Monthly Archives: January 2020

A federal court ruled in December that ICE violated the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by denying immigration lawyers access to their clients files.

Immigration lawyers are not entitled to their clients files, so many rely on FOIA requests. ICE defended the practice because the agency deems the lawyers clients that are in their custody as fugitives.

But that reasoning was not within the nine stated exemptions in the law, and the ACLU decided to file a lawsuit. FOIA requires federal agencies to provide documents to any person who requests them.

The government needs to follow the law, ACLU of Colorado legal director Mark Silverstein said. The government doesnt get to make up extra exceptions to disclosure. This was a lawless and illegal practice.

In 2013, Glenwood Springs immigration lawyer Jennifer Smith filed a FOIA request to U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services for information about one of her clients. USCIS then forwarded the request to ICE, who refused, stating It is ICEs practice to deny fugitive alien FOIA requesters in 2015.

Smith then filed a lawsuit in 2016, arguing that there is no FOIA exception that would justify ICEs practice. Soon after, ICE sent Smith the information she originally requested. Regardless, she continued on with her lawsuit, stating that this was an ongoing problem with ICE.

According to court documents, ICE used this practice as justification to deny FOIA requests at least 333 times between July 21, 2017, and April 4, 2019.

ICE has about a month remaining to appeal, Silverstein said.

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Federal Judge Finds ICE Violated Freedom Of Information Act By Denying Immigration Lawyers Documents - Colorado Public Radio

Three months after the fatal crash of the B-17G Flying Fortress bomber Nine O Nine, patrons can tour one visiting B-24J vintage bomber but flights will not be available.

VENICE The Wings of Freedom Tour returns to Venice Municipal Airport at 2 p.m. Thursday, for what will be the third stop on its 31st annual tour. Organizers are still regrouping in the aftermath of the Oct. 2, 2019, crash of the B-17G Flying Fortress Nine O Nine that cost the life of pilot Ernest "Mac" McCauley, co-pilot Michael Foster and five passengers.

The tour started Jan. 17 in DeLand and moved to Tampa Executive Airport, with two planes the B-24J Liberator Witchcraft and the Mustang fighter plane, Toulouse Nuts available for ground tours.

Flight training is being offered on the Mustang, technically a TF-51D two-seat trainer.

No flights will be offered on Witchcraft, as the Collings Foundation is still in the middle of a "voluntary stand-down" on the Living History Flight Experience during an Federal Aviation Administration investigation.

The B-25 Mitchell bomber Tondelayo is currently being serviced in New Smyrna Beach and may rejoin the tour in two or three weeks.

"With fewer aircraft it draws fewer people but what were surprised is theres still a good turnout thankfully so," Collings Foundation spokesman Hunter Chaney said.

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The National Transportation Safety Board is still investigating the crash that occurred at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Connecticut.

"We really were encouraged by people all around the country to get back on the horse and start the tour in Florida," Chaney said. "Were taking things gently as we start to tour."

He added that the continued tours are a tribute to McCauley, co-pilot Michael Foster and the five passengers who died.

"Its not something that we outrightly advertise," Chaney said. "They were friends and family stellar, excellent people, unique its heartbreaking, so they leave a big hole for us."

McCauley, who was 75, had the most hours spent as a pilot and in command of a B-17 in the history of aviation, Chaney noted.

"Its been rough," he added. "Aside from just the encouragement of the general public around the country, Mac would have our hides if we stopped touring hed say you have 10 minutes to get over it.

"Thats another form of our memorial for the crew."

The tour, essentially a traveling aerial museum, has been offering rides since 1989 and visits by World War II veterans have often resulted in cathartic experiences.

"Its a way that these veterans remember their past and heal from it too," Chaney said.

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With members of the Greatest Generation dwindling, their children and grandchildren have been attending to try and connect with the past.

"Were starting to find theres a whole new group of younger people who are genuinely curious to see what these planes are like, to crawl through the inside of it, to talk to the pilots," Chaney said. "A lot of extended family members are starting to come out, because theyre genuinely curious, trying to capture that slice of time, to get an idea what it was like in 1944, how do these machines behave, what do they smell like, feel like thats appealing to a lot of folks."

Venice where the planes will be available for tours through Monday afternoon has always been a highlight of the Wings of Freedom tour.

"Its in the top 10 every year," Chaney said. "The number of friends who come out every year is just neat.

"Venice is one of the true motivating factors for us to get out there and tour and at least get done what we can for people to come and visit Its a special stop.

"We have some great organizers there who work so hard and we felt it necessary to make sure we visited."

The planes will be open for tours from 2 to 4:30 p.m. Thursday and from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Friday through Sunday.

