Did history begin anew last Nov. 8?

"When the blessings of American freedom get parceled out, WHAMs (white, heterosexual American males) are accustomed to standing at the head of the line," writes Andrew Bacevich. Here, Vice President Mike Pence meets with the House Freedom Caucus to discuss health care on March 23, 2017. (White House photo tweeted by Vice President Mike Pence)

This post originally appeared at TomDispatch.

Forgive me for complaining, but recent decades have not been easy ones for my peeps. I am from birth a member of the WHAM tribe, that once proud, but now embattled conglomeration of white, heterosexual American males. We have long been theres no denying it a privileged group.When the blessings of American freedom get parceled out, WHAMs are accustomed to standing at the head of the line. Those not enjoying the trifecta of being white, heterosexual and male get whats left.

Fair?No, but from time immemorial those have been the rules.Anyway, no real American would carp.After all, the whole idea of America derives from the conviction that some people (us) deserve more than others (all those who are not us). Its Gods will so at least the great majority of Americans have believed since the Pilgrims set up shop just about 400 years ago.

Lately, however, the rules have been changing in ways that many WHAMs find disconcerting. True, some of my brethren lets call them 1 percenters have adapted to those changes and continue to do very well indeed.Wherever corporate CEOs, hedge fund managers, investment bankers, tech gurus, university presidents, publishers, politicians and generals congregate to pat each other on the back, you can count on WHAMs reciting bromides about the importance of diversity! being amply represented.

BY Tamara Draut | November 14, 2016

Yet beneath this upper crust, a different picture emerges. Further down the socioeconomic ladder, being a WHAM carries with it disadvantages.The good, steady jobs once implicitly reserved for us lunch-pail stuff, yes, but enough to keep food in the family larder are increasingly hard to come by. As those jobs have disappeared, so too have the ancillary benefits they conferred, self-respect not least among them.Especially galling to some WHAMs is being exiled to the back of the cultural bus.When it comes to art, music, literature and fashion, the doings of blacks, Hispanics, Asians, gays and women generate buzz.By comparison, white heterosexual males seem bland, uncool and pass, or worst of all, simply boring.

The mandate of Heaven, which members of my tribe once took as theirs by right, has been cruelly withdrawn.History itself has betrayed us.

All of which is nonsense, of course, except perhaps as a reason to reflect on whether history can help explain why, today, WHAMs have worked themselves into such a funk in Donald Trumps America. Can history provide answers? Or has history itself become part of the problem?

Paging Professor Becker

For all practical purposes history is, for us and for the time being, what we know it to be. SoremarkedCarl Becker in 1931 at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association.Professor Becker, a towering figure among historians of his day, was president of the AHA that year.His message to his colleagues amounted to a warning of sorts:Dont think youre so smart.The study of the past may reveal truths, he allowed, but those truths are contingent, incomplete and valid only for the time being.

Put another way, historical perspectives conceived in what Becker termed the specious present have a sell-by date.Beyond their time, they become stale and outmoded, and so should be revised or discarded. This process of rejecting truths previously treated as authoritative is inexorable and essential. Yet it also tends to be fiercely contentious.The present may be specious, but it confers real privileges, which a particular reading of the past can sustain or undermine. Becker believed it inevitable that our now valid versions of history will in due course be relegated to the category of discarded myths.It was no less inevitable that beneficiaries of the prevailing version of truth should fight to preserve it.

Who exercises the authority to relegate?Who gets to decide when a historical truth no longer qualifies as true?Here, Becker insisted that Mr. Everyman plays a crucial role. For Becker, Mr. Everyman was Joe Doakes, John Q. Public, or the man in the street.He was every normal person, a phrase broad enough to include all manner of people.Yet nothing in Beckers presentation suggested that he had the slightest interest in race, sexuality or gender. His Mr. Everyman belonged to the tribe of WHAM.

BY Bill Moyers | January 20, 2017

In order to live in a world of semblance more spacious and satisfying than is to be found within the narrow confines of the fleeting present moment, Becker emphasized, Mr. Everyman needs a past larger than his own individual past.An awareness of things said and done long ago provides him with an artificial extension of memory and a direction.

Memories, whether directly or vicariously acquired, are necessary to orient us in our little world of endeavor.Yet the specious present that we inhabit is inherently unstable and constantly in flux, which means that history itself must be pliable.Crafting history necessarily becomes an exercise in imaginative creation in which all participate. However unconsciously, Everyman adapts the past to serve his most pressing needs, thereby functioning as his own historian.

Yet he does so in collaboration with others. Since time immemorial, purveyors of the past the ancient and honorable company of wise men of the tribe, of bards and storytellers and minstrels, of soothsayers and priests, to whom in successive ages has been entrusted the keeping of the useful myths have enabled him to hold in memory those things only which can be related with some reasonable degree of relevance to his own experience and aspirations.In Beckers lifetime it had become incumbent upon members of the professoriate, successors to the bards and minstrels of yesteryear, to enlarge and enrich the specious present common to us all to the end that society (the tribe, the nation, or all mankind) may judge of what it is doing in the light of what it has done and what it hopes to do.

Yet Becker took pains to emphasize that professional historians disdained Mr. Everyman at their peril:

Berate him as we will for not reading our books, Mr. Everyman is stronger than we are, and sooner or later we must adapt our knowledge to his necessities. Otherwise he will leave us to our own devices The history that does work in the world, the history that influences the course of history, is living history It is for this reason that the history of history is a record of the new history that in every age rises to confound and supplant the old.

Becker stressed that the process of formulating new history to supplant the old is organic rather than contrived; it comes from the bottom up, not the top down. We, historians by profession, share in this necessary effort, he concluded.But we do not impose our version of the human story on Mr. Everyman; in the end it is rather Mr. Everyman who imposes his version on us.

Donald Trump as Everymans Champion?

Becker offered his reflections on Everyman His Own Historian in the midst of the Great Depression.Perhaps because that economic crisis found so many Americans burdened with deprivation and uncertainty, he implicitly attributed to his everyman a unitary perspective, as if shared distress imbued members of the public with a common outlook.That was not, in fact, the case in 1931 and is, if anything, even less so in our own day.

Still, Beckers construct retains considerable utility.Today finds more than a few white heterosexual American males, our own equivalent of Mr. Everyman, in a state of high dudgeon.From their perspective, the specious present has not panned out as it was supposed to. As a consequence, they are pissed.In November 2016, to make clear just how pissed they were, they elected Donald Trump as president of the United States.

Both sides agree on one point only: that history began anew last Nov. 8, when (take your pick) America either took leave of its senses or chose greatness. Its almost as if the years and decades that had preceded Trumps election had all disappeared into some vast sinkhole.

This was, to put it mildly, not supposed to happen.For months prior to the election, the custodians of the past in its now valid version had judged the prospect all but inconceivable.Yet WHAMs (with shocking support from other tribes) intervened to decide otherwise.Rarely has a single event so thoroughly confounded historys self-assigned proctors.One can imagine the shade of Professor Becker whispering, I warned you, didnt I?

Those deeply invested in drawing a straight line from the specious present into the indefinite future blame Trump himself for having knocked history off its prescribed course. Remove Trump from the scene, they appear to believe, and all will once again be well. The urgent imperative of doing just that immediately, now, no later than this afternoon has produced whatNew York Times columnist Charles Blow aptlycallsa throbbing anxiety among those who (like Blow himself) find the relentless onslaught of awfulness erupting from this White House intolerable. They will not rest until Trump is gone.

Thiside fixe, reinforced on a daily basis by ever more preposterous presidential antics, finds the nation trapped in a sort of bizarre do-loop.The medias obsession with Trump reinforces his obsession with the media and between them they simply crowd out all possibility of thoughtful reflection. Their fetish is his and his theirs.The result is a cycle of mutual contempt that only deepens the longer it persists.

Both sides agree on one point only: that history began anew last Nov. 8, when (take your pick) America either took leave of its senses or chose greatness. How the United States got to Nov. 8 qualifies, at best, as an afterthought or curiosity. Its almost as if the years and decades that had preceded Trumps election had all disappeared into some vast sinkhole.

Where, then, are we to turn for counsel?For my money, Charles Blow is no more reliable as a guide to the past or the future than is Donald Trump himself.Much the same could be said of most other newspaper columnists, talking heads and online commentators (contributors toTomDispatch notably excepted, of course). As for politicians of either party, they have as a class long since forfeited any right to expect a respectful hearing.

God knows Americans today do not lack for information or opinion.On screens, over the airways and in print, the voices competing for our attention create a relentless cacophony. Yet the correlation between insight and noise is discouragingly low.

What would Carl Becker make of our predicament? He would, I think, see it as an opportunity to enlarge and enrich the specious present by recasting and reinvigorating history.Yet doing so, he would insist, requires taking seriously the complaints that led our latter day Everyman to throw himself into the arms of Donald Trump in the first place.Doingthat implies a willingness to engage with ordinary Americans on a respectful basis.

Unlike President Trump, I do not pretend to speak for Everyman or for his female counterpart.Yet my sense is that many Americans have an inkling that history of late has played them for suckers.This is notably true with respect to the post-Cold War era, in which the glories of openness, diversity and neoliberal economics, of advanced technology and unparalleled US military power all promised in combination to produce something like a new utopia in which Americans would indisputably enjoy a privileged status globally.

In almost every respect, those expectations remain painfully unfulfilled.The history that served for the time being and was endlessly reiterated during the presidencies of Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43 and Obama no longer serves. It has yielded a mess of pottage: grotesque inequality, worrisome insecurity, moral confusion, an epidemic of self-destructive behavior, endless wars and basic institutions that work poorly if at all.Nor is it just WHAMs who have suffered the consequences.The history with which Americans are familiar cannot explain this outcome.

BY Henry Giroux | December 16, 2016

Alas, little reason exists to expect Beckers successors in the guild of professional historians to join with ordinary Americans in formulating an explanation.Few academic historians today see Everyman as a worthy interlocutor. Rather than berating him for not reading their books, they ignore him.Their preference is to address one another.

By and large, he returns the favor, endorsing the self-marginalization of the contemporary historical profession.Contrast the influence wielded by prominent historians in Beckers day during the first third of the 20th century, they included, along with Becker, such formidables as Henry Adams, Charles and Mary Beard, Alfred Thayer Mahan and Frederick Jackson Turner with the role played by historians today.The issue here is not erudition, which todays scholars possess in abundance, but impact.On that score, the disparity between then and now is immense.

In effect, professional historians have ceded the field to a new group of bards and minstrels.So the bestselling historian in the United States today is Bill OReilly, whose books routinely sell more than a million copieseach. Were Donald Trump given to reading books, he would likely find OReillys both accessible and agreeable. But OReilly is in the entertainment business.He has neither any interest nor the genuine ability to create what Becker called history that does work in the world.

Still, history itself works in mysterious ways known only to God or to providence. Only after the fact do its purposes become evident.It may yet surprise us.

Owing his election in large part to my fellow WHAMs, Donald Trump is now expected to repay that support by putting things right.Yet as events make it apparent that Trump is no more able to run a government than Bill OReilly is able to write history, they may well decide that he is not their friend after all.With that, their patience is likely to run short.It is hardly implausible that Trumps assigned role in history will be once and for all to bring down the curtain on our specious present, demonstrating definitively just how bankrupt all the triumphalist hokum of the past quarter-century the history that served for the time being has become.

When that happens, when promises of American greatness restored prove empty, there will be hell to pay. Joe Doakes, John Q. Public and the man in the street will be even more pissed. Should that moment arrive, historians would do well to listen seriously to what Everyman has to say.

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Kissing the Specious Present Goodbye - BillMoyers.com

New Llano has a unique, 100-year-old, history. It is arguably the longest-lived socialist community in the United States.

