(Mobile is my home town, where my mom and dad still live. I didn’t like living in Mobile, but just because of its suburban ickiness—I didn’t know I had other reasons to get out of there, like a disturbingly recent history of Klan violence.)

Michael Donald was a 19-year old African American who ended up the random recipient—and medium—of the Klan’s usual message of murder and hate. Two Klansmen beat Michael Donald, slit his throat, and hung him from a tree outside the local Klan leader’s house.

Was this the last lynching?

No, actually—the murder of James Byrd, Jr., in Texas in 1998, probably, could be called the most recent lynching. I’m scared to say last.

All this I learned on the radio this afternoon, in an NPR interview with Ted Koppel, the host of the documentary, and Artur Davis, a congressman from Alabama, among others.

What astounds most about the Michael Donald murder is the date. This wasn’t the 1930s. This was 1981. MTV was on the air. I was alive.

A friend who teaches at the University of Minnesota said (as I’ve quoted before on this blog) that his students often have the mistaken impression that racism, and certainly racial violence like lynching, was something that happened a long time ago. And then Dr. King came and fixed it for us. Didn’t you see the movie?

Michael Donald’s murder in 1981 (and James Byrd’s in 1998, and many more incidences of violence) reminds us that racism, even in its most blatant and visible form, is alive and well. Never mind the secreted racism of the job application slush pile, or the divisive lies parents pass on to their children.

But the most recent lynching might be this: a couple of weeks ago, four students at a small religious school in Oregon hung a cardboard effigy of Sen. Barack Obama from a tree.

Which brings me to: what do the appalling deaths of Michael Donald and James Byrd mean to us now, as Barack Obama campaigns for the white house?

Many things, but here’s one; that when John MCain and Sarah Palin condone hatred and violent speech from their supporters—when they stand quietly by as rally-ers yell “Kill him!” and “Off with his head!” (not to mention “treason” and “terrorist”)—it’s way, way beyond “negative campaigning,” or irresponsible. It’s fast approaching a lynch mob.

As long-awaited as Barack Obama’s nomination for president has been, and as proud every American should be of it—we haven’t moved beyond racial violence. We’re not immune to it, and we’re not above it.

The colors don’t come through as well as I’d like from a cell-phone pic, but, in person, I was blown away.

Can you see the hair-thin lightning bolts?

I was in Phoenix last week at a conference in a resort, and I saw the painting you see here hanging on the wall. It was a ritzy place in the middle of the desert, on Gila River Indian Community land, where members of the Pima and Maricopa tribes live. So the decor and design was Native American, including murals on the ceiling of the lobby, and art on the walls of the rooms.

Maybe the most striking feature of the resort was a two-and-a-half mile “replica” of the Gila River. Why a fake river? Because the Gila doesn’t flow through the Gila River Indian Community anymore.

European settlers first started diverting the Gila River upstream from the Pima and Maricopa settlements in the 18th century. By the time Arizona became a state in the Union, the Arizona state constitution was drafted to uphold all existing appropriations and diversions, leaving a trickle, if anything, for the Gila River Indian Community.

If anybody’s heard of anybody from the Pima tribe, it’s probably Ira Hayes. Ira was a decorated American soldier in WWII, and one of the four men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima, immortalized in the famous photograph (and in Clint Eastwood’s recent films).

Then Ira, after his death, was himself immortalized in a song sung famously by Jonny Cash: The Ballad of Ira Hayes. The song tells the story of the Pima fighting for their water rights, Ira volunteering for the army, and, finally, Ira dying drunk, drowning in a ditch, forgotten by all.

The song is, to say the least, pretty sad. But it’s always been one of my favorites. And one of the first songs I heard that told a story with a point, and stood up for the little guy, in the true American folk tradition.

But there’s good news, believe it or not, and in the stories of the American government’s interactions with Native Americans, there’s not a lot of good news.

After three hundred years of being screwed out of their water, after the drying-up of an agricultural way of life, and after thirty years of litigation, the Gila River Indian Community is getting the Gila River back in their community, in a landmark settlement that went all the way to the U.S. Senate (and signed by President Bush!) in December 2004.

Others involved in Native American water disputes (and there are others) are hopeful for the precedent, and I’m hopeful, too.

Finally, this is an inset from Toby Manuel’s painting above, Thunder & Lightning I, and it was this image that most caught my eye. A figure, standing on a hilltop, protecting the village below, a shotgun half shrouded in a U.S. Army blanket.

Is it Ira Hayes? I think it is.

(Or it could also be a gesture towards the “smallpox army blankets”–one of the earliest documented attempts at biological warfare, where, in 1763, the British commander of Fort Pitt, Pennsylvania gifted two blankets and a handkerchief from a smallpox quarantine to Delaware Indian emissaries . . . But I think it is, at least in part, a tribute to Ira Hayes.)

Also called the “deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history” (modern or otherwise), Virginia Tech has now joined the ranks of many other America college, high school, and grade school campuses ravaged by mass murder.