Admission is $10 for adults, and $5 for children age 12 and under. World War II veterans are admitted free.

Mustang training flights start with a $2,400 donation per student for a 30-minute flight training, with 60-minute sessions available. Links to book the flight are available at collingsfoundation.org.

Even as it works on preserving history, the Collings Foundation which operates one of the worlds largest collections of historic aircraft has an eye on future activities.

Last year, the foundation started refurbishing a second B-17, which will be outfitted to look like "Outhouse Mouse," a plane that flew in the same squadron as Nine O Nine.

A two-stick P-40 Warhawk it acquired last year is being outfitted to fly along with the Mustang.

"Its still in the works, were about a year out with that restoration," Chaney said. "As tragic as it is, its nice that well have another B-17 representing the veterans that flew them."

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There is no timetable for the FAA to allow the Living History Flight Experience excursions to resume. Flights on the B-24, at $475 per person, and the B-25, at $425, are the main source of revenue to keep the museum going.

Since the crash, insurance premiums have also increased, boosting costs of what was already an expensive endeavor. Proceeds from the flights already go back into the airplanes.

"It really is more of a labor of love than anything," Chaney said.

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Wings of Freedom returns to Venice Thursday - Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Most afternoons, Jeremiah Smith can be found in a small building at the center of the Mississippi Delta, where a signpost in the front features a Black Power fist clutching a rose. He belts verses of Oh, Freedom and Which Side Are You On with his students after long days at school. In his usual teaching uniform of a T-shirt and cargo shorts, Smith claps with the most enthusiasm out of anyone and bravely tries to get a group of middle schoolers to muster up enough energy for the rest of the afternoon with his endless enthusiasm and commanding voice. After this morning circle-up with singing and announcements for the day, Smith leads some of the students in a class about filmmaking techniques. Others head to the creative writing club, the activist club, a study session or the social justice reading club for afternoon activities like voter registration planning and poetry readings.

A 29-year-old Teach for America alum in Mississippi, Smith is the Director of Programming at the Rosedale Freedom Project. The Project is an educational nonprofit organization in the Mississippi Delta that aims to support youth leadership through community building, grassroots organizing and classroom enrichment. Its programming focuses on the histories of democracy and protest in the Delta. The students, called Freedom Fellows, participate in six years of summer camp and after-school programming that culminates in high school graduation.

A 29-year-old Teach for America alum in Rosedales school district West Bolivar, Smith remembers being dissatisfied with the prospect of moving back to the East Coast, having felt a pull to remain in the Delta. I was on this precipice of do I stay, or do I go, he said.

Smith chose to stay, taking a job an hour away from Rosedale at the Sunflower County Freedom Project a program founded by early Teach For America corps members in 1998. The program had modeled itself after the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project in which liberal college students from the East Coast organized mass voter registration and taught civics classes to local residents. In 1998, almost 50 years after the Freedom Summer, TFA corps members decided to bring students and teachers from beyond the community to supplement the still-broken and underfunded education system in Mississippi and help students get to college.

Smith saw a need for a similar program where he lived in Bolivar County, where the lasting impact of centuries of racial oppression is perhaps felt most deeply in the schools. Once the site of a failed lawsuit to integrate Chinese students into white schools, the high school is now considered an apartheid school. Over 98 percent of the student body is black. In 2015, Smith decided to open up another organization in Rosedale with a similar mission inspired by Sunflower County the Rosedale Freedom Project.

Amidst national conversations about desegregation, Mississippi can be seen as one of the places where efforts have most obviously failed. A study done by the U.S. Department of Education in 2016 found that Mississippi spends $33,355 less per student over the course of their education than the national average. Black families continue to fight for better resources and investment in their childrens education despite these barriers. When I was a teaching assistant, we attended crowded school board meetings where parents constantly questioned the lack of funding in the district. Students in the Freedom Project have met with their state and congressional representatives several times encouraging them to advocate for black students in public schools. In contrast, white parents in the area pay thousands of dollars for their students to attend private segregation academies private schools founded in the 1960s to ensure that white students did not have to participate in integration.

Bolivar County is the kind of place that programs like Teach For America were originally founded to serve. A drastic shortage of teachers in the county led to the school system buying a computer program, which students use to take classes for several hours of the day. Fifty-seven percent of the rural towns population lives under the poverty line, and eleven percent of students in West Bolivar High School are considered proficient in algebra by the Mississippi Academic Assessment Program. Eleven percent are proficient in English. Paddling students by hitting them with rulers as a disciplinary measure is a legal and common occurrence in the public school system. Students are acutely aware that they are being disempowered by larger political systems, and Smith says that the first thing students ask during the program is, Why does racism exist?