New Llano has a unique, 100-year-old, history. It is arguably the longest-lived socialist community in the United States.

Originally established in 1917 as a Utopian community, people came from all walks of life, and from all over the world to New Llano. They were seeking a paradise where you produce for use, not profit;" where all members did equal work for equal benefits in a self-sufficient cooperative.

The first colony in California, called the Llano del Rio Cooperative Colony, was established by Job Harriman, in 1914. It was abandoned just four years later. Llano del Rio turned out to be too far from other settlements to develop a sustaining economy, and it had an unreliable water supply.

In 1917, 200 of the original 600 California colonists chartered a train and moved the experimental colony to Louisiana. They settled into the former lumber town of Stables, and changed its name to New Llano.

For the next 20 years, the colony evolved its own brand of "cooperativism," southern-style. Everyone over the age of 18 had a job. Usually jobs were assigned, but people were allowed to change occupations if they were competent.Life at the colony was not easy, but no one starved physically or intellectually.

In the early 1900's, lumber workers in Louisiana had faced many conflicts with big lumber interests in the state. This made the politics of a co-operative society appealing to them.

The socialist concept had much popular support in the United States, during the late 19th and early 20th century. Utopian colonies were scattered throughout the country during the industrial age, as the working class struggled to gain rights.

The New Llano Colony has often been dubbed a "socialist commune," however, this is not entirely accurate.

Although Harriman and many of the long-time colonists were Socialists, it was not a requirement for membership. Members simply had to agree to live co-operatively and abide by the Golden Rule-- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Many of the ideals, which were promoted within the Utopian community, were a source of pride, and have been instituted in today's American society. These include minimum wage, Social Security, low-cost housing, old-age pensions, equal rights for women, welfare, and a move toward universal health care.

Members collectively owned all industries, which they ran themselves, including water and electricity for their homes. The group produced many high-quality items, from shoes to machine tools, and popular food products.

New Llano was once home to a broom factory, sawmill, ice plant, sheet metal factory, and the leading national socialist newspaper.

The colony was one of the first groups in America to adopt the Montessori teaching method. Theodore Cuno, one of the founders of Labor Day, made New Llano his home until his death. Cuno endowed the colony with a substantial library, one of the best in Louisiana. Colony orchestras and theatrical groups performed on a roof garden, free of charge, to fellow colonists and their neighbors.

Everyone worked together to produce whatever they needed.

Eventually, in 1939, a series of financial problems and internal dissent forced the colony into receivership.

Documentary filmmakers Beverly Lewis and Rick Blackwood produced the 1994 film, "American Utopia," about the Llano del Rio Cooperative Colony in Vernon Parish.

The Town of New Llano is celebrating the 100-year anniversary with a two-day festival-style celebration, featuring live music and vendors selling arts and crafts, food and drinks.

The event runs Friday, June 30 - Saturday, July 1 at the park on Stanton Street. It will get started both days at 8 a.m. The celebration will will close at 6 p.m. on Friday. A fireworks display will take place on Saturday at 9 p.m.

Alcoholic beverages and pets are prohibited at the celebration.

The Museum of the New Llano Colony Museum will be open during the event. It is located at 211 Stanton Street, and is regularly open Tuesday-Friday, 8 a.m. - 4 p.m. (closed from noon - 1 p.m.).

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The Town of New Llano is celebrating its 100th anniversary - Beauregard Daily News

The compound called Orange Acres is arranged in four quadrants. At the bottom of the sloping property, abutting U.S. 93, used cars are parked in grassy rows. Next to the cars, the first strawberries of the year are ripening in a garden. Uphill of the garden is owner Jeffrey-James Halvorson's single-story house. And across from his house, Halvorson has converted an old tannery into what's most simply described as a guesthouse.

Flagpoles flank the junction at the center of Halvorson's property. A flag showing a smiley face with the words "Peace, love and happiness" flaps atop one. From the other flies the yellow "Don't Tread On Me" banner of American revolutionaries, its coiled rattlesnake ready to strike.

Halvorson is Orange Acres' only permanent resident, but he likes company. He's variously advertised this 8.36-acre strip of land south of Arlee as a commune, couchsurfing community center, nerd colony, dharma station and free guest ranch. The Missoulian called it "peculiar." A couchsurfing Mother Jones reporter noted the unconventional house rules (dreadlocked guests must provide their own pillowcase) and the assault rifle Halvorson claims to keep on the premises.

In his late 30s and sturdily built, Halvorson smiles like an old friend as a reporter pulls up, stepping away from the yellow refrigerator that he and a preppy, twentysomething man named Wes are lugging across the yard. At the same time, a lanky, older guest turns off the lawnmower he's been pushing beside his motorhome. The sound of the engine gives way to wind chimes dancing in a summer breeze. The breeze blows open the doors to an outdoor cupboard, exposing stacks of dishware to the sun.

Halvorson is, in no particular order, an ambassador for couchsurfing, an ordained minister (credentialed online) and a used-car salesman. To the extent that others might see contradictions among those personas, he is unfazed. One minute Halvorson is explaining his spiritual mission to give food and shelter to veterans, homeless people and pretty much anyone who isn't drunk and wants a place to rest. The next, he's saying that Missoula County officials should be jailed for what he considers their campaign over the last six years to stop him. The minute after that, he's sprinkling "be-back" dust on a potential buyer whose first offer is too low.

A self-described Libertarian, Halvorson likes to demonstrate taxation policy by passing around a dollar bill and cutting off a third of it with each exchange. Pretty soon the whole dollar is gone, but what's really diminished is liberty.

"We started as a country where we left (England) so people could have their freedom to farm, to live, to thrive, to practice their religion," he says. "To practice who they are."

One of those Puritans, John Winthrop, famously imagined his colony "a city upon a hill." He was quoting the Book of Matthew, in which Jesus describes his followers as "the salt of the earth" and the "light of the world." The new world, Winthrop meant, would offer more than a chance for his fellow nonconformists to flee a king. It would carry the promise, and the baggage, of righteousness.

Nearly 400 years later, two poles of American righteousness are staked out on this gentle slope south of Arlee: the hippie and the rattler, the "take and eat" of Matthew meets the "Come and take it!" of battle and self-determination. In the middle is Jeff. Standing on his hill.

Jay Lewellen found Orange Acres on Craigslist, where it was listed as a "nerd colony, free guest ranch, for young adults." The post explained that people willing to pull their weight could stay for up to 20 days, maybe longer. The listing featured a photo of people in Stormtrooper helmets posing next to a black limousine.

"We are not a cult," the ad promised.

Lewellen is 29 years old, originally from Florida, with twin neck tattoos that depict a pot leaf folded into a peace sign and a skeleton hand flashing the sign of the horns. He was planting dragon fruit in the Philippines earlier this year when he decided to move to Montana. He doesn't consider himself a nerd, but figured rent-free temporary housing would buy him time to find his footing in a new city.

His plane landed in Missoula at midnight. Halvorson met him at the airport. After a quick tour of the Orange Acres property, Lewellen laid down in a recycled-wood cabin barely bigger than the mattress inside it. He couldn't sleep because of strange rustling sounds on the other side of the wall. "It was kind of like The Hills Have Eyes," Lewellen says.

Halvorson had forgotten to mention his sheep.

Missoula residents familiar with Halvorson likely know his name from the newspaper, where he's a frequent flyer on the Missoulian's letters page, and from that paper's coverage of Missoula County's controversial crackdown on land-use violations, which landed him in court. But most people who meet Halvorson are introduced to him online, through Couchsurfing.com and other sites that cater to people in search of a free place to sleep.

Couchsurfing is for idealists, strangers who trust one another to open their homes to fellow humans without recompense. This experiment in generosity and sharing has since been co-opted and commodified by Airbnb, but commercialized hospitality is sterile compared to couchsurfing havens like Orange Acres, where host and guest alike wear their eccentricities on their sleeves. Halvorson introduces himself in his Couchsurfing.com profile as a "rebel, do-gooder" who is "out to right the wrongs of the world." Then he lists the details: Guests staying more than one night have to pitch in on chores. No crackheads, Sierra Club members, haters or meanies allowed. Dogs and children are welcome if they're leashed. No one goes hungry, but if Halvorson catches you spending money on alcohol instead of food, you'll be asked to leave. Surfers without references must complete a lengthy questionnaire that asks whether they've ever clubbed baby seals and what they'd miss most about life if they died today.

Couchsurfing is a natural fit for Halvorson, who says he'd like to meet every person on Earth, if only he could live long enough to do it. He admits to being the guy who tries to strike up a conversation in the grocery line. His worst nightmare is being trapped alone on an island with $1 million and a direct line to an Amazon drone, because he'd have no one to share the deliveries with.

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Jeff Halvorson built an idiosyncratic utopia at Orange Acres. Now it could all be yours for $399999. - Missoula Independent

Red Utopia is an art book in the making, documenting communist parties and their iconography over the past 100 years in India, Italy, Nepal, Portugal and Russia. The project is currently gathering funds on Kickstarter and will be jointly published by Nazraeli Press and Ipso Facto.

Jan Banning, the photographer and artist behind the work, describes Red Utopia as a non-propagandistic search for what is left of communism, 100 years after the Russian Revolution.The book will contain photos of communist party office interiors as well as environmental portraits of officials and activists, and is plannedfor publication in October 2017, to mark the hundredth anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

Elisabeth Biondi, the independent curator and former Visuals Editor at The New Yorker, described the photo series as terrific and even better than Bureaucratics, Bannings critically acclaimed photo book that brought him worldwide recognition.

To find out more about the project and how to get involved, click here to visit the crowdfunding page.

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Red Utopia: help fund a new art book documenting communist iconography across the globe - The Calvert Journal

When American filmmaker Damani Baker talks about the power of meeting his "first black president," he isn't talking about Obama. He means Maurice Bishop, who led a bloodless coup on the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada and, for a hot minute in the early '80s, worked to turn it into an Afrocentric socialist paradise.

In The House on Coco Road, Baker sets out to recall his brief and largely idyllic experience on the island. In 1983, Baker's mom Fannie Haughton abruptly uprooted her young family from Oakland to seek a better life in Bishop's vision for a new society. But the documentary ends up painting a far broader picture of the woman who brought them there and her role in the history of black activism.

Home movies reveal Baker's family's ongoing quest for a sunnier futurefrom segregated Louisiana, where his great-grandparents were sharecroppers, to California in the Great Migration, to college campuses for his mom's political awakening and then to his boyhood home of Oakland, the birthplace of the Black Panther Party that gave way to the crack epidemic.

Through this lens, we start to understand his mom's seemingly wild plan to move their family to a tropical island in the wake of a revolution. "To live in a country where there is a black prime minister and black folks taking care of their own. I thought, what a good experience for my children," Haughton tells her son, still smiling as she thinks back on that year. "It was a utopia."

The utopia was short-lived. Bishop was deposed by his right-hand man. Reagan then sent in troops to take down what he claimed was "a Soviet Cuban colony being readied as a major military bastion to export terror and undermine democracy."

Baker says this is a lie, and his film places the episode in the larger narrative of black oppression at the hands of white America.

Still, it's a remarkably hopeful film. Baker's intimate family portrait makes a compelling case that, even in the darkest times, moms and dads should still strive toward a brighter future where their kids can play carefree in the sun. RUTH BROWN.

SEE IT: The House at Coco Road screens at Clinton St. Theater on Thursday, June 22 at 7:30 pm. $7-$10 suggested admission.

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"The House on Coco Road" Remembers A Short-Lived Afrocentric Utopia - Willamette Week

My trip to the 2017 U.S. Open at Erin Hills turned out to be an ego trip.

