Do Working Moms Raise Healthier Kids?
Lissa Rankin discusses a study that working moms can raise healthy children.
Here I am, five years later, raising a perfectly healthy, happy, secure, loving, confident daughter. And according to a recent study, I'm not the only working mother raising a well-adjusted child. The study set out to examine often touted theories that children raised by families with two working parents exhibit more bad behavior and that working mothers are more likely to raise overweight children. What they found can let all of us working parents breathe a sigh of relief.
As it turns out, not only do working moms not harm their children. The evidence suggests that they're actually better off when both parents work!
I'll never forget leaving my then four year old daughter at the airport when I was heading off on my book tour. She was sobbing. I was sobbing. My husband was trying to pry the two of us apart, and my heart felt like it was breaking. We reunited a week and a half later in Boston, and then I had to go back on the road without her for another week. I called her soon afterwards and she said, "Mommy, I've been crying for three days (I had just left an hour earlier.) I thought for sure I was doing permanent damage to my child, and I seriously wondered if pursuing my own dreams were worth it.
Then, a few months later, the daughter of a very famous female author came to stay in my guest house. She is one of the most charming, beautiful, witty, smart, healthy, well-adjusted, twenty-somethings I know, and her mother spent the better part of her childhood jetting off for repeat appearances on Oprah while her daughter cried at airports. So when my daughter asked me to come play with her and I had to say no because I was about to lead a teleseminar, I breathed a sigh of relief when the daughter of this famous author leaned into Siena and said, "Darling, let me let you in on a little secret. I know how you feel, but I promise - everything's gonna work out just fine."
This daughter with the famous mother told me that it was hard when she was young. She sometimes wished her mother would stay home and bake cupcakes like the rest of the mothers. But as she grew older, she came to not only tolerate but appreciate the role model her mother has been in her life. As working mothers, we may have to pry our baby's arms off our necks or wind up pumping - or weaning - because we just can't keep nursing or miss the occasional school festival because we have a board meeting. But we offer up a potent message to both our sons and our daughters. Women have dreams too. Moms have something to offer the world outside the home. And when it comes time to have their own children, they will remember that their mother worked, pursued her dreams, and served out her life purpose, and they (and their wives) can feel free to do the same.
If you're one of those mothers committed to doing everything you can to ensure that you raise the smartest, healthiest, most well-adjusted kid on the planet, even at the expense of your own needs, please - with all due respect - take a chill pill. This study does not mean that stay-home mothers who love being stay-home mothers need to go out and seek gainful employment outside the home. If you love being home with the kids and the intuition of your Inner Pilot Light tells you that's what's best for your family, by all means, stay with the kids the way my mother did. Throw the perfect birthday party. Home school your children. Bake cookies. Flip flashcards. Go to amusement parks. Coach the soccer team. Attend every ballet class. And put your whole heart into it. Go for it. I fully support your inner wisdom's ability to make choices that are best for you and your family.
But if you're one of those women who sacrificed your career dreams because you thought you might harm your children if you kept working, you might want to rethink your choices. You living out your own best life just might turn out to be the best thing you ever did for your children.
The moral of the story is that whatever makes you happy, healthy, and whole will benefit your kids. If that means staying home, stay home. If that means going back to work when your child is a month old, go to work, and trust that your child is more likely to wind up well-adjusted if you are. On the flip side, if you resent your children because you had to put your dreams on hold, they may feel that - and act out.
In other words, don't fake it for the kids. Don't play martyr or pretend to be something you're not. Be authentic. Express your true self. Live your dreams NOW. And model that for your children.
What do you think? Are children of stay-home mothers happier and healthier? Should you sacrifice your dreams to be with the kids? Is it selfish to be a career mom? Or might we be benefiting our children by being good role models as we pursue our own dreams? Tell us what you think!
Lissa Rankin, MD: Founder of OwningPink.com, Pink Medicine Revolutionary, motivational speaker, and author of What's Up Down There? Questions You'd Only Ask Your Gynecologist If She Was Your Best Friend and Encaustic Art: The Complete Guide To Creating Fine Art With Wax.
Motherhood versus Career: The Epic Battle that Need Not Be is a reply by Sherrie Bourg Carter Psy.D.
I just don't know if I buy this. According to Attachment theory, a baby needs his or her primary caregiver to physically be there quite often during the first years of life. Baby benefits from getting breast milk and it is advised by the World Health Organization that a baby gets it up to 2 years of age. This is much more of an obstacle when mommy works full time.
You can find a study to support almost any kind of philosophy. So, I'm not impressed with the research.
One message your article sends is that being a mother is somehow not a real job. That, the child will later realize mommy did not stay home with the baby because she was out doing real work. It's time our society begins to view stay at home work as real work! If we valued this, perhaps your child would not think to stay home is anything otherwise.
When both parents work, the child is left with a caregiver who is not as invested in that child's bonding experiences or psychological health. It's up to the parents to raise their own children, and not just pass them along to someone else.
And I have always wondered why parents choose to work rather than be home with their children? You are the best person for that child.
Stay at home moms are also working moms.