This is the system that Smith and the rest of the staff are working to subvert. With a starting budget of only $12,000 raised with local grants and a supportive community a dilapidated former youth center donated by the town and a few undergraduate teaching assistants, they put on the first Rosedale Freedom Project Freedom Summer in 2015.

Now, there are around 30 Freedom Fellows a year. The program has a $150,000 operating budget and pays three full-time staff members. Four principles define all programming: love, education, action and discipline (LEAD), which guide student behavior and highlight the Freedom Projects desire to provide structure in students education while still allowing them to take control of what they want to learn. Fellows take annual trips to Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and began a student-operated community garden on their lawn in 2018 called the Freedom Farm. During the summer, middle school students spend all day at the building taking reading, math and arts classes, while high schoolers have the opportunity to take college-level courses with Ph.D candidates. When I most recently spoke to Smith, it was on his single Sunday off of work after taking the Fellows to the New Orleans Film Festival on an overnight trip.

It is kind of hard to wrap my head around how much we have changed since the beginning and how many of those changes have been innovating what it means to be a Fellow, Smith said. To be honest, then, it was really just about giving kids quality reading and math instruction and teaching them about the civil rights movement.

Smith is known among his staff and students for his willingness to work endless hours for the Freedom Fellows and intense devotion to developing the program. His desk is often filled with Red Bulls and student work, and he has put in hundreds of hours driving students around the South in the Freedom Projects white van.

Lucas Rapisarda, the former director of operations of the Rosedale Freedom Project and Smiths former roommate in Teach For America, recounted Smiths passion for young people as a large part of what has contributed to the projects rapid growth and sustainability. However, he also acknowledges that this same devotion to students and strong opinions about the direction of the Freedom Project can cause conflict and wear out the staff. Smith himself acknowledges that, for a long time, he believed it was necessary to constantly look at what was going wrong at the Freedom Project so they could improve while not allowing himself to celebrate small successes. Now, he tries to balance the small victories with students while still pushing himself and the staff to think about improvements.

Although the Freedom Project prides itself on allowing students to take charge over their own lives and education, Program Coordinator Lydia DuBois also said that Smiths personality has helped keep students motivated. He is a person that people want to impress when they meet him, she said. It drew the kids back because there was this person that was working for them overtime and in overdrive all the time.

One of those students is Chandler Rogers, a high school junior who has been a Freedom Fellow since 2015. During the summer, he often remains in the building long after programming is over, chatting with Smith and the teaching assistants about anything and everything. Rogers credits the Freedom Project with giving him confidence in his social and academic life, and he now helps lead the Creative Writing Club for younger students. He is a junior, so he is starting ACT preparation at the Freedom Project and hopes to attend Southern Mississippi University. Chandlers sister JaMya is a sophomore who helps run the Freedom Farm, and many of Chandlers closest friendships are with other fellows.

The opportunities and the atmosphere they give the youth are important, he said of his time at the Freedom Project. It makes you feel welcome and like you are important to society.

Although he has established the Freedom Project as an important presence in the region and is well-known by residents of Bolivar County, Smith said that it has been difficult to foster trust in an outsider in Mississippi. He came into a community that has often been betrayed in the past by people who receive grants to do projects that are unsustainable, with weak frameworks that rely on short-term teachers from outside Mississippi. By living in the community and establishing permanent partnerships, he has been able to slowly earn trust from parents and leaders. Smith spends a lot of time thinking about his own privilege as a white, college-educated man from Virginia and the ways it has helped him bring grants and other donations to the Freedom Project. They have started to attract more staff and summer teaching assistants who are from the Delta as well as bringing in the parent community board and student leaders as a more active presence. Smith says that the ultimate goal is to get to a place where his presence is no longer needed at the Freedom Project and it can be fully sustainable in the long term. But until then, he is completely invested in Rosedale and its students.

Smith is also fundamentally uncomfortable with any assessment that would give him too much credit for the community created within the Freedom Project. He describes a restorative council he facilitated a few weeks prior between students who were in an altercation and their parents as just one example of the communitys investment in children. Smith emphasizes how much the parents did the work of making their children feel protected and loved while he only facilitated the discussion. To Smith, it is only because of the contributions of the people who the Freedom Project serves who have made its direction possible.

This space is a product of students and teachers and parents and community members, he said. Just remember how indebted you are to the people that you serve.