That happens when youre one of the co-designers of Erin Hills and your ugly mug is flashed, even briefly, on television. Along with my fellow designers, Dr. Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry, I made the most of every opportunity. We became bona fide celebrities de jure, albeit undercard division, filling airtime in that dull Sunday through Wednesday lead-up to the main event.

It was enough exposure that people in the gallery would walk up and ask for our autographs. I signed so many hats (and flags!) that, by Tuesday, I made sure I had my trusty Sharpie in my pocket as I headed to the course. Forgot my sunglasses one morning, but not my Sharpie.

One guy asked me to sign the back of his flag, so as not to soil Jordan Speiths signature. Another asked me to pose for a selfie, which I did, and then shook my hand, saying, Terrific course, Dr. Hurdzan.

Like any good Kardashian, I had my entourage. My wife Lynn and I had rented a five-bedroom house on the edge of North Lake, 15 minutes from Erin Hills, and our five daughters, three sons-in-law and five grandsons all joined us, as did a niece and her husband from Omaha. The USGA had provided me with tickets for all, some Hospitality, some Gallery, so I had to play Scrooge on a couple of mornings, picking who deserved air conditioning that day. On Thursday I played Solomon, allowing one daughter to have breakfast in the Rules Hospitality tent before surreptitiously switching tickets with another daughter so she could also sample the buffet line.

The author, in the back with a purple shirt, with his extended family during an eventful U.S. Open week at the course he helped design.

My family played its part, particularly at the Monday afternoon USGA Architects Forum, in which Mike, Dana and I pontificated for an hour on the virtues of Erin Hills, each of us

proving that weve yet to grasp the sound-bite mentality that is essential to todays media. Had Adam Barr not let the Whitten Clan into the media tent to watch the event (and cool off), I suspect it would have lacked a quorum.

But enough about my family. This column is about me, budding narcissist.

Mike, Dana and I made two appearances on Golf Channel, one Monday evening, the other early Wednesday morning. The first time, we climbed the Golf Channel tower to the Live From set, incredibly cramped for such a rickety structure, and as a make-up artist dusted our noses, we watched Rich Lerner, Brandel Chamblee and Frank Nobilo discuss whether U.S. Open courses should now measure 8,000 yards. At the end of the segment, the first of the nightly rainstorms rolled in and a crack of lightning struck uncomfortably nearby.

Related: Ron Whitten on the making of Erin Hills

Talent off the set, the director shouted. Down to the rain room. Chamblee and Nobilo shed their microphones and were hustled downstairs. I expected to follow, but instead, microphones were put on Mike, Dana and me, and we took chairs at the desk, the open air backdrop of a storm rolling in behind us. I looked at Lerner, still at his seat, and thought, Isnt he talent, too? But, pro that he is, he stayed to conduct a quick interview with the three expendables. Anchors, I presume, are grounded.

I returned to the tower early Wednesday morning and found it empty. So I sat on the steps, thinking that sooner or later the Morning Drive crew would show up. A writer walked by, said hello, and asked why I wasnt with Mike and Dana on the practice range, where they were talking with Matt Ginella. So I ran to the practice range, found I had plenty of time to get miked up, but they stuck me on the side of a slope of the tee box next to Dana. Hes about my height but looked half a foot taller than me in the shot. Seeing my profile on a rebroadcast that evening, I looked like Danny Devito as The Penguin.

The rest of the week, I strutted around the gallery each day, awaiting recognition. One morning, a small scrum behind the eighth green caught my eye, so I investigated. It was Bob Lang, the original owner of Erin Hills, signing hats with his signature and tag line, Golf is a Journey. He saw me and motioned me over.

We proceeded to entertain a dozen spectators with a five-minute comedy routine, me mostly the butt of his jokes. But I got in one good jab.

Back in twenty-oh-three, Ron gave me a copy of his book, Bob told our modest audience, and Ron inscribed it, Someday Ill write a book about Erin Hills, and Ill call it, Golf is a Journey. You remember that, Whitten? Isnt that right?

Yes, I responded, and you stole my line.

That got a big enough laugh that a marshall shushed us up.

On Sunday, the plan was for Mike, Dana and me to walk down the 18th hole with the U.S. Open champion, whomever that might be. But I wanted to walk the entire course first. I selected the twosome of Patrick Reed and Russell Henley, both four strokes back of leader Brian Harman at the start of the fourth round, and three groups ahead.

Id been given a lime green lanyard which got me inside the ropes, and the unwritten rule is that such a lanyard is tethered to those perimeter ropes. But I wanted to walk down the middle of every fairway on my golf course that Open Sunday, despite not having a lime green Walking Access badge. Figuring its better to seek forgiveness than permission, I simply slipped under the rope after Reed and Henley teed off, and I strolled out into the middle of the first fairway, following them at a respectable distance, acting like I belonged there.

No one questioned my presence, so I followed the group for the next four hours, soaking up the grandeur, pretending the polite applause was for me. I did contribute a bit on the 12th. After Henley smothered his second shot, from the first cut of rough, into deep fescue, he and his caddie headed far too far into the gunch in search of it, so I trotted over to where Id seen the ball go in, pushed back the thigh-high grass and said, Heres your ball.

Dont touch it! the caddie shouted, and I took that as a thank-you.

Henley salvaged a bogey at 12, but then bogeyed the par-3 13th, four-putted the 14th and took a horrendous 8 on the short par-4 15th, a score that undoubtedly contributed to making 15 the hardest hole that last day. Reed, meanwhile, played steady golf, playing magnificent recoveries every time he missed a green, but he failed to sink a single birdie putt in my presence. Sorry, Patrick.

At the 15th, I spotted Hurdzan, so I left the Reed-Henley pairing. Mike and I quickly surmised that Brooks Koepka was likely to win this thing, and after we watched him birdie 15, we decided to follow him home. When Koepka then birdied the par-3 16th, we knew it was all over.

On the 18th, Koepka hit a towering 3-wood tee shot, followed by another to the slope below the green of this massive par 5. As Mike and I walked a short distance behind him, I kept looking for Dana, but never found him. Perhaps he was still with Harman, hoping for a miracle.

As Mike and I proudly marched shoulder to shoulder down the 18th of Erin Hills, sure enough, an official in a lime green shirt approached us. Off the fairway, he said. You dont have Walking Access.

Its the last hole, Mike said. Were the architects. Cut us some slack. The official did.

A lot has been made of the fact that, during my many interviews leading up to the U.S. Open, I repeatedly predicted that, if the wind didnt blow, the winner would shoot 16-under par. People were amazed that Id hit Koepkas score on the nose. I dont understand why. To steal a line from Paul Simon: As if I didnt know my own bed?

Once every 25 years I turn into Carnak. Back in 1992, when the U.S. Open was played at Pebble Beach (the last par 72 Open until Erin Hills), I bet longtime Golf Digest editor-in-chief Nick Seitz that Tom Kite, who hadnt even qualified for the Masters that year, would win it. Kite did, and I won a whole ten bucks.

I won another ten bucks this year, this time from golf architect Stephen Kay, with whom I designed my first course, Architects Golf Club in New Jersey. Stephen and I have a running wager on every major, alternately making 12 picks in advance of each event. Yes, among my dozen picks this year was Brooks Koepka. Surprised?

As if Id never noticed the way he brushed his hair from his forehead.

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Seven Days in Utopia - GolfDigest.com

Technology evolved our species. From simple stone tools to satellites in space and reprogramming our DNA - our tools developed us in exponential ways.

The speed of change is mind blowing. The rate of change that would happen in an age or a lifetime is now happening on a daily basis. We are launching into a future where we can create and manipulate a virtual reality, where augmented humans become super humans and where super AI become our next evolutionary stage.

But what will be the fate of Homo-Sapiens? Where do we find ourselves in this new evolutionary stage?

Is this Techno-Utopia all its cracked up to be? And is it for everyone or just for the very wealthy and privileged, like most of the distributive technologies which have been transforming our reality at light speed.

What happens to us when we have super augmented humans and AIs running around amongst old-fashioned homo sapiens?

Augmented World Expo

In early June 2017, over 4500 participants, 351 speakers, and 212 exhibitors

Met at the Santa Clara convention center in Santa Clara, CA for the 8th Augmented Worlds Expo. The exhibition hall was filled with the latest and greatest Virtual Reality experiences, Augmented Reality technology and other cutting-edge technologies and companies. The event has grown and is becoming global with the Asian Expo coming in July 2017 and the European one in October 2017.

This year, beyond its excellent production quality, great speakers and an overall great experience, I also found an industry and subculture that is coming of age in many ways. It seems that the industry and its contributors and investors are privy to the distribution and transformation they are about to unleash on humanity.

For the first time in history, the difference Tech brought forward in this conference is about to create a superhuman. These technologies will change and augment homo-sapiens and what it means to be human.

To investigate more about the state of augmented humanity, I sat down with Jay Iorio, Director of Innovation of IEEE-SA, part of IEEE - the worlds largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.

I had a long and profound conversation with Jay, specifically focusing on ethics around the question I raised above: In a world where we have developed machines smarter, faster and more evolved than humans - how do we protect the rights of humanity?

Jay believes we have gotten to a stage where technology cannot escape the moral question. Virtual reality is promising a world without friction, but we grow through friction. With the evolution of smaller and smaller augmentative technology, we are nearing the stage of implants in our eyes and our brains.

As we talked, I thought of this great piece by Keiichi Matsuda HYPER-REALITY

For some, this could be the best thing - always on, always gamified existence. For others, including myself, this proves as a nightmare scenario where you cannot escape and already chaotic existence of urban life. Where the mind, already over saturated and bombarded by constant input, knows no rest.

My conversation with Jay went deeper into the time where we will be in this surreal new world where we are constantly on and cannot escape the digital reality:

IEEE did a Call To Action to try and build these conversations of ethics and free will into the emerging tech of AI[ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE], and AS [AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS], like an engineer building a security system within the platform, she is building.

So how do we start building Ethical interoperability built into the underlying code?

Jay Iorio is part of IEEE collaborative project called:

The General principles of this document, are reminiscent in a way to Asimovs three laws of Robotics:

In their deeper exploration they look into these sections:

In our conversation, Jay and I talked about the idea of ethics being mental or moral externalities (externalities are the consequences of economic activities by unrelated third parties. Pollution is one common externality created as a side product of industry and affects everyone).

As our civilizations become god-like and we obtain superpowers, not all of humanity will continue to move forward, and a lot will be left behind.

Humans are now in control of our evolution - but should we be?

We all need to become futurists, to understand what is coming and thus be able to assess what is happening.

We need to see how we use these technologies for good.

But we also need to remember that we can separate from our bodies and become detached minds - and is that truly where we want to go?

One of my favorite keynotes of the expo was by the brilliant Tish Shute, co-founder of Augmented Worlds Expo and Director of AR/VR at Huawei Technologies . Tish is a synthesist a corporate technology and product strategist, entrepreneur, and innovator. In her talk, Tish brought forward Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella 10 Laws for AI. These 10 laws embody a lot of what is also discussed in the ETHICALLY ALIGNED DESIGN document. These are questions and concepts that need to be raised as we are moving towards hailing a new age of intelligent machines and calling forth the singularity.

Tish brought forward the idea of XR - exponential reality. This definition wants to put together VR [Virtual Reality], MR [Mixed Reality] and AR [Augmented Reality] into a new categorization that looks at exponential humans. It seems that the most quoted person during this three days conference was Yuval Noah Harari:

Tish Shute

Yuvals quote is what it means to live in a world where people have super powers. Its not about upgrading our external tools, thats the old idea of AR - a new UI to the world. Weve moved beyond this. We arrived in times where soon we will have the abilities to upgrade the human body, augment it and the mind and merge it with our tools.