I loved your article. I appreciate the manner in which you approached an issue that can be quite the hot-button topic!
I am a working mother and sometimes it is very difficult and tiring to both hold down a job and be a mom. But before I was a mom, I was a woman who had many talents, strengths, hopes, and dreams. I still have those things, and I feel like I would be losing part of myself if I were to be a stay-at-home mom forever.
Now before somebody jumps down my throat....YES, there have been times when I was a stay-at-home mom. Did I love all of the extra time I had with my son? You betcha. Did I miss doing a job that made me feel intelligent and talented? You betcha. Did I miss having something to talk about with my friends and husband other than what my child did that day? Yes.
I just feel that for me, I really would be giving up a huge piece of myself if I were to be a stay-at-home mom. I think being a good mom is ONE of the ways that I contribute to this world--but not the only way. I would like to add that out of my friends that are my age, the ones with strong, intelligent, working mothers are the ones that turn out to be strong, intelligent, working adults. Just my take on it.
I thought that the linked article was very relivant to this topic.
Most jobs are not great!
I agree with Eric above, and it's important to understand that most moms who work do not have the privilege of choosing a glamorous and prestigious career over raising a child at home. Most working moms are in drudgery, working class positions that barely cover the costs of childcare. I feel articles like this one are aimed at an elite group of women who, a. have a choice to stay home or not and b. have prestigious, well-paid jobs such as yourself.
I totally agree with everything the first commenter said. I felt your article implied that being a stay-at-home parent was second best; that a woman has to always work outside the home to be fulfilled or to "serve our life's purpose".
You know what? I think that raising the next generation of human beings is the most important job any person can be charged with. Why do we undervalue it so much? Why does staying at home for the first 3 or 4 years of a child's life have to mean we have "sacrificed our career dreams"? And what role are we modelling to children, what potent message? That career opportunities come before family? Why also does it have to be the mother that is seemingly solely responsible for child-rearing?
Sorry I just don't agree. Children are the most important investment in the future we will ever make. Sure all family dynamics are different, as are family situations, but when parent's can afford to I believe that they should invest their time and energy into raising their own children, and the onus is not just on the mother here.
I agree that it is healthy for stay-at-home parent's to purse their own interests, seek intellectual stimulation and foster adult relationships, but surely the first 3 or 4 years of a child's critical development are not too much of a "career sacrifice" to make. I just think the "live your dreams NOW" sounds lovely but is kind of selfish and "if you resent your children because you had to put your dreams on hold, they may feel that" yes this is true but they also may resent you putting your career first. I mean surely we CAN put our dreams on hold for a few years and we CAN make sacrifices, personal, financial and even *SHOCK HORROR* career-wise for the sake of our own children! Can't we? Why can't we? I'm not suggesting we exchange our lives for the life-time of household drudgery of the 1950s woman, but I just don't see how making a 4 year investment in a child can equate to never reaching our full potential because we somehow missed our opportunity in that small window of time.
I look forward to resuming my career (in medicine also) in the next few years but I don't in any way feel that because I have stayed at home for the last 4 years until they are school aged that I have lost out or denied myself or that my children won't see me as a successful, happy, fulfilled woman who was also able to purse her dreams both in my personal life and in my career!
Moms Working Outside of the Home: Good for Kids?
The Key to Raising Confident Kids? Stop Complimenting Them!


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NGO slams policy putting Ethiopian olim in specific areas
Government creating 'new ghettos' by restricting where immigrants can buy homes with public aid, claims Ethiopian advocacy group.
By RUTH EGLASH
Published: APRIL 21, 2011 01:29
New Ethiopian immigrants at seder 311
(photo credit: Courtesy)
An Ethiopian immigrants' rights group has been working to change an Immigrant Absorption Ministry policy that it claims forces new olim to purchase property in limited neighborhoods – some in very poor or troubled areas – to receive a government housing grant and mortgage package.
However, the ministry said at a Knesset hearing last month that the policy is aimed at avoiding a trend of "ghettoizing" the new immigrants.
Ethiopian immigrants set to celebrate their first Seder
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Still, Ziva Mekonen-Dagu, executive director of the Israel Association of Ethiopian Jews, told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday that such a policy is not only "patronizing" but severely infringes on human rights, and is "creating new ghettos" in other areas.
"The Immigrant Absorption Ministry thinks it can tell Ethiopian immigrants what to do, and no one will complain or respond – but it is not right for a person to tell another person where they can or cannot buy a house," she said.
Mekonen-Dagu added that during a meeting last week with representatives of the Immigrant Absorption and Housing and Construction ministries, "we told them that these kinds of policies are simply not acceptable."
She took over as executive director of the grass-roots NGO last September, and said she sees this issue as her first big battle for improving the status of Ethiopian immigrants.
Mekonen-Dagu said many of the streets offered to the immigrants are in low socio-economic neighborhoods, such as the haredi stronghold Mea She'arim in Jerusalem; or in crime-ridden neighborhoods in south Tel Aviv. Some are even in mixed Jewish- Arab neighborhoods, such as Ajami in Jaffa, or Beit Hanina in east Jerusalem, she