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PROFILE: The freedom teacher in the Delta - Yale Daily News

By Staff | on January 23, 2020

The B-24 played a primary bombing role in the American effort during the war from 1942 to 1945 and was famous for its ability to sustain damage and still accomplish the mission, despite the risks of anti-aircraft fire, enemy fighters and sub-zero temperatures. COURTESY PHOTO

In honor of WWII veterans, the Collings Foundations Wings of Freedom Tour will bring extremely rare bomber and fighter aircraft for a local Living History Display as part of a 110-city nationwide tour.

The Wings of Freedom Tour will arrive at the Naples Municipal airport (off North Road) at 2 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 30, and will be on display until the aircraft departs after 4 p.m. operations on Sunday, Feb. 2. Hours of ground tours and display are 2-4 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 30; and 9 a.m.- 4 p.m. Friday through Sunday, Jan. 31 to Feb. 2. Thirty-minute flight experiences are normally scheduled before and after the ground tour times above.

Participating in the Collings Foundations Wings of Freedom Tour will be the B-24 Liberator and P-51 Mustang Toulouse Nuts fighter. This is a rare opportunity to visit, explore and learn more about these unique treasures of aviation history. The B-24J is the sole remaining example of its type flying in the World. The P-51 Mustang was the first intercept fighter that had the long-range capability to protect Allied bombers all the way to a target and back.

Visitors are invited to explore the B-24 aircraft inside and out. The charge of $10 for adults and $5 for children under 12 is requested for access to up-close viewing and tours through the inside of the B-24. Discounted rates for school groups are available. Visitors may also experience the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take a 30-minute flight aboard these rare aircraft. Flights on the B-24 are $475 per person. Or, get some stick time in the worlds greatest fighter. P-51 flight training is $2,400 for a half hour and $3,400 for a full hour. For reservations and information on flight experiences call 800-568-8924.

The Collings Foundation is a 501(c) (3) non-profit educational foundation devoted to organizing living history events that allows people to learn more about their heritage and history through direct participation. The foundation developed the Wings of Freedom Tour to promote the concept of educating future generations in WWII history through an immersive experience of touring through and flying in these WWII aircraft. The Wings of Freedom Tour travels the nation as a flying tribute to the flight crews who flew them, the ground crews who maintained them, the workers who built them, the soldiers, sailors and airmen they helped protect; and the citizens and families that share the freedom that they helped preserve. The nationwide Wings of Freedom Tour is celebrating its 31st year and visits an average of 110 cities in over 35 states annually. Since its start, tens of millions of people have seen the B-24 and P-51 display at locations nationwide.

Local veterans and their families are encouraged to visit and share their experiences and stories with the public. For aviation enthusiasts, the tour provides opportunity for the museum to come to the visitor and not the other way around. Visitors can find out more by visiting http://www.collingsfoundation.org.

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Wings of Freedom Tour featuring WWII aircraft coming to Naples - Florida Weekly

By Sen. Patrick Leahy

Last Tuesday night, just as Senate Republicans voted to blindfold the Senate from key witnesses and evidence during the Senate's impeachment trial of President Trump, even more damaging bits and pieces of his illegal Ukraine aid freeze spilled into public view thanks to the Freedom of Information Act. These documents - heavily and inappropriately redacted by the Trump administration - shed light on just how much more information remains hidden about the alleged misconduct for which the President has been impeached. And it is Congress's constitutional obligation - not as Republicans or Democrats, but as a coequal branch of government - to fight systematic efforts to keep us and the American people in the dark.

Although a lot of news coverage has focused on the president's alleged abuse of power by using his public office for personal gain, I believe his wholesale obstruction of a co-equal branch's constitutional oversight responsibilities merits equal attention, as it threatens a fundamental premise underlying our democracy.

No other president in our history has engaged in such a complete stonewalling of Congress. Throughout the impeachment inquiry and trial, the president directed Executive Branch officials not to cooperate at all, and through overly aggressive classification efforts and baseless executive privilege claims, not a single subpoenaed document was turned over. Numerous key witnesses defied Congress and followed the president's instruction. President Trump isn't even working to hide this obstruction. As he boasted earlier this week, "we have all the material. They don't have the material."

Despite this obstruction, some of the very documents President Trump kept hidden from Congress and the American people have recently been made public through FOIA. FOIA empowers the public to request and obtain information from the federal government. Using FOIA, organizations like American Oversight have obtained documents that - despite the Trump administration's rampant abuse of FOIA exemptions and redactions - show White House staff laying the groundwork for the unlawful aid delay the day before, and even during, President Trump's infamous July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president.

As the son of Vermont printers, I've worked for decades to improve government transparency, in particular through FOIA. The American people have a right to know what their government is doing. This transparency is necessary to hold our government to account, to ensure it acts in the public interest and follows the law, and to understand what happened if the government falls short. That is especially true if, as the House has alleged, taxpayer money has been used, in violation of the law, to extract a personal favor for the president.