Tish Shute

And this is the three paths it may show. We at the beginning of a new era, as Yuval Calls our next evolutionary phase - Homo Deus - the God-Human.

The thread that was weaved through this event was the fear and awe of these technologies. On one side, the program kept using the tagline Super Powers to change the world but also acknowledging the dangers of these technologies. In his talk, Black Mirror / White Mirror: A Look at our Utopic and Dystopic AR Futures, Super Ventures partner and co-producer of AWE, Tom Emrich looks at both side of this conversation: from Empathy through VR immersive experiences, to super power to the people, which now focuses on helping people with disabilities but will expand to all of us: Gone will be the days where we are limited by the limitations we are born with. The only limitation will be whatever is in our pocket in terms of how much we can spend. Tom also discussed the potential of a quantum jump in spirituality and how the meme in the more spiritual world discusses the paradigm shift in human consciousness at the same time the technologist are hailing a huge shift.

On the contrary, these technologies might bring humanity to live in deep isolation, truth and reality might disintegrated and is the future of AR/VR will be one long digital interaction where we find ourselves isolated, alone and scared.

The big question is where does the Black Mirror, like the dystopian TV show brings forward, starts and where does the White Mirror starts?

My favorite talk of the event was the amazing storyteller and futurist, Jason Silva. Jason is by far, one of the more eloquent thinkers Ive seen in years.

His brand of inspirational videos on youtube, Shots of Awe aligned beautifully with the AWE of Augmented Worlds Expo. He gave an excellent talk about the evolution of humanity and how we are creating our evolutionary children with AI and augmented humans.

He reflected on how humanity has been using instruments to extend our agency, transcend and overcome our limits.

We are Living in the age of exponential change. The rate of change is beyond what our ancestors were used to in a few generations.

We used to live in a world that was linear and local and now we live in a world that global and exponential but our brains and intuition are still wired to think of change in a linear fashion.

Exponential transformation: the phones in our pockets, the tool you take for granted is a million times faster, a million smaller and a thousand times stronger than something that used to be half a building in size 40 years ago. And this is not changing - in 40 years our phones will be the size of a blood cell and will change us from within - all of this is not changing - its getting faster.

All the ways we can Steward the contents of our consciousness

Jason reflects in his talk, how Technology is the embodiment of human creativity in the world.

I got the chance to speak with Jason one on one and asked him about his view of the light and shadow of technology and what his view of technology as a real creator for change.

He reflected how technology could be demonized, not without reason but to keep a positive possibility for the future; positive vision is essential if we are to truly grow as a species.

If there is so much darkness in our collective narratives and all we are showing in our mainstream media is dystopia, his vision is of a techno-utopia where we become more human, more super, more conscious and more feeling. Jason wants to bring forward the meme of the White Mirror, the light to shine our shadows, and the optimism that we can become great evolved humans, who feel, experience and be entranced in states of bliss.

We become the architects of our future and we can envision a great one . One where we dont need to ever get down from our bliss and our highs. But in actuality, what David Pierce called, Paradise Engineering - creating pleasures and paradise beyond anything we can imagine, or as Jason said it in his newest Shots of Awe video - After the ecstasy, more Ecstasy.

In his book, Homo Deus - A brief history of tomorrow, Yuval Noah Harari, who seems to be the prophet du jour of the augmented human and Dataism movement, looks at our species, the Sapiens as it evolves into the new Homo-Deus - the God-Human.

Our species is in crisis. But some believe that a crisis is our birth. But is it a birth of a new species that, like us, Homo-Sapiens, will destroy the less technologically advanced species that came before us, as we did to the Neanderthals. Or will it be a more human than human species, one that is not only highly intelligent but conscious and empathetic beyond our wildest dreams?

One that will engineer paradise, not only for themselves but for all beings sharing this beautiful planet earth.

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The Fear and AWE of Techno-Utopia - HuffPost

So just what is a utopia?

Way back in 1516 Englands Sir Thomas More used the word to describe a mythical island with ideal economic and social conditions where everyone was educated, wise, and prosperous. In other words, an ideally perfect political and social society.

In the modern world, Peter Drucker used the word or concept to describe an ideal Christian society.

So, who was Peter Drucker? Many will remember this American management sage, consultant, and educator. He was born in Austria and grew up in a liberal, Lutheran family, later becoming one of the most astute observers of organizational and managerial effectiveness. It was Drucker The Economist magazine described as the king of the management gurus. He was a leader in his field, and he focused on the enormous social benefits that can be achieved by what he referred to as uncompensated, volunteer efforts aimed at helping others.

We were surprised to learn that it was also Peter Drucker who, after his thorough study of its inner workings, boldly declared The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as the only utopia that ever worked. Powerful, statement to be sure.

When interviewed by a Harvard-educated writer, Drucker was asked if it might be best to pencil out the word ever, to avoid stating his case too strongly. The founder of modern management took his pen and wrote ever back into the quote.

Drucker was fascinated with what he saw as the fruits of Mormonism in the multitude of effective service and educational activities successfully performed every day by hundreds of thousands of volunteers in the Church that some have described as a well-oiled machine.

With no paid clergy, its well known that the Mormons do carry out an amazingly rich variety of well-organized and effective educational and humanitarian service programs. This is true for people of all ages throughout the world. Studied simply as a functioning organization, Drucker could not get over the literally billions of dollars that would otherwise go to personnel and administrative costs now handled instead by dedicated volunteers who work daily in the trenches, so to speak.

Starting with six members led by Joseph Smith, Jr. in New York State in 1830, the Church continues to roll on with over 15 million members in 150 countries.

As converts, we are always amazed at the functioning of the priesthood leadership existent in the church to which we now belong. In our lifetime we have seen the amazing functioning of the many thousands of missionaries and volunteers, young and old, respond to acts of God, such as floods and tornados. We have witnessed immense projects in other countries such as the providing of fresh drinking water to people in remote villages, wheelchairs donated by the thousands, amazing educational opportunities made available to those less fortunate, and so much more.

Meanwhile, we always find it interesting to read and listen to others regarding their thoughts about our organization and beliefs -- such as Peter Drucker. We feel these various perspectives can help us make the effort to share especially the positive things about our various religious backgrounds. This, we feel is true -- knowing that so many dedicated churches and organizations do so much wonderful work in the world. It has been our joy to partner with several of these entities both in Africa and Polynesia, so we know whereof we speak.

Dean and Nancy Hoch are local public affairs representatives of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. dean.nancy@gmail.com.

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The only utopia that ever worked - Idaho State Journal

A dose of exaggeration is inevitable and occasionally welcome in politics. But in making his case for keeping control of New York schools, Mayor de Blasio is crossing the line into pulp fiction.

Standing in City Halls glorious rotunda, the mayor warned that any change would invite the return of chaos and corruption. The implied subtext, that he is running a smooth, honest operation, is so obviously untrue that he might well have winked and nodded.

To add irony to insult, he was surrounded by children holding Pass mayoral control signs as he insisted, We dont want our children treated as political pawns.

Hey, pawn, smile for the camera. No, wait, dont smile. Look sad and angry.

So it goes in the cynical swamp known as New York. The mayor who presides over one of the most corrupt and incompetent administrations in memory holds a rally for children that is dominated by union members where he warns that a nonexistent utopia is at risk.

The gathering was such a soulless gesture that even the teachers union, which has benefited the most from de Blasios tenure, skipped it as unnecessary.

Unhelpful would have been more accurate, for the greatest threat to mayoral control is this mayors false claim to have been a wise steward of the power Albany granted. His many failures, and especially his ruthless bid to strangle the charter movement, explain why the state Senate is threatening to let the power expire at the end of the month.

In theory, mayoral control is a no-brainer. In fact, under this mayor, the schools are slipping backward, even as the cost skyrockets.

Failure doesnt come cheap in de Blasios New York. The schools operating budget is $24.3billion, and another $6.5 billion covers pensions and debt service, according to the Department of Education. In addition, there is a $15.5 billion capital plan through fiscal year 2019.

This gusher of city, state and federal money defeats any claim that New York doesnt invest in its children. In fact, it invests like a drunken sailor, with similar results.

Credibility is also a casualty. The mayors team uses every loophole to lower standards, including on discipline, so they can pepper the debate with happy talk about statistical improvement.

And no teacher need fear the ax, even when students graduate without being able to read their diplomas.

The lack of consequences is exactly why then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg succeeded in gaining mayoral control in 2002. If it is now failing, why should it be continued?

After all, the current mayors brand of mayoral control amounts to union control, which takes the city back to the pre-Bloomberg era. Since de Blasio isnt using the power for actual progress, why not take it away?

The answer is the real tragedy: there is no reliable place to put the power. The history of New Yorks school wars illustrates the point.

The turbulence over decentralization, which involved racial politics and rank anti-Semitism, reached its peak under Mayor John V. Lindsay, who was so embattled that he was given no seats on the ruling Board of Education. Eventually, the mayor got two of the seven seats, with the five borough presidents each getting one.

The goal was to keep local control by forcing the mayor to win over at least two borough presidents to get a majority. In reality, the unions controlled most of the borough leaders, so no chancellor could get the job or take action without union approval, which immediately doomed reform.

Mayors Ed Koch, David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani chafed under the structure because it made them responsible for the budget without the authority to make real change. Going back to a system of fractured power, then, isnt a step forward.

The awful truth is that mayoral control is the best solution, but it wont work as long as the mayors name is de Blasio. The only hope is partial that Albany exercises greater oversight to prevent disaster, which is what Senate leader John Flanagan is offering City Hall.

Flanagan, a Long Island Republican, wants better answers on how the city spends billions of state taxpayer dollars. And he wants de Blasio to get out of the way of adding more charters. Those are reasonable demands, and the mayor is foolish to reject them.

That he does so shows his arrogance, and his hypocrisy in pretending to care about at-risk children. The best charter schools have broken through the barriers of race, class and ZIP code to show that most children can meet high standards.

Yet the mayor resists for one simple reason: As the chief errand boy of the unions, he is sworn to protect them from charter competition. Unions give him money and votes and he lets them run the schools, the results be damned.

Thats the truth, the whole truth, and everything else is fiction.

Another day, another attempted terror attack in Europe. Yesterday, it was Belgium, the day before, it was Paris.

Most intelligence analysts say that the Islamic State is stepping up individual attacks in response to the fact that American and coalition forces are shrinking the territory it controls in Iraq and Syria. The theory is that the barbarians want to inflict civilian casualties in the West to distract attention from their battlefield defeats.

Whatever the truth, the facts compel tighter restrictions on potential jihadists who are already on law enforcements radar.

Unfortunately, a lax approach still dominates. For example, officials admitted that the man who rammed a car filled with guns and gas canisters into a police van on the Champs-Elyses had a gun permit despite being on Frances terror watch list.

Why does that keep happening? Nearly every major attack, including many in the US, involve men suspected of being radicalized, yet they were free to carry out their mayhem.

Numbers are part of the problem, with Great Britain watching some 23,000 people. That takes enormous police power, with much of it certain to be wasted.

But what is the alternative? Public safety must come first or western cities will become full-time war zones.

Stop the presses! Tuesdays New York Times did not have a single front-page story accusing President Trump of doing anything dastardly, despicable or just different.

Even more stunning, there was a David Brooks column inside saying it is striking how little evidence there is that any underlying crime occurred that there was any actual collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russians.

Hmmm. Inquiring minds want to know, whats up, Gray Lady?

Thats going to leave a mark.