There’s nothing really to say about it, surely not on a blog posted for fun by a crowd of non-journalists, but I’m going to briefly go against my better judgment.

The Twin Cities’ Star Tribune ran an online poll, asking readers how attacks like the one at Virginia Tech yesterday could be prevented in the future.

As of 2:30 p.m., the winner, with 45% of the votes, is “Such attacks can’t be prevented.”

But the big surprise for me, however, was that the answer “Adopt stricter gun control laws” was not the winner.

With 573 votes, gun control just barely beat out “Allow trained school staff members to carry guns.”

(That one’s not the best plan in my opinion, although 510 Strib readers disagree–would that be an armed guard outside every classroom? Or just hand out the pistols to the professors and TAs?).

Over 1300 people polled think there’s nothing we can do. Violence, it’s true, probably can’t be prevented. But you’ve got a better chance at stopping gun violence. And yesterday was gun violence.

The American school shooting has become an institution. The most famous arguably, before yesterday, took place in Colombine, CO, but it’s been repeated several times since–get some guns and lots of ammo, suit up, and shoot as many people as you can before blowing yourself away.

It’s a murderous form of suicide, but you can’t do it without a gun. Or a couple of guns, usually. And specifically, handguns. Forgive me for a blunt bit of logic, but how many people can you knife to death before you yourself are overpowered?

For the 45% of Star Tribune poll-ees who voted “Such attacks can’t be prevented,” you’ve got all the more reason to vote for stricter gun control laws. Maybe you can’t stop murderous intent, violent acts, or psychotic behavior. But we are dangerously negligent if we don’t try to make it hard to get your hands on the tools that turn violence into shooting, rampage, and massacre.

Well, to be fair, there were about seven other people and I may not have been sitting the furthest away from him, but it was close. He had come to our school to speak, and as a recent member of the Forum Planning Committee, I snuck in on the pre-lecture dinner reservation. It would be an exaggeration to say that he and I had a conversation that night, but he did ask me once if I was the kind of Indian that wore a diamond on my forehead. And to prove my true appreciation for his writing, I had no sarcastic response for him.

His lecture was great. I remember him doing a bit about story arcs– the conventional arc, exceptions to the conventional arc, and the Kafka story arc, which is basically just straight descent. The rest of it is fuzzy. I remember that the hall was packed because there were students there from colleges in Alabama and Louisiana. There was a guy in the front row who asked Vonnegut what his favorite vegetable was, and Vonnegut started singing and left the stage mid-sentence and mid-song.

Nothing beats Welcome to the Monkey House, which is the first thing of his that I ever read. It’s possible that all the sexy stuff was what got me hooked when I was thirteen, but I’m sure that now that’s been replaced with a serious, mature understanding of his craft and socio-politics.

Who am I kidding? Long Walk to Forever is still my favorite because it’s a sappy love story.

I haven’t read his last few books, but I am sad that there will be no more.

Talkdemonic, Beat Romantic (2006)

Victory at Sea, All Your Things Are Gone (2005)

Young People, All at Once (2006)

First off, I should say that this post is several years past its expiration date. It’s like I see a requiem for indie rock in some magazine or another every year, so I shouldn’t annoy anyone by adding my voice to the chorus now. But the sheer mediocrity of three of my recent CD orders left me with no other way to review them than by clustering them into a eulogy. And I threw in Sufjan Stevens for good measure.

So what is “indie rock”? I’ll assign Sufjan Stevens, Talkdemonic, Victory at Sea, and Young People to that genre because they’re all vaguely poppish (which is almost like being rock) and they’re all on indie labels. But stylistically, I don’t think “indie rock” means anything anymore; at this point it designates only a mode of distribution. The underground network of independent labels and distributors, which used to deliver specifically non-commercial rock, has (with the help of online music retailing) stepped into the void created by the major music conglomerates’ continual swallowing of smaller labels. Signing to an independent label is no longer a statement of musical ideals: it’s a viable career move. You won’t have a #1 album, but you can still get your music to the masses.

Which is a shame, because the perpetrators of these albums really don’t need to be heard. Take Talkdemonic. The duo comprises a fiddler, Lisa Molinaro, and a multi-instrumentalist mastermind, Kevin O’Connor. Beat Romantic, the liner notes helpfully tell me, is “the second Talkdemonic record.” Released on the ironically named Arena Rock label, it features lovely cover art of white-barked birch trunks in a row under a canopy of green leaves. And the music sounds like it was recorded in a bedroom with a Starbucks latte at hand. It’s offensively inoffensive. A reviewer might refer to “delicately plucked acoustic guitar,” “whispers of organ,” “reedy violin.” I might put this on in the background while I’m surfing the Internet, then get frustrated halfway through and exchange the CD for something else. The only one of these sixteen instrumental tracks I could identify after it has passed is “White Gymnasium,” thanks to the nautical flute line that graces it. The album is very polished and very pretty, and I mean that in the worst way possible.