But even when FOIA works perfectly, it was never meant to replace Congress's oversight authority, which is deeply rooted in the Constitution. Republicans and Democrats alike have agreed: Congress, by virtue of its constitutional mandate and position of public responsibility, should receive more information than the FOIA statute requires, not less.

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That the Trump administration provided documents to private FOIA litigants but refused to provide those very same documents to Congress should offend all members of Congress. Such obstruction is an affront to our Constitution's carefully calibrated system of checks and balances that have defined our fragile but, so far, durable democracy for more than two centuries.

The House of Representatives tried valiantly to obtain these documents from President Trump, but was stonewalled at every turn. Now the Senate has the chance to serve as the check and balance on the executive branch it is meant to be - and compel the Trump administration to provide us with the basic transparency that we deserve as a coequal branch, and that we need to uncover the whole truth.

As Congressman Adam Schiff, who is the lead House Manager prosecuting President Trump, pointed out this week, this information is going to get out one way or another. Through FOIA, through good journalism, or through John Bolton's forthcoming book, the American people will ultimately learn the full story. If Senate Republicans bury their heads in the sand now which will forever damage the Senate and do nothing to heal the country they do not even know the extent of what they're covering up.

During the Senate trial, President Trump will have the opportunity to present evidence that he has thus far kept hidden. That includes key documents and critical witnesses with firsthand knowledge of the president's actions, including John Bolton, the president's former National Security Adviser. Bolton described the Trump administration's efforts in Ukraine as "a drug deal" and said this week he would testify before the Senate if asked. If any of the evidence that the President has thus far kept under wraps helps his case, I would think he would seize this opportunity. If he does not, the Senate consistent with its constitutional duties can and should compel cooperation from the President and relevant witnesses. We can do so with just 51 votes. And that means just four Republican senators.

FOIA continues to play a critical role in shining a light on government misconduct. And I will continue to work hard to improve compliance with the letter and spirit of that law. But FOIA is no substitute for the Senate's constitutional duty to pursue the truth and to impartially weigh the impeachment charges presented to it. At stake is whether the president can be permitted to keep both the Senate and American people in the dark, to stand beyond the reach of accountability for his actions. In our democracy, no one not even a president is above the law.

The Senate's actions in the days and weeks ahead will shape our system of checks and balances for decades to come. FOIA is doing its job, and slowly, steadily exposing pieces of the truth. Now senators must do theirs and demand all of it.

Patrick Leahy (D) is Vermont's senior United States Senator, the vice chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and the dean of the Senate. He has long been Congress's leading champion of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and in 1996 was inducted into the FOIA Hall of Fame.

If you'd like to leave a comment (or a tip or a question) about this story with the editors, please email us. We also welcome letters to the editor for publication; you can do that by filling out our letters form and submitting it to the newsroom.

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Leahy | Impeachment and the ongoing importance of the Freedom of Information Act - Bennington Banner

Among the 1,985 former students and faculty members featured on our Gies College of Business-powered UI at 150 & Beyond website: the Class of 2003s SHAILA KOTADIA, director of culture and inclusion at Stanfords School of Medicine.

The UI is where Shaila Kotadia earned the bachelors degree in cell and structural biology that led to positions at two of Americas most distinguished academic institutions.

Its also where she got a keepsake from Campustown.

Going to the U of I meant getting freedom. And one choice I wasnt allowed, even away from home, was having my belly button pierced, says the Cal-Berkeley STEM equity planning director-turned-Stanford Medical School director of culture and inclusion.

I remember there was this trendy store on John Street that my friends and I would sometimes shop at and they had piercings. So, one day, gripping the hands of my friends friends I still have today too tightly, I experienced the pain of freedom.

Recently, I had a baby and the piercing had to come out. But I still have a scar to keep the memory alive.

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UI at 150 & Beyond: 'Going to the U of I meant getting freedom' - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Wednesday that Americans must work to protect their democracy and freedom, and the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump is part of that effort.

Theres no guarantee that next year people will live in more freedom than today, and the prospect for our children is even more in doubt, Schiff, the lead House manager in the trial, said during his opening arguments on the Senate floor.

He said freedom is not an immutable law of nature and instead every generation has to fight for it.

Were fighting for it right now, Schiff added.

The seven House managers, Democrats who are acting as prosecutors in the trial, began their arguments on Wednesday and will continue to present their case over three days. Trumps lawyers will then present their defense.

The House of Representatives impeached the president in December on two articles abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Democrats argue Trump abused his official powers when he withheld U.S. military aid for Ukraine, allegedly in an attempt to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals. They further claim Trump improperly blocked Congress from investigating his conduct.