A story headlined Skiers Hit the Slopes in Bikini Tops as Californias Endless Winter Endures a Heat Wave contained the not-so-sexy facts: Patrol workers describe dealing with brutal skin abrasions on bare-skinned skiers who fall.

Ouch!

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The truth about mayoral control under de Blasio - New York Post

TRONDHEIM, Norway Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has set a deadline for humanity to save itself. Within in the next 100 years, he warns, we need to colonize Mars and other planets. If we dont, we may not survive climate change, disease, and other versions of doom were bound to inflict on ourselves this century.

Hawkings pessimistic take on humanity isnt new. But the super-famous scientist and author has been making the case more urgently in advance of the release of his new BBC documentary, Expedition New Earth, this summer.

And President Trumps decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement on June 1 has only upped the stakes, Hawking said in a talk delivered by Skype at the Starmus science and art festival on Tuesday.

Unlike Donald Trump, who may just have taken the most serious and wrong decision on climate this world has seen, I am arguing for the future of humanity and a long-term strategy to achieve this, Hawking, now 75 and still a professor at the University of Cambridge, said.

There is no new world, no utopia around the corner, on Earth, he added. We are running out of space, and the only places to go to are other worlds.

If you share Hawkings faith in the human imagination and fierce drive to explore, then these are hopeful words. Its conceivable that we could rekindle the excitement of the early days of space travel in the 1960s, and get more serious about it.

And Hawking has some concrete goals to guide us going forward. If were going to make his timeline for building new civilizations before we perish, heres what we need to do:

If these ideas sound familiar, its because billionaires like Elon Musk and Richard Branson, who are deeply invested in spaceflight, have been pushing them too. Some of Hawkings fellow physicists and astronomers also agree we could use an exit strategy. And theres now a small but growing community of aspiring space colonists prepping for life on Mars. (To be clear, Mars, for now, looks like a pretty deadly place.)

Last year, as Voxs Brian Resnick reported, Hawking, along with a Russian billionaire and Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg, concocted a scheme to build and send spacecraft the size of postage stamps to Alpha Centauri, the second-closest star to Earth, some 4.37 light-years away.

The plan, called Breakthrough Starshot, is ambitious, to say the least. A huge number of engineering hurdles would need to be cleared over the next couple of decades to make a launch possible. And its just a tiny example of what wed need to actually decamp to other planets and the moon.

Timetables like Hawkings are troubling to climate scientists and a whole lot of other people whod like to focus on fixing planet Earth, however. If we start looking for our salvation outside our solar system, they fear we may be dissuaded or distracted from reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avert catastrophic climate change right now.

As Katherine Hayhoe, a renowned climate scientist at Texas Tech University and another Starmus speaker, tweeted during Hawkings talk on Tuesday:

And that's why cutting our carbon emissions is so essential to all of us: our planet, its people, and even the future of space exploration.

Hawking admits there are risks to the kind of audacious space exploration hes calling for. We dont know what or whom well find when we venture further afield.

But, he said Tuesday, with just a twinge of envy, "If there are beings on Alpha Centauri, they remain blissfully unaware of the rise of Donald Trump.

Why Stephen Hawking is more afraid of capitalism than robots

A neurologist explains how she helped Eddie Redmayne play Stephen Hawking

Heres Joey Stromberg on why space tourism is going to be utterly disappointing

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Stephen Hawking: it's time to get the hell off planet Earth - Vox

By Celia Wren By Celia Wren June 19 at 1:05 PM

Roller coasters are my favorite! a character exclaims as he sits onboard a climbing, plunging amusement-park ride in This Is the Big One, a 10-minute drama featured in this years Source Festival. The remark may strike a chord with hearers: After all, a festival that focuses on new works can be like a roller coaster, with abrupt, vertiginous ups and downs. People who attend such events may have a tolerance for variability.

But dependable attractions are much in evidence at this years Source Festival, running through July 2. To start with, in honor of the festivals 10th year, the lineup includes a new production of Topher Paynes Perfect Arrangement. After debuting at the Source Festival in 2013, the play went on to national success, including a major award and an off-Broadway run.

Set in a Georgetown duplex in 1950, Perfect Arrangement tells of two gay couples who have worked out marriages of convenience with each other so as to pass as straight. Bob and Millie Martindale (Jon Reynolds and Danielle Scott) appear to be the next-door neighbors of Jim and Norma Baxter (Jack Novak and Mary Myers). In fact, Bob and Jim are partners, as are Millie and Norma. The masquerade allows the four to maintain a comfortable private domesticity until the State Department, where Bob and Norma work, embarks on a purge of suspected homosexuals. (The play is based on the real events of the Lavender Scare.)

On opening night this month, director Nick Martins production displayed a few moments of hesitation and stiffness, suggesting that the actors were still acclimatizing to their roles. Still, the action clipped along at a pleasantly brisk pace, honoring both the plays bubbly comedy and its serious themes. In a fun touch, every now and then a stretch of dialogue, or a stage picture, would archly echo 1950s sitcoms and advertisements.

Scott and Myers are particularly persuasive as the ebullient but canny Millie and the wearier, more cynical Norma. In a smaller role, Toni Rae Salmi displays ace comic timing as Barbara Grant, a State Department translator who knows her own mind. Jessica Cancino designed the set, a bright, decorous 1950s living room an ideal spot for serving cocktails and canaps.

Perfect Arrangement isnt the only festival offering to reprise the tried-and-true. Of the two 10-minute play showcases, one revives some of the best short scripts from the past decade. I caught the other showcase: an enjoyable group of six playlets with the umbrella title Covert Catalyst. Highlights include This Is the Big One, Chelsea Marcantels artful portrait of six people who experience a roller coaster in drastically different ways. (Kevin Boudreau plays the aforementioned fan.)

Also delightful is local playwright John Bavosos Threat Level: Cream, a droll and twisty tale of two Washingtonians (Chloe Mikala and Jonathan M. Rizzardi) who encounter a suspicious gallon of milk on the Metro.

A couple of the Covert Catalyst pieces are slyly political. For instance, in Lori Fischers bold, surreal Gotta Gethere Whatever Itakes Versus Mr. Chaos, two people (Zoe Walpole and Carol Spring) are so shocked by an election that they embark on a nonstop jumping routine, essentially aiming to bounce their way to utopia.

The festival also includes two artistic blind dates, collaborations between artists of different disciplines. This reviewer cannot attest to the quality of the readings or blind dates. But bracing for the ride can be part of the fun.

Source Festival Through July 2 at Source, 1835 14th St. NW. Tickets: $15-$32. Call 866-811-4111 or visit sourcefestival.org.

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Brace for fun in Source Festival's new plays - Washington Post

The New Inflatable Moment May 3September 3, 2017

BSA Space 290 Congress St #200 Boston, MA 02210 USA

http://www.architects.org Twitter / Facebook / Instagram / #BSASpace / #BSAFoundation

The New Inflatable Moment (through September 3, 2017) explores inflatable structures used in architecture, art, and engineering since the emergence of the hot air balloon. While celebrating their practical applications, the exhibition focuses on the role some of these revolutionary works of imagination have had in envisioning utopia.

Inspired by the 1998 exhibition and book, The Inflatable Moment: Pnuematics and Protest in '68 by Marc Dessauce and The Architectural League of New York, BSA Space examines key historical moments during which inflatables kindle visionary aspirations. Through a series of installations, photographs, videos, and models, The New Inflatable Moment contextualizes the renewed interest in inflatable structures for architectural and artistic experimentation as expressed among established, emerging, and student architects and artists. Featuring Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Grimshaw, Anish Kapoor/Arata Isozaki, Otto Piene, Graham Stevens, Chico MacMurtrie, and raumlaborberlin, among others. It will also showcase the earlier, pioneering visions of Buckminster Fuller and Frei Otto; the utopian collectives of the late 1960s such as Haus-Rucker-Co, Utopie, and Ant Farm; and the use of inflatable technology for space exploration by Foster and Partners and ILC Dover.

Curated by Mary E. Hale AIA and Katarzyna Balug, The New Inflatable Moment anchors the present moment with an interactive timeline informing the parallel evolution of the medium with key moments of sociopolitical change. With this exhibition, we revisit the moment of the 1960s explored by Dessauce to suggest that utopian thought is re-emerging today in architecture and art as evidenced in projects involving inflatables, say Hale and Balug.

Laura Wernick FAIA, chair of the BSA Foundation adds: The exhibition reveals some of the most visionary architectural minds working with new methods of display and communication. Its premiere at BSA space will empower designers to similarly think and work in new ways to create a better future and motivate the general public to believe in it.

The New Inflatable Momentison display at BSA Space, (290 Congress Street, Boston, MA 02210), through September 3, 2017. Admission is free. Opening hours: 10am6pm on weekdays, and 10am5pm on weekends and holidays.

About BSA Space BSA Space, Bostons leading cultural institution for architecture and design, is home to the Boston Society of Architects/AIA (BSA) and the BSA Foundation. The BSA is one of the oldest chapters of the American Institute of Architects. The BSA Foundation, a charitable organization, supports activities that illuminate the ways that design improves the quality of our lives. All exhibitions at BSA Space are supported by the BSA Foundation. BSA Space is open Monday through Friday from 10am6pm, and on weekends and holidays from 10am5pm. Admission is free and open to the public. For more information visit architects.org/bsaspace.

Curators bios Mary Hale AIAs passion for inflatable structures began as a student at MIT, where she developed her first inflatable structure: The Monumental Helium Inflatable Wearable Floating Body Mass. Since then, she has continued to explore wearable inflatable structures, at multiple scales from clothing to shelters.One notable project, Itinerant Home, is an installation commissioned by the New Orleans Chapter of the American Institute of Architects for their annual Descours Festival. In addition to artistic practice, Mary has been deeply involved in organizing design-oriented community events, exhibitions, and teaching architectural design studios at the Boston Architectural College and at Northeastern. Mary founded ROYHALE Design in 2014 as a channel for these projects. Marys work has been recognized in international art, design, and technology publications ranging from the MIT Technology Review to Arcade to Clam, a Parisian fashion and culture magazine.Mary holds a Bachelors Degree in Urban Studies from Brown University, and a Masters of Architecture from MIT.

Katarzyna Balug explores the place of imagination in the city, and the possibility of utopia in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Inspired by science-fictional worlds and informed by studies in urban history and theory, her work involves research, curation, performance and collaborative installations in public space. Those installations are often inflatable. Past projects have been shown at the Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz, Poland, at the Boston Arts Festival, and at FARO Tlhuac in Mexico City, among others. She is co-founder of Department of Play, a lost city department that facilitates collaboration between residents and urban systems through momentary fictions in public space. Kate is a PhD student in urban and architectural history and theory at Harvard Graduate School of Design.

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BSA Space - E-Flux

Way back when, long before the huge hitStompa, in a small town near Peterborough, Ont., a pre-teen Serena Ryder saw her future reveal itself in the opening scene of the 1988 filmBeaches.

"What's the girl's name from 'Blossom'?" Ryder asked meas she remembered Mayim Bialik playing a youngCC Bloom (BetteMidler's character)in the movie.

The singer-songwriter startedimitating Bialik's over-the-top character, turning her mouth to the side, flaring her jazz hands and shimmying like a showgirl.

"She's this 9-year-oldgirl, smoking a cigarette behind the bleachers and singing and I was like 'Oh, I wanna do that!'"Ryder said, laughingat herself.

But dressed all in black, with hersoon-to-be signature fedora (which was more Six than Blossom), Ryder says she neverfelt like she reallyfit in growingupinMillbrook,Ont. Shehad a sense of there being something for her beyond the sleepy town of 8,000 people.

Serena Ryder performs songs from her album Utopia in Studio q. (Cathy Irving )

"I always felt that I stood out like a sore thumb," said Ryder, now Toronto-based and a Juno award-winning musician.