For something equally low in energy, trying Young People’s All at Once. After about five listens, I finally cottoned on to who Young People sounds like: Cat Power. Katie isn’t as good a singer as Chan Marshall, but she does offer the same wispy, alcoholic vocal haze; I don’t think she delivers a single song in full voice. It makes me tune out, so I’m not sure I can remember any of the lyrics. These might be lines from “Slow-Moving Storm”: “Angel bright and fair / Take me to your care.” Or they might not be. It’s her voice that mires All at Once in the realm of passionless music I don’t care about. They have some interesting musical ideas, like the distortion-drowned piano riff of “Reapers,” but too many of those ideas meander into collapse. They sound like they got bored while recording; why should I be interested while listening?

I think Victory at Sea’s album, All Your Things Are Gone, is the clearest sign that anything underground about the indie world has long since been abolished. The band starts off with some trendy angular post-punk (“No Reason to Stay,” “Cecille”) before moving into strange storytelling (“The Letter”), but finally softens to reveal itself as a purveyor of Carole King adult-contemporary piano pop (“Turn It Around” onward: six songs out of ten). This kind of music isn’t in vogue right now, but there’s no stylistic weirdness that would prevent Victory at Sea from having a hit single. All Your Things Are Gone is a 2005 release, so it’s past its sell-by date already, but may I suggest “Bored Otherwise” as the potential hit that could have led listeners to this filler-packed extravaganza?

Speaking of hits, filler, and piano pop: Sufjan Stevens. I’m not as in touch with indie politics as I used to be—blame the dullness of the music—so I might be wrong about this, but I think Stevens is today’s biggest indie star. He got enough press on what was probably an off-the-cuff comment about making an album for each of the fifty states that he decided to follow his love letter to Michigan with 2005’s study of Illinois. Even the outtakes got great reviews.

But I must say, I’m not impressed. First of all, Illinois doesn’t have any moves on it that weren’t already in display on Michigan—I suppose Stevens has his Beatles-style “Revolution” with the electrified Superman song, whose title I will not exhaust my fingers by typing, but Stevens’s distorted guitar work only reminds me of the excruciating, incomprehensibly reissued A Sun Came! Otherwise, there’s a lot of the Charlie-Brown-soundtrack piano, orchestral instrumentation, softly sung melodies, and pensive lyrics that have long stocked Stevens’s releases. The musicianship has come a long way since Michigan, in that there’s no spit-filled trumpet here, but then the bedroom-recording aesthetic was part of the charm of early Sufjan (and if Talkdemonic had left some rough edges unsanded, their bland instrumental pop might have had more character).

The word I want to use to describe Illinois is “professional.” And that’s part of the problem. “Professional” implies a received standard, an external framework of values. “Professional” demands a pre-established sound and promises a primarily financial reward. So here’s a word to describe Stevens: “accomplished.” As in “mission.” He found a career path and he’s treading it to the usual terminus.

This is why indie isn’t indie anymore. Underground rock was supposed to be about finding your own voice, about making your own noise. Early indie bands (I’m thinking of those profiled in Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life: Black Flag, Minutemen, Mission of Burma) went independent because they had to—major labels weren’t willing to take a chance on their weird music. There’s no reason a major label wouldn’t want to take a chance on Stevens. He’s cute, friendly, low-budget, and has already proven himself. Stevens may decide he wants to stick with Asthmatic Kitty, but that doesn’t mean he’s underground. If you need proof, just get The Avalanche (outtakes from Illinois). I haven’t heard it and I’m not going to, but: recording 150 minutes of music for a single album and then releasing the outtakes separately, as if even your rejects are gems? Smells like Fleetwood Mac to me.

a) 4 ways how taking the preliminary exams is like having sex for the first time:

1. There’s a divide between people who’ve gone through with it and those who haven’t. All the advice that the experienced can give you is to “close your eyes and barrel your way through it.”
2. Before, your entire identity can be summed up as someone hasn’t gone through it. On the other side of the fence, people say it’s now just something they did.
3. Every now and then, you come across someone who’s experience was magical. They were fully prepared, had everything sorted out, knew exactly what to expect, and might have even had fun. For most people, it seems to have been torture while they were doing it, but at least went by very quickly.
4. You think you want to be on the other side– very, very badly. When the time is actually close, and the moment is inevitable, you suddenly wish you had just a little while longer.

b) 1 important way that taking the exams is NOT like having sex

1. You try to do it just once in your life.

My dad worked in Australia for a year in 1993 and, when he came back, found Steve Irwin on late, late night TV (one of his first shows). My dad loved watching this guy manhandle horrifically poisonous snakes with nonchalance. For him, I think, Irwin was a mix of the Australian cultural bravado he saw in his time down under and the familiarity with sometimes-dangerous wildlife my dad has from growing up on a farm. I don’t know if Dad read about Irwin’s death . . . but I know he’ll be sad to hear it.

Stingrays aren’t particularly dangerous at all (there are only 17 known recorded deaths by stingray), especially when you compare stingrays to the leading cause of animal-related deaths in the world, crocodiles.

On a random note, Steve Irwin’s death is one of the only things recently I’ve seen reported prominently in the NYT, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and BoingBoing.net. People liked this guy.