During the trial phase, U.S. senators will determine whether Trump is convicted of those charges and removed from office, or acquitted.

Trump is the third president to be impeached. No president has been removed from office.

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WATCH: Every generation has to fight for democracy and freedom, Schiff says - PBS NewsHour

The Palm Springs Vintage market is held on the first Sunday of every month starting in October at the Palm Springs Cultural Center. Palm Springs Desert Sun

I'd just asked jazz trumpeter, artist and sculptor Herb Alpert my last question when he flipped the script on me in a recent interview.

"What do you like about jazz?" he asked.

I told him how I only used to listen to jazz at night because it's great mood music, but that I listen to it any time of the day now.

Do you feel the freedom of it? If so, then you get it," Alpert replied.

That's the only explanationthe 84-year-old musician provides for the source of his creativity. "I don't think when I make music, paint or sculpt," he told me during a previous interview. "I let creativity speak without being filtered."

Herb Alpert and his wife, singer Lani Hall, return to the McCallum Theatre Jan. 27.(Photo: Courtesy of the McCallum Theatre)

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This is how Alpertapproached his latest album,"Over the Rainbow," a compilationof covers of well-knownpop songs. Released last September, it features trackssuch as Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World," Barry Manilow's "Copacabana" and"Always On My Mind" byWayne Carson,Johnny Christopher andMark James.

"I picked out songs that touch me," Alpert told me. "I like melodies and theres no intellectual reason on why I do this stuff. I try to take my brain out of the mix."

Alpert rose to famein the early '60swhen he incorporated world music influences in his instrumental variations of popular tunes, mostly Latin brass music. He worked with members of the Wrecking Crew, a collective of Los Angeles session musicians, on his first four albums released under the name "Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass."

The fourth album, "Whipped Cream and Other Delights," released in 1965 and featured covers of pop standards likeJerry Leiber and Mike Stoller's "Love Potion No. 9,"Bobby Scott and Ric Marlow's "A Taste of Honey" and Tony Velona's "Lollipops and Roses." The album cover, featuring model Dolores Ericksoncovered in whipped cream, was just as memorable as the music. It went on to sell six million copies in America and was remixed in 2006 by producerAnthony Marinellias Whipped Cream & Other Delights Re-Whipped.

Jamie Hartinger with a Herb Alpert album at Record Store Day at Shake It Records, April 13, 2019. When asked why this particular album, Hartinger pointed to the cover. "The girl! It's classic Herb."(Photo: Ryan Terhune / The Enquirer)

Following the release of that album, Alpert formed an actual version of the Tijuana Brass with musiciansJohn Pisano (electric guitar), Lou Pagani (piano), Nick Ceroli (drums),Pat Senatore (bass guitar),Tonni Kalash (trumpet) andBob Edmondson (trombone)before disbanding four years later in 1969.

But he's still performing and recording,translating well-known lyric linesinto jazz trumpet tracks.

Alpert will perform with his wife, vocalistLani Hall,at the McCallum Theatre on Jan. 27. He discussed some of the songsonhis latest album, technological changes in the music industryand music education with The Desert Sun.

The following interview was edited for length and clarity.

The DesertSun:What made you want to do "Over the Rainbow"?

Herb Alpert:Instinct. I dont think too hard about this stuff. I hear songs that I like and sometimes Ill hear a standard song like Over the Rainbow and Ill say, "Can I do this in a way that hasnt been done quite that way before?" If I come up with that,then its a pursuit of mine.

Herb Alpert performing at the 2017 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.(Photo: Amy Harris, Invision/AP)

Over the Rainbow is such an iconic song. Do you ever wish you recorded it earlier?

I didnt have the idea to do it earlier. Even when I thought about doing it, I thought, "Who wants to hear this song? Its been recorded about 14 billion times." When I came up with this idea of working with (composer) Eduardo del Barrio and putting that intro on it and expressing the lyric through the trumpet, it workedand it felt good. I listen to my instincts and Im a right-brained guy. I paint, I sculpt, make music and try to do it as authentically as I can.

You did a cover of Bill Withers Aint No Sunshine When Shes Gone. Was that difficult to translate into a jazz song because of thewell-knownlyrics?

It was easy to translate because its a beautiful melody and the lyrics arewonderful. I always try to play the lyrics through the trumpet. Its a little challenging because the Bill Withers record is memorable and one most people treasure. I didnt want to step on it in any way and wanted it to be my own way of presenting it. When we hit on it, it felt good. Thats the beautiful part about the arts for me its all about a feeling and if you think too hard about it, you lose the feeling. If you try to analyze a piece of art, I think you go past it, go sidewaysbut not go in it. To go in it, you must forget what you know and go for the feeling.