"I always felt like 'Oh, there's something and I don't know what it is, but I know that there's something out there for me to be doing.' And I always loved music from the beginning ... always so passionate about it."

Contrary to the pop-country music that everyone in the townwas into in the 1990s, Ryder loved soul andR&Bsingers:Mariah, Whitney, Linda Ronstadt and TLC.

Ryder's new album Utopiashowcases a teeny-tiny bit of those influences: be it in the melody and cadence of tracks like Firewater or in the soulful runs that peek through on the first single Got your Number a high energy track that she wrote jamming at the drum kit in her living room.

At the time of the impromptu session with the drum kit, Ryder didn't even know she was writing a new album.

After the excitement of touring the platinum Harmony,she says she needed to take time for herself. She moved to a beach in California for a year-and-a-half.

She had no plan other than getting back to writing music for music's sake.

"For me it was writing from a place of loving creating again," she said. "Loving experimenting, loving the art of writing, doing it because I just felt like it, which was so awesome."

Almost 100 songs later, Ryder realized that there was a narrative that linked her new songs together, and she had more than enough material for a full-length album.

The first song she wrote during that period, Saying Hello,reflects the story of someone who needs to reconnect with herself from time to time. Other songs deal withthe rollercoaster of life:love, lonelinessand loss.

Cover art for Serena Ryder's new album, Utopia. (Facebook)

The music on Utopiawas also inspired by Ryder's reality of being a person dealing with mental health challenges.

"I was writing about my journey, years of going up and down with my different moods," she said. "In the past I've been diagnosed as having really severe clinical depression and even with having bi-polar disorder."

Not knowing much about her family roots, Ryder says, might have contributed to her psychological difficulties.

During our conversation, she talked about her mother, Barbara Ryder, having Ojibway family but not knowing her biological parents. She doesn't know much abouther biological father at all.

"My biological father was from Trinidad, but I never met him, didn't know where he was from," she said.

"So it was always like 'Where am I from? Where's my history, where's my family?' And so I felt like that might haveperpetuated the imbalance as well."

Although the creation of Utopia was spontaneous, Ryder did go to several different sources for inspiration. She drew fromher personal stories, but also stories from First Nation communities.

The Cherokee parable of the Two Wolves inspired Ryder while writing songs for her new album. (Album art)

Her friend and fellow Canadian songwriterSimon Wilcoxtold her of the Cherokee legend of the Two Wolves, which holds that within us all there is a battle between good and evil, represented by two wolves;the one we feed is the wolf thatwill prevail.

"But I was like: 'What would happen if you satiated both wolves, and they're not fighting with each other anymore," she said.

"So that's the grey area. And that's my utopia: finding that balance, finding that grey area"

SerenaRyder will perform at Metropolis July 8th as part of Montreal's Jazz Festival. Nantali'sinterview withRyderwill be broadcast on the July 8th edition of Our Montreal.

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If it weren't for 'Blossom', we may not have Serena Ryder - CBC.ca

Former Buddhist monk Lan Huynh concludes a recent worship ceremony with the sounding of a bell, forged in Vietnam. The bell notes the locations of the temple Manchester, New Hampshire.(MARK HAYWARD/UNION LEADER)

IMAGINE THAT FIERCE, religion-hating communists take over the Vatican.

They plunder, purge and create their utopia, but after about 25 years, they loosen up. (After all, the internal energy of any revolution has the half-life of a Russian winter.)

Eventually, the Red Vatican offers to send priests to Catholic parishes around the world.

What would a priest-less church do?

Thats the predicament of Phuoc Dien, the 25-year-old Vietnamese Buddhist temple squirreled away in the Hollow neighborhood of Manchester. Vietnam which went entirely communist in 1975 with the fall of Saigon initially repressed religion.

But about five years ago, the Vietnamese government offered to replace Phuoc Diens monk, said Dung Hale, the president of the temple.

No thanks, said the temple. They could be spies, said Hale, 72, who has lived in Manchester for 18 years.

Now they (the communist government) say they cant destroy religion, so they use religion to make people like them, said Hale, who spent 10 years in a communist prison camp.

So the temple turned to Lanh Huynh, also 72, who also spent 10 years in a prison camp. Now a retired carpet installer, Huynh was a Buddhist monk in the former South Vietnam. When the communists took over, they forced him to marry, ending his career as a monk, he said.

He holds services in a converted factory. The worship space includes plush rugs comfortable to shoe-less feet, bright reds and yellows, and statues of multi-armed figurines and other deities. A massive bell cast in Vietnam with the words Manchester, New Hampshire, evident among Asian symbols calls people to prayer.

The temples Cedar Street parking lot features a statue of the quintessential Buddha happy, fat and seated. A bowl of oranges and apples is at his feet, as well as a few sticks of burning incense. On the Auburn Street side, a patio features Quan Tse Am, a Buddha with a female figurine who is under a canopy and surrounded by palms, incense, fruit and benches where people gather to converse.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that about 916 Manchester residents are Vietnamese, a little less than 1 percent of the city population. Hale estimates that about half are Buddhists and the other half Catholic.

They gather at times for community events, such as 6 p.m. tonight at St. George Greek Orthodox Church, when a fundraiser will be held to raise money for Vietnamese war veterans who remain in Vietnam.

The temple also serves as a gathering place for the Vietnamese community. Older people said it reminds them of their home country. Middle-aged Vietnamese put their children in the language classes, hoping they do not lose all connections to their heritage.

The classes include three American-born adults.

I think Im in third grade. They tell me that once you learn the alphabet its a simple language, said Kevin Georgantas, 41. The owner of a Goffstown automobile sales and service company, Georgantas is learning Vietnamese to prepare for the arrival of his fiancee.

He sits next to his future cousin, a 5-year-old Vietnamese boy.

Georgantas said he was drawn into the Vietnamese culture when he picked up his mother from a Vietnamese-run nail salon. The manicurists peppered her with questions: Is her son single? Would he like to meet an Asian woman?

He has visited Vietnam twice and is awaiting a visa for his 25-year-old wife. The Vietnamese approach family the way his parents did, he said.

The traditional roles that my parents and grandparents had that seemed to be lost to the millennials, are very strong, he said, in the Vietnamese culture.

Mark Haywards City Matters appears Saturdays in the New Hampshire Union Leader and UnionLeader.com. He can be reached at mhayward@unionleader.com.

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Mark Hayward's City Matters: Vietnamese community finds comfort in Manchester temple - The Union Leader

Architect Moshe Safdie talks about his most celebrated project and how it still influences housing today.

Moshe Safdie observes construction at Habitat 67, now half century old.

Moshe Safdie, now 78, hadnt even turned 30 when his first building, Habitat 67, was built.

The housing complex, a striking, 12-story massing of concrete cubes in Montreal, was based on his thesis project at McGill University. There he wrestled with the world of modern apartment design, which had mostly been reduced to austere, brick Towers In The Park and luxurious, minimalist glass boxes. Safdie wanted to create something that could be prefabricated and deliver open spaces, good views, and access to greenery in an urban environment for people of all incomes.

Affordability, however, never became a part of Habitat. Built in conjunction with Expo 67, the federally owned project saw its construction costs soar. To recoup costs, unit prices ended up substantially exceeding the cost of a typical middle-class Montreal apartment. Safdie has emphasized since that he didnt promise affordability, only a new model for urban living. Instead of providing an affordable utopia, Habitat instead became a status address for the citys elite. In a 2008 article for The Walrus, Adele Weder wrote, As a worlds fair spectacle or as architectural research, Habitat was terrific. As a pilot project, it was a bust.

The building was sold and then flipped to a tenants collective in 1985. It endures as a stunning design from a period in Montreal during the 60s and 70s which saw dynamic, modern architecture spread above and underground. It was designated as a heritage site by the Quebec government in 2009. Habitat also spawned a long and prosperous career for Safdie, building off of and expanding on the ideas from his university thesis and spreading them around the world.

Habitat turns 50 this year. To celebrate, the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM) is hosting Habitat 67: The Shape of Things to Come, an exhibit that connects one of the citys most unforgettable buildings with Safdies more recent projects. CityLab recently caught up with Safdie to talk about Habitat, some unrealized projects, and how to tackle density while still delivering good design in todays real estate climate:

How did the idea to revisit Habitat 67 in a show come about?

Well, not only is it the 50th anniversary of the project, its also Montreals 375th anniversary, Canadas 150th, and Expo 67s 50th. So its a big year in Montreal. We had a traveling exhibit, Global Citizen, that had just been to Boston and New York and a good third of it was Habitat, post-Habitat, and current residential projects. We proposed an exhibit on Habitat to the 375th committee and they agreed to sponsor it while UQAMs architecture school would host it. So, the show is adding to Global Citizen while focusing on Habitats influence and evolution.

Youve said previously that the question about Habitat 67 isnt if its appreciated but if youll be able to replicate it. What prevented your other Habitat projects from being realized?

There were different reasons for each one not working out. But if I had to sum it up, Id say the system wasnt ready for them. Puerto Ricos was undertaken with funding from Operation Breakthrough, a major HUD program meant to encourage research of prefab and new housing concepts. But then Reagan was elected and stopped the program. Construction had already started but it had to be abandoned [after 30 modules had been built].

In New York, everyone was enthusiastic about our project but the marketplace couldnt adjust to all the innovation. There wasnt an organization with the will and ability to deal with unions, either, which we didnt have to deal with at Expo.

They were all sort of near the finish line but we just couldnt break through. There was an economic recession in the late 70s, which meant real estate came to a halt. There was zero building experimentation in the U.S. at that point. It was discouraging. The only housing I built at the time was Coldspring in Baltimore, which had a conventional design and was only partially built because the market had disappeared.

Urban housing then isnt what it is today. It was all about trying to convince the middle class to stick around or move back in. I only have one New York project at the moment; its no Habitat, but its something where you can explore outdoor spaces within the building. In Asia, theres more of a will and a bigger scale to work with although much of that has to deal with fractalization of buildings with gardens and outdoor spaces. In terms of prefab, the idea of building finished and lifted 3-D boxes is a dead direction until light fireproof materials are introduced. As long as were dealing with heavy materials, its just too bulky and too complicated.

Im sure youve noticed some recent projects that are clearly inspired by Habitat, even if its just an aesthetic hat tip.

Im amusedpleased, evento see it coming though the work of firms like like BIG and Herzog and de Meuron. Its more than aestheticits fractalizing the surface to create balconies. For me, its fascinating. Its 50 years after the fact and youll see it in student work now, too. Theres a lot of stuff in the architecture schools today that look at massing and fractalizing.

Paul Rudolph was apparently inspired by Habitat 67 and became interested in building modular housing soon after seeing it. Did you have a relationship with him at all?

In 1966, a substantial amount of the boxes at Habitat were up but the project wasnt totally finished. Rudolph, I.M. Pei, and Philip Johnson came up to Montreal to see me and tour the building. I was in awe! It was a very memorable moment for me.

Johnson kept talking about how it was the closest anything anyone got to Piranesi, and he was fascinated by underside of building. Rudolph was fascinated by the hillside terraced garden typology. A few months later his East River project came out, followed by his stepping terraced housing at Yale. He was very excited by it. I would not say I was influenced by him but we were steering in the same direction, the same wind. I enjoyed his work.

The original plan for Coldspring in Baltimore seemed like a really exciting plan. What did you hope to accomplish there?

It was going to be like a whole town, but we only built 10 percent of it. The town center was going to hover over the road and bridge two halves of the site. Housing would have lined up along all of the cliffs from a quarry and a permanent pond at the bottom. It would have been an amazing place to live like a horseshoe opening at one end. But these parts never got built and the housing that did get built was traditional construction. I had a prefab scheme but the developer decided to just used concrete blocks. The deck housing is very livable, 45 years later.

