I’ve recently been thinking a lot about archival description and the principles that are (or ought to be) behind it, and as always I’ve been thinking in metaphors (one of the hazards of being a songwriter). I found the post resonated strongly with many of my thoughts about archival description, and in many cases McClure’s...
At this week’s Code4Lib conference in Seattle, I was scheduled to give a lighting talk on some of the work I’ve been doing with the Occupy Wall Street Minutes Working Group. However, due to the previous evening’s festivities I was, um, indisposed and ended up not giving the talk. Since there seemed to be some interest in the topic, I thought I’d write something up and post it, especially since the indefatigable Corey Harper offered...
Introducing the Center and Library for the Bible and Social Justice
For the past two-plus years, I’ve been working with a stellar group of folks on the daunting and somewhat quixotic task of setting up a new library and educational center. Located at Stony Point Center about 40 miles north of New York City in the scenic Hudson Valley, the Center and Library for the Bible and Social Justice has a fantastic collection of books and periodicals in the fields of biblical study, the social sciences,...
The Society of American Archivists’ annual meeting (held this year in Chicago) ended almost two weeks ago today and, while it’s hard to believe it’s already been that long, I wanted to get down a few thoughts about the conference before it all fades away. First of all, I had a fantastic time. There was a lot of unfortunate drama surrounding the labor dispute before the conference that led to my being pretty ambivalent about...
On Continuing Conversations and Organizational Transparency
Since my post last week which detailed my concerns with the latest communication from SAA regarding the labor dispute at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, I’ve had a number of significant conversations and communications have clarified the situation and my thoughts about it. Unsurprisingly, the email which I found so problematic made a number of my colleague’s uneasy as well. Some had similar questions (and conclusions) as I did, while others wondered if they should be...
I’ve never really liked Phil Ochs all that much, mostly because I always found his songs hard to cover. His music was always too idiosyncratic; the chord changes simultaneously too labored and too unpredictable, the melodies unmemorable, the lyrics too specific and pedantic. I’m just back from watching Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune at the IFC Center, and thought I’d post a few thoughts while they’re still fresh in my mind. It’s one of...
Lately I’ve been very taken with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, an trio of fine musicians reinventing the African American string band tradition in their own unique way. Their latest release, Genuine Negro Jig, is an absolute masterpiece, but is still no substitute for seeing them live. I’ve been to a couple of their shows over the summer, and aside from being blown away by their energy and charisma, I was really fascinated by how invested...
Rosanne Cash - The List So we all know the great back story for this album by now. And to be honest, I’m starting to think that the back story outstrips the album. Look, this is a great collection of songs, and it would be pretty darn hard to totally screw it up, and Rosanne hasn’t done that. But let’s start with the song choice - there were 100 songs on that list, right? So...
Neko Case - Middle Cyclone Seeing Neko Case live is a lot like watching one of Shakespeare’s comedies. There are two women (good friends, obviously), who get most of the lines (and definitely all the good ones) and you spend most of your time paying attention to them. Then there are a bunch of men who do things like play drums and bass and guitar and banjo and whatnot. And they’re all very proficient, but...
Mark Olson and Gary Louris -Ready for the Flood Saw these guys in concert a few weeks back, and I have to say that seeing these songs live helped put the record into perspective. On the first few listens it falls flat, absent of the pop sparkle and supersized hooks of the Jayhawks days. Even the harmonies sound lazy. But seeing these two guys on stage together, you realize thisrecord is all about the unconscious...
In the library of a school that will remain unnamed, where I may or may not work, there is an elevator (in a bank of seven others) which is intended to be used exclusively by administrative staff. It runs directly to the top floor of the building, which is where the administrative offices are located, and does not stop on any of the intervening 10 floors. Now, during the school year, this is a great...
Signed J. Keir Hardie portrait card. This guy was a huge hero of my grandad, and it’s not hard to see why. ] “The Labour movement is an attempt to enable the working class to realize itself, its thoughts, and its aspirations. At present the People is a formless, shapeless, and voiceless mass, or at best, ‘An infant waiting for the light, and with no language but a cry.’ We will change all this by...
Just ran across this great article in the NY Times in which Clinton aides talk about the way the White House has changed. It’s a fascinating read from any number of angles. To whit: “None of these newly arrived archaeologists would allow their names to be used when discussing their findings; to preserve cooperation with the Bush White House in a handover-of-power that still has 49 days to go, President-elect Barack Obama’s top aides have...
Came across these rockin’ German anarchists stickers from the FAU (very well put-together website, by the way), and had to share them.
Love the cat logo.
I have no idea what any of these are saying. My pitiful grasp of high school German did not (shockingly) include the revolutionary vocabulary that might be helpful.
Quick thoughts on sports (because I'm tired of politics)
I am totally psyched for Manny v. Boston in the World Series. John Madden is one of the stupidest people on television. Troy Aikman, and I quote, “he continually continues to take bad angles on plays.” Dude, you embarrassed yourself enough as a quarterback. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for the inevitable TO implosion, which should come next week. Here’s hoping he bitchslaps Tony Romo while screaming, “take that, Jessica.” Seriously,...
Sometimes they’re unassuming. But no less beautiful: I found this hiding in the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union, Local 1-S Records, in a folder for Suburban Foods, a kitchen equipment business which required their salespeople to make onsite visits in order to conduct business and make sales. Apparently there was some dispute in the mid 70s about neighborhoods that were “safe” and “unsafe.” And here’s the “unsafe” list. As one of my co-workers...
Not so much an artifact as much as an obsolete piece of equipment. A most excellent one, mind you. Yes, it’s a radio. It’s hard to believe they were ever this big. Check out the guts of this thing though. Talk about precision tuning: I really, really wanted to take this home with me. But it weighed a lot, and besides, when the zombies attack, we’re going to need something to communicate with the rest...
Leaflet from The Group of English speaking Communists, 1918-1918. During the Russian Civil War (immediately following World War I), some Allied troops, including American and British soldiers, fought against the Communist forces in Russia. On the American side, perhaps the most famous of these groups was the Polar Bear Expedition (which totally sounds like an Arctic exploration team). Besides sending the full force of the Red Army against the invaders and their allies, the White...
It struck me the other day that us archivists have really wasteful practices. Take, for example, this method of organizing cassette tapes: Yes, those are post-its. Nothing against my colleague who was doing this. As he said, “If you can think of a better way of doing it, tell me.” Well, I couldn’t. Today I threw out some forty-odd perfectly good folders (acid-free and everything!) and replaced them with new ones simply because they were...
I’ve been in the studio a lot the last week or so, and thought I’d drop a couple pictures from the sessions here. By the way, this record is going to be great. It’s currently being mixed, so stay tuned.
The arsenal
Alvin and Russ rocking the horns.
Alvin is a Japanese nerd from 1985
Studio door
Jason Mercer on the bass.
Pensive Josh.
A couple of month ago, I guested on an episode of “Woody’s Children” hosted by the irrepressible Bob Sherman with my good friends Anne Price and Steve Suffet. Although the show aired on January 20th, I just recently managed to get my hands on the audio (hey WFUV, how about updating your website so it doesn’t look so 80’s-tastic. And what’s the point of having an “archive” if there’s nothing in it? Just askin’). Listening...