You incorporated a lot of different sounds and instruments from around the world into Louis Armstrongs What A Wonderful World. Why did you do that?

I was doing What A Wonderful World in a way that honored Louis Armstrong, because I wasnt trying to cover itbut express the idea that what he said and answer the question kids asked him like, "What do you mean its a wonderful world? What about the destruction, the warsand the poverty?" and hed say, "Its all about love, baby." But I wanted to play that song and, in the middle, put in instruments from all over the world and how we are all united as artists. Were all interconnected, and I think thats the way I think a lot of us would like the world to feel.

Herb Alpert received the National Medal of the Arts from President Obama in 2013.(Photo: Submitted)

Recording technology has come a long way. Do you feel that its made music better or thatthe beauty of recording music has gone away?

When I started before tape recorders, I had a Webcor wire recorder. This was before tape was invented. You couldnt edit on that, if you wanted to.You needed a soldering iron. Then there was the mono machine and a two-track stereo, then there was three-track, four-track, eight-track and 16-track. The digital age came with zeros and ones and now theres infinite numbers of tracks. Its a whole different world.

In the '60s and '70s, we used to get the band together in the studio to record and feel the energy of all the musicians I worked with. I did an album called Whipped Cream & Other Delights Re-Whipped based off the "Whipped Cream & Other Delights album with producersfrom different parts of the country that remixed that album and wanted me to add a couple of horn parts. They would send me what they were working on and Id put on the horn part that I liked at my studio and send them back just the trumpet and theyd put my trumpet back into the mix and do what they had to do. I never met those guys and they could have been in Afghanistan. We made this good album together, but I never laid eyes on these guys. Its a different world and the album isnt that bad, but its not that same feeling of walking into a studio with a series of musicians and coming out with something youre excited about.

Vinyl records have made a big comeback and Whipped Cream and Other Delightsis in demand on vinyl. Is music a better experience on vinyl?

The average person is so conditioned to wanting things quickly because of the TV and 24-hour news, they dont listen to music like theyre capable of listening. They judge too quickly. If youre listening to someone who has something serious to say musically, you cant put on 10 or 20 seconds of it and make a judgment. You need to spend time analyzing, listening and feeling what the person is trying to communicate. But if youre impatient and dont have that ability, its a different world. We dont seem to have the patience required to listen to great artists anymore.

Youve donated a lot of money to music education. Do you feel music is still a good career path?

(laughs) You have to be lucky. The timing has to be in your corner, but unless youre really passionate about being a musician, dont even try it. There are so many great musicians around the world struggling to make ends meet to keep their passion alive. We have to get back into the education of these young kids coming up where they can appreciate classical, jazz and all the different genres and where they come from. Jazz is one of the unique art forms of all time that has come out of the United States that is, in my opinion, overlookedbecause its all about freedom and thats what were looking for all around the world. We want to be ourselves and the people were intended to be. Jazz expresses that feeling.To appreciate it, you have to understand the roots.

Herb Alpert and a collection of his totem pole sculptures.(Photo: Courtesy of Sunnylands)

How can we keep jazz alive?

Its going to take education. We have to make sure its not just a privilege to have an education with music and the arts for kids at an early age, but it should be a right for them to have that.

As the owner of Vibrato Jazz Grill in Los Angeles, what makes for a good jazz club atmosphere?

First, it has to be acoustically beautiful. It needs to represent the sound coming from the stage. The environment, the colors, the feeling of walking into a place and feeling comfortable is a good start. Ive been into a lot of clubs and just by the feeling of it, you dont think its going to be good, but the sound might be good. If you can combine a good feeling in a club with acoustically beautiful sound, that would be a great combination.

What:Herb Alpert and Lani Hall

When: 7 p.m., Jan. 27

Where: McCallum Theatre,73-000 Fred Waring Dr., Palm Desert

How much: $35-$55

Information:(760) 340-2787

Desert Sun reporter Brian Blueskye covers artsand entertainment. Hecan be reached at brian.blueskye@desertsun.com or (760) 778-4617. Support local news,subscribe to The Desert Sun.

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Herb Alpert finds 'freedom' in jazz, from 'Whipped Cream' to 'Over the Rainbow' - Desert Sun

Activists during a political funeral for youths slain in the grenade incident which took place in Duduza Township in 1985. Eight activists were killed when an undercover agent gave them decoy hand grenades. Gideon Mendel.