Since Baltimore, I think your only other U.S. residential projects have been the one in Cambridge from the late 80s and now your upcoming New York project. Why so few?

The phenomena of developers going to big-name architects is relatively new, I think. Really only noticeable in the last 15 years. Why I havent been getting those commissions is an interesting question. Its not that that I dont make myself available. I get interviewed by the big real estate players in New York, but somehow I dont have exactly what theyre looking for. I was in the running for the Domino Sugar site in Williamsburg, but Violy ended up winning it at the time.

My practice doesnt have a marketing department and the work in Asia after Marina Bay Sands just keeps coming in, so weve had to turn a lot down. Its just the way things are. Ive been in Boston for years and Im embarrassed when people ask me what Ive done locally in a period where Ive been able to do work all over the world. Its weird!

Youve had a few commissions in Singapore since the 80s. What about their approach to housing attracts you? What about your design philosophy attracts builders in Singapore?

My first Singapore project was Ardmore Habitat, which has since been demolished. Singapore doubled the zoning on the site and I was commissioned by a shipbuilder who wanted to build the project out of modules hed make in a shipyard but it was eventually made out of concrete. It was vertical and not terraced because of site constraints. More recently theres Marina Bay with three towers and a single core bridging the them together. I had a background with Singapore early on and realized there are developers there who really want to explore and push boundaries. But weirdly enough, when I got the commission for Marina Bay they didnt even know I had a local track record!

The low-rise, high-density philosophy you embraced early on in your career was an important rejection of the Towers In The Park trend. What is the housing type of today that your ideal project would reject?

Habitat 67s original scheme would have been 25 stories high. I was seeing it as an alternative to Miesian projects like Lafayette Park in Detroit and Westmount Square in Montreal, as well as Corbusiers Unite dHabitation. As a student, Unite seemed like a betrayal to his projects from 1930s that had a sense of nature and roofs while this was a compact box with dark corridors.

More recently, with my Habitat of the Future project, I realized that the densities of what was built at Habitat are meaningless in todays citiesits one fifth of what it needs to be. The projects Ive realized more recently in Singapore and Chongqing are as dense as anything else out there. What Id like to do on a site of adequate scale today is to a mixed use complex and show how a new typology can be put together in a very complimentary and reinforcing way.

What are the most important elements in humanizing a high rise?

We create private and public outdoor spaces, so the massing and the multiple towers connecting with each other like at Sky Habitat in Singapore has three bridge levels every 15 floors that meander between the towers. Its all totally public space: parks, pools, meeting roomsthings Singapore always provides in housing. About one-third of the units open to the sky and there are generous furnishings. Its pretty straightforward. If you go back to Habitat in Montreal, fractalizing, breaking up, clever circulationall those ideas are there.

Habitat 67 is based on the popular 1960s idea of creating horizontal passages. The project creates spaces that are open to the outside while also providing protection from the rain without losing great views from the outside. Even though its Montreal, residents still love living there when its winter.

But theres a dilemma in Asia today, particularly with luxury projectssame with the Middle Eastthey dont like the horizontal streets, they want elevators to pop you into the apartment. I dont know if its real or what developers are perceiving but thats being driven by a desire for exclusivity.

The key question, in terms of typology of high rise housing, is, do you have multiple cores with three or four apartments? Or do you create corridors on horizontal plane? Horizontal circulation is more popular and seen as useful with middle income housing.

What are your greatest concerns about the way urban development and housing has changed since you built Habitat 67?

The big cities are all denser and more concentrated than I expected, but the force of that density which you feel in New York, Chicago, or Boston, you dont feel in the rest of the country. For ten years, I went back and forth to Bentonville, Arkansas, doing the Crystal Bridges museum. It went from a population of 20,000 to 100,000 during that period but nothing was more than three stories high. Theres no contiguous use of land there: a farm here, a farm there, with sprawl in between. America still uses land as if it were an infinite resource. Its just not like that in the rest of the world.

So, is the urban density and the congestion around the world worse or better today? I think theres optimism about cities again but most of whats still being built is pretty depressing: inhumane towers facing each other, shadow and light indiscriminately being blocked. I do think were about to be nicely surprised by a revolution in urban transit, because of self-driving cars. Were on the verge of something, but we dont understand it yet. It could have a huge effect on density levels.

Im amazed now of the force driving these extreme densities. In New York, everyone wants to be in one place and theyll pay any price. But what drives the density seen for miles in so many urban real estate markets across Asia? Why not reduce the density by 30 percent and spread it out more? What about their economies are pushing towards extreme concentration? I still dont understand what pushes it to such extremes.

Habitat 67: The Shape of Things to Come is on exhibit at UQAMs Centre de Design through August 13.

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Revisiting 'Habitat' 50 Years Later - CityLab

Throughout both Bill and Ted movies, the titular teenage metalheads are presented as little more than dim slackers barely able to play their instruments, even though we learn they'll one day make music so righteous that it will put an end to famine and war, uniting the planet and ushering in a new utopia for mankind. We never hear a note of this actual music until the very end of 1991'sBill and Ted's Bogus Journey when our heroes return from "16 months of intensive guitar training" to finally play one of these magical songs we've heard so much about.

They then break out Kiss' cover of Argent's 1973 tune "God Gave Rock and Roll To You" with a new guitar solo by Steve Vai. Kiss modified the lyrics to the point where they felt compelled to change the title to "God Gave Rock 'N' Roll To You II," but the message of rock music as a unifying force remains. It was the most attention a new Kiss song had gotten in quite some time, but it came at a very dark time for the band. Drummer Eric Carr was deathly ill from heart cancer when they recorded it, and was only able to contribute backing vocals. He plays drums in the video (which you can watch here), but passed away at age 41 just a few months later. It's one of the few post-makeup songs that Kiss play in their live show today, and one of the only Kiss songs featuring both Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley on lead vocals.

The big performance in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey seemed to wrap up the movie series quite nicely, but Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter (now an accomplished documentary filmmaker) have been pushing for a third move for years. "Basically, they're supposed to write a song to save the world and they haven't done that, Reeves said last year. "The pressure of having to save the world, their marriages are falling apart, their kids are kind of mad at them, and then someone comes from the future and tells them if they dont write the song it's just not the world, it's the universe. So they have to save the universe because time is breaking apart."

This comes up in interviews every time Reeves is promoting a new movie, and a thirdBill and Ted filmalways seems to be just a year or so away from going into production, but we've been hearing that for a good decade now. It seems like no studio is willing to bankroll this idea, and not without good reason. Sequels from long-dormant franchises have a very dicey history. Look no further than Dumb and Dumber To and Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles if you don't believe us.

But we think that Bill and Ted 3 will be different. Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey is one of the only comedy sequels in history that live up to the originals. These are iconic characters that paved the way for Wayne and Garth and Beavis and Butt-head. They deserve a conclusion to their trilogy. Hollywood, don't give us another John Wick movie. Give us Bill and Ted 3. While you're at it, make sure Death (aka the Grim Reaper) has a large role. He's the best part of the second one. And when the time comes, maybe have Kiss cover another Argent song, perhaps "Hold Your Head Up" this time.

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Flashback: A Kiss Song Unites Mankind In Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey - RollingStone.com

The Harlem-based musician performs in Providence, where she lived for awhile after attending Yale.

Larkin Grimms voice is sexy and commanding with its raw, almost visceral tones, somethingher promoter calls a bloody howl that is fierce enough to gobble people whole and spit out theirsouls.

Yet, in a recent phone interview, she is another single mom waiting for her son to get home andmusing about the artistic side of her craft, her dedication to being considered an artist byherself, her fans and her peers unwavering.

Why do people create anything? she asks, quickly answering the rhetorical question with,they are trying to make the world better. None of us can be as beautiful as their artwork, but wecan strive for something beautiful.

The Harlem-based musician, who lived in Providence for a time after attending Yale University, returns June 22 for a concert at The Grove.

Grimm's latest album, Chasing an Illusion, dropped June 16. She saysshe surrounds herself with amazing people and finds herself consistently holding them andherself to higher standards than the industry generally demands.

Chasing an Illusion is a freer sound than Grimms previous albums, as sheblurs the confines of genres and infuses her songs with a more jazz edge, tapping older recordingand mixing equipment to achieve a more unique result.

I dont get moved by todays computerized pop songs why would you Auto-Tune Beyonc? even though I recognize the artistry behind them," she says. I love old, flawed songs. Its all about thefeeling. Autotuning is as bad for our soul as airbrushed pictures are to a womans selfimage.

The lyrics on the new album are drawn from her life experiences, particularly motherhood. Shecalls it her latest attempt at creating utopia through sound.

This is an album about higher love and truth truth in sound, accomplished by recording live,keeping the vocals raw, hearing the actual sound of the room and letting the out of tune and outof time parts celebrate our humanity and imperfection, Grimm notes. This is the beauty of thealbum, as we honor the perfection of the divine energy that we invoke through the ritual trance ofthis music.

Believing that the music is a product of the energy and vibe among the musicians at themoment of recording, she tries to direct that feeling to a degree. At one point while recordingpieces for Chasing an Illusion, she started a conversation with her musicians about the bookshe was reading about a transgender kid whose father sent him to straight camp. A lesbian, shesays she was also sent away when her parents learned about her first girlfriend.

Through this music, I strive to be free free from suffering, free from shame, free frominhibitions, free from language, free from hatred, free from oppression, free from gender, freefrom race, free from expectations, she says.

Chasing an Illusion was written in the midst of Grimms divorce and at a time she found outshe had skin cancer. Both left the artist feeling deflated and with an ego that was crushed. Sheturned to yoga, where she met other musicians who helped her regain her self-awareness throughhealing and creating music.

It was like getting a head-to-toe massage hitting all of your stuff and expelling all of yourstuff, she explains.

Susan McDonald is a regular contributor to The Providence Journal. She can be reached at Sewsoo1@verizon.net.

If you go ...

What: Larkin Grimm

When: 7 p.m. Thursday, June 22

Where: The Grove, 25 Grove St., Providence

Tickets: $10 suggested donation at the door

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Singer Larkin Grimm creates utopia through sound - The Providence Journal

By Gerald Ford

In this Midweek, a columnist shares an amusing catalogue of last meals, ordered by prisoners facing execution.

It got me asking not only what would I eat, but how would I end up in that mess?

I could only blame the kind of future world I see in my worst nightmares, where non-conformity is a capital offence

It is the year 2028 and New Zealand is in trouble.

The global Ministry of Environmental and Security Services (MESS) took over from the last indigenous Prime Minister (a cryogenically preserved Roger Douglas) three years ago, and life is not much fun.

The national anthem and the haka have been banned as fostering nationalism, now as dirty a word as racism used to be.

Without their inspiration, the All Blacks havent won in two seasons.

Now we sing the international anthem, Its a small world after all, with lines in six languages.

Not that Disney has fared that well. The 18th remake of Captain Planet bombed at the VR plex.

(This is a giant maze of cubicles with headsets and gloves. The genetically modified popcorn is as big as walnuts so it can be held in gloved hands, but to us old-timers its not the same.)

Sheep and beef farming has been discontinued and the nearest thing you can get to a burger is a lentil, mussel and synthetic monstrosity known colloquially as a McMummy.

Economics is simpler since the Globo our new unit of currency was instituted, and tax dodging is trickier, too. The compulsory smart chip implants have turned us all into walking wallets.

There is a black-market currency of old New Zealand $1 coins, Pokemon cards, .22 bullets and cigarettes.

Just dont let MESS catch you with the cigarettes. Their re-education courses are brutal and the official vape alternative, Little Nico, is even more addictive than tobacco.

Religion has gotten weird.

Divisive sacred texts have been banned, as have symbols except for the peace sign, and MESS-approved clerics preach awareness from circular temples, as the congregation meditates or secretly watches sports games through headsets disguised as spectacles.

All our clothes are smart clothes now. Basically everything we wear and use is now cleverer than us and connected to the Internet.

With AI or its trendier new name CC (connected consciousness), the Internet is all around us, on us, and increasingly with all the tech implants, in us.

TV still exists, despite all predictions, being essential to combat boredom since most of our jobs are now done by machines.

MESS itself is in fact the only employer, and they screen all their applicants with the peace and unity test. This weeds out anyone who doesnt believe in the inevitable goodness of human progress.

I failed the test. My fish and chips are waiting.

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Utopia and fish & chips: Opinion - Wairarapa Times Age

Creative Social and Innovation Social co-founders Daniele Fiandaca and Nadya Powel have set up a business consultancy which they hope will disrupt businesses in order to harness the power of creativity.

Utopia will see the pair work with the self-imposed mission to re-wire business for the age of creativity which will aid clients to become more agile, innovative and faster to reach market.

If you look at the power of efficiency then creativity is the only way, Fiandaca states while speaking to The Drum about the business.

This idea of creativity I've been exploring for two years and as time goes on we are seeing more people talking about it, he added before explaining that the idea was forged between the pair while attending SXSW in Austin where the idea of robots and emotional intelligence really hit home.

He went on to explain that the consultancy will aim to introduce business transformation across four service areas: relevant business purpose, the use of creative leadership models, cultural creativity being embedded within each organsation alongside innovation to improve thinking and business outcomes.

We are trying to redefine how business should run, states Powell matter of factly.

A lot of people are falling out of networks as they frustrated over the creativity within these business... the time was right, the people are there and brands want to bring creativity into the heart of their business, continues Powell who believes that the creation of the business would have been impossible just three years ago.

Explaining the ambition to Rewire business for the age of creativity, Fiandaca explains his view that now it's about time and everyone is starting understand that automation is taking away the mundane. Businesses are feeling lost and they don't know how to navigate the new world. What digital has done is create change and they don't know how to navigate that speed of change.

The business will be supported by 30 Utopians expert professionals in different creative fields who will be brought in when their expertise fit the problems that clients aim to overcome.

Those involved include Ali Hanan from Creative Equals, Selma Nichols from Looks Like Me, Jonathan Lindon from Digital Futures, Marc Runacus from Pride AM and John Monks and Lizzie Shupak from Curve.

Over the coming months it is hoped that the number involved will rise to as many as 60 Utopians potentially offering bespoke services when required.

Continuing to explained the rational for the consultancys creation, Fiandaca claimed that three quarters of employees within businesses are disengaged. Everyone is creative - I'm a qualified chartered accountant for example and Ive done a lot of work with big brands around hacking. Weve been on a mission to get everyone to be hackers - getting people to look at what is broken and fixing it. That's what creativity is. Delivering solutions that can solve problems.

Fiandaca and Powell also intend to continue to run Creative Social and Innovation Social alongside the new endeavor.

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Daniele Fiandaca and Nadya Powell to 're-wire business for the age of creativity' with Utopia consultancy - The Drum

At the Peoples Summit, the left plots its takeover.

Tim MurphyJun. 12, 2017 12:24 PM

Michael Bowles/Rex Shutterstock via ZUMA Press

When supporters of Bernie Sanders convened the first Peoples Summit last year in Chicago, an air of anxious optimism suffused the event. The gathering came days before the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, and the attendees, drawnfrom the ranks of the candidates most passionate supporters, held onto hopes that the independent senator from Vermont might still be on the path to the White House.

He wasnt, but 12 months later, some 4,000 lefty organizers, activists, campaign vets, candidates, and Sanders himself returned to Chicago for what amounted to a three-day celebration of the movements political ascendancy. In speeches, breakout sessions, and interviews, attendees offered a similar refrain: The political revolution is already happening, and it is already remaking the Democratic Party.

Over three days at the sprawling McCormick Center, they huddled in small groups to discuss best practices for organizing, lessons learned from 2016, and how to prevent, er, Bernout. The sessions ranged from trainings on nonviolent resistance (attendees were sequestered in a breakout room where they took turns role-playing as protesters and police) to PowerPoint presentations on neoliberalism and the emerging possibility of utopia.

The event was put together by a collectionof Sanders-aligned organizations, including the grassroots group People for Bernie, the Democratic Socialists of America, Sanders political nonprofit Our Revolution, and the new Sanders Institute, a think tank run by his wife, Jane. The bulk of the funding came from National Nurses Unitedthe union that was instrumental in backing both Sanders presidential campaign and the single-payer health care bill that recently passed Californias Senate.

One thing was clear: The diverse movement Sanders assembled last weekend looks far different from the lily-white one that first set out to win Iowa and New Hampshire for him. Attendees submitted applications to take part in the summit,and organizers looked for racial and socioeconomic diversity. If we had open registration to the general public, it would have looked like a Bernie rally in Wisconsin, said Winnie Wong, a People for Bernie co-founder who helped organize the summit. Just 46 percent of the 4,000 attendees were white and a third were under 30. There were undocumented Latino students, Oglala Lakota water protectors, Black Lives Matter activists, and yes, at least one white factory worker from Wisconsin who once voted for Scott Walker.

The Peoples Summit didnt have the cattle-call quality that has come to define similar events on the right, such as the Conservative Political Action Conferenceand the Values Voters Summit. Sanders gave a keynote, but only a handful of other elected officials dropped byand most of them were not household names. They included Rep. Ro Khanna of California, a tech bro turned populist; Chokwe Lumumba, the newly elected mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, who promised to turn his city into the most radical city on the planet; and khalid kamau, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who recently won election to the city council of South Fulton, Georgia (and spells his name without capital letters).

The West Virginia environmental activist running against conservative Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin was there; so was Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosis Democratic challenger. You could hardly refill your coffee without meeting someone running for county commissioner.

Bernie would have won may have been the mantra of some of the attendees, but many of the organizers took seriously the fact that he ultimately didnt win, and they wrestled with the mechanics and messaging of a campaign that could.

At a breakout panel on Saturday, Becky Bond, a former senior Sanders aide who helped assemble the campaigns national field operation, was challenged by an African American attendee about the whiteness of the campaigns leadership. Bond acknowledged that the homogeneity of the campaigns top guns had hurt them. She pointed to the recent district attorneys race in Philadelphia, where Larry Krasnera defense attorney supported by groups including Our Revolution, the DSA, and Bonds Big Organizing Projecthad won an insurgent victory in the Democratic primary by campaigning on his record opposing police brutality and cash bail.

Had we done years of that work, she said of the issues animating the DAs race, I think we would have won the presidential primary.

As it happens, Krasner was holding court about his win a few floors down, at a training session for would-be candidates and campaign workers. Krasner had been opposed by almost every Democratic ward boss in the city, but he ended up winning 44 of 66 wards. He accomplished that by boostingturnout almost by 50 percent over previous municipal races. He even found some voters who hadnt turned out last fall when Donald Trump won the state. Most of those new Krasner voters were African American.

The reality that I represented activists and organizers for 25-plus years unquestionably meant that the campaign activated people who are incredibly good at politics but dont normally do it, he said, giving a description that also applied toa lot of the people who showed up in Chicago. That might be the big lesson: All over the country there are networks of activists and organizers who might just be better at politics than the people in politics.

In Krasners view, his race offered a template for similar candidates to succeed. Candidates of color and white candidates who are able to form that coalition will be unbeatable with their own party, he said. And theyll be unbeatable by any other party.

The summit represented a very different view of the political landscape than that being discussed by many Resistanceminded Democrats. If you got your political news from speakers at the conference, you might not know about the Obamacare repeal bill making its way through the Senate or Democrat Jon Ossoffs lead in the upcoming Georgia congressional special election. Hardly anyone mentioned Russia, except to say that no one should mention Russia. We need to keep the focus of our work on our vision, not the latest scandals, Jane Sanders said. The hell with Russia! said Nina Turner, a potentialcandidate for governor of Ohio, who may have been Bernies most popular surrogate at the conference.

You would, on the other hand, be fully up to date on the status of California Senate Bill 562, which would create a single-payer health care plan in the nations largest state. And youd probably know about Christine Pellegrino, a Berniecrat who recently won a special election for a New York state assembly seat in a Trump-voting Long Island district.

British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn got more mentions onstage than Trump, and he got a special shout-out from Sanders during his keynote. In this context, Corbyns surprisingly strong showing in Thursdays UK election was just a higher-profile version of what Krasner, Lumumba, and kamau had done. In fact, some Bernie veterans had worked on Corbyns behalf.

Claire Sandberg, a former Sanders campaign stafferwho spoke to a group of organizers Saturday, was fresh off the plane from the United Kingdom, where she spent six weeks volunteering for Corbyns Momentum campaign. Everyone here is looking to the UK right now and feeling this wellspring of hope, she said. The Labour Party defied expectations , she believed, less through innovative campaigning or the raw charisma of Corbyn than through a compelling message, in the form of the Labour Manifesto. It wasnt too hard to find a Bernie parallel. (It also didnt hurt that Corbyns success had come at the hands of the Democratic elites Sandernistas rail against: Obama 2012 campaign chief Jim Messina helped run the Tory campaign.)

A major aim of the conference was to build a political left that can transform the Democratic Party, inSanders words. Organizers persuasively made the case that from California to Mississippi to the halls of Congress, this transformation is already happening. The idea is to take what started as one long-shot campaign and turn it into hundreds or thousands of different onessome electoral and some notand build an intersectional movement strong enough to walk on its own without a presidential race to guide it.

But the glue for the weekend, the element that united such diverse groups of lefty organizers, was still Bernie. You could pose next to cardboard cutouts of the senatorat booths in the exhibit hall or sign a petition to Draft Berniepart of an effort to coax the senator into running for president again under a new Justice Party. People for Bernie, the grassroots group that helped turn a 70-year-old curmudgeon into a millennial icon, offered T-shirts with the senators hair and glasses over the phrase Hindsight is 2020. The official conference store was filled with Bernie swag. The senator came and went, but Jane Sanders was everywhere.

He is a global meme, says Wong, the People for Bernie co-founder who helped organize the summit. And we have direct access to the global meme, so we should really utilize this moment. Why mess with what works?

Even the best-run campaigns have a tendency to fade away the further they get from the race in question. (Barack Obamas Organizing for America famously fizzled out during the 2010 midterms.) But Sanders army is very much alive. Whenone of his closest allies, National Nurses United executive director Rose Ann Demoro, referred to Sanders at a pep-rally-style Friday event as our real president, chants of Bernie would have won! broke out in the crowd.

Sanders has expressed frustration with questions about his future prospects, but at the Peoples Summit the speculation was coming from inside the room. He was interrupted repeatedly by supporters shouting Draft Bernie! and clutching signs from the Justice Party booth. His hourlong address was part stump speech and part manifesto. He rattled off a list of movement-backed candidates (many of them Sanders delegates) who had won local elections since November, and he outlined a platform and message by which heor someone like himmight effectively run against a faux-populist bomb-thrower.

When it was over, he gave the microphone back to Demoro. I want to say to the Draft Bernie people: Im with you, she said.

Bernie and JaneSanders smiled awkwardly, and Demoro shrugged. Heroes arent made, she said. Theyre cornered.

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This Is Why Bernie Sanders Thinks His Political Revolution Is Winning - Mother Jones