In 1990, Gideon Mendel left a box of negatives in his friends garage in South Africa. Now, 30 years later, the damaged negatives are reincarnated in a photobook

When Gideon Mendel left South Africa in 1990, three years before the official end of Apartheid, he left a huge archive of transparencies and negatives in storage. I was leaving quite a hectic, chaotic situation, says the London-based artist, who began working as a news photographer in the 1980s, documenting the often violent and distressing scenes during the final years of a system of institutionalised racial segregation. Removing what he thought of as important photographs, Mendel packed the rest of his images into a couple of boxes and left them with a friend.

In 2016, 25 years later, Mendel learned that the top inch of one the boxes had been water-damaged. Coincidentally, the photographer had been working on a long-term project about climate change and flooding called Drowning World. Within it is a series that draws on an archive of more than 1,000 water-damaged photographs gathered on journeys through flooded communities. I was already attuned to the effects that water can have on photographic emulsions, says Mendel, describing these effects as radioactively charged. Thinking there could be something interesting in this forgotten work that he had packed away and neglected decades earlier, he decided to revisit the memories.

It does feel important, and it feels emotional, says Mendel, about the process of looking back on images from an important time in not only his development as a photographer, but a time of huge political and social unrest in his home country. With very little experience I was thrown into intense, dangerous and violent situations. No one spoke about stress or trauma, you just had to deal with it, he says. A lot of people said as long as you had a camera in front of you, nothing could affect you. But I think I was quite deeply affected.

These images, many seen for the first time, are now presented in Mendels latest photobook, Freedom or Death. Split into three parts, each section is categorised by a different process of intervention. The first section presents the series of water-damaged negatives, which, for Mendel, speak about the fragility and malleability of memory, unintentionally moulded and distorted by the inevitable cycle of nature and time.

The second section is a collaboration with Argentinian artist and human rights activist Marcelo Brodsky, who writes and draws on Mendels photographs to enhance their historical narrative. The images in this section focus on objects that are symbolic of conflict and repression: stones, teargas, wooden guns, and the sjambok a heavy rubber whip used by the police.

The images in the third section are derived from press prints made during Mendels time as a news photographer for agencies including Magnum, AFP and Network Photographers. Mendel digitally merged the front and reverse of the prints, creating a superimposed combination of image, text, and markings.

Each process of intervention has a different effect, but they all return to the idea of reframing the narrative. Through this attempt to re-engage with these documents of history a history of conflict, tragedy and struggle Mendel was also able to re-engage with his own memories. Ive come to realise that to some extent I was packing away those traumas within myself, like how I packed away the boxes, he reflects. Unpacking it has been an important process for me.

Freedom or Death by Gideon Mendel is published by GOST. The book launch will take place at UCL in London on 28 January 2020. The work will also be shown at ARTCOs new gallery in Cape Town from 15 February 2020.

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Freedom or Death: Revisiting an archive of conflict, tragedy, and struggle - British Journal of Photography

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A Connecticut resident and DACA recipient was detained in New Mexico by ICE while traveling with his girlfriend.

Bryhan Ali Andrade-Rojas was traveling across the west coast when he was detained by ICE officials at an immigration checkpoint on January 17.

I know that hes sleeping on a floor, said his friend, Samantha Andersen, who has been talking to him since hes been detained. People are defecating next to him.

Bryhan is a recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA. It allows people brought illegally to the United States as children to receive temporary relief from deportation. It also allows them to work and go to school. Bryhans status lapsed in February of 2019.

Even with the DACA lapse, nothing precludes this individual to apply for DACA again, said Alex Meyerovich, an immigration attorney. The application for DACA is pretty simple.

Yet Bryhans friends who have been working to get back his freedom tell FOX61 they have received no word on when he will have the opportunity for a bond hearing. He can't access his files on his laptop, which preclude him from sending in his application. The application for DACA renewal is $495 and usually takes only a month or two to hear back on approval.

Assuming it's a clean case, the gentleman came here as a child, just overstayed, no criminal issues, no immigration court proceedings in the past, nothing prevents the family from applying for a bond hearing [and] trying to get him out on bond, said Meyerovich. Then this way he can just apply for DACA renewal and then move on with his life.

The Trump Administration tried to eliminate the DACA program in 2017. The Supreme Court is now deciding whether the Trump administration has the power to dismantle the DACA program after hearing arguments in November.

If DACA is eliminated, thats going to be bad news for DACA holders because they will be left without work permits. It will affect their employ-ability, ability to go to college, possible deportations; it might become pretty chaotic, said Meyerovich.

Bryhans friends are working on accessing lawyers and raising money for his potential bond, which they say could cost up to $50,000. To access his Gofundme page, click here.

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Connecticut resident detained in New Mexico by immigration fighting for freedom - FOX61 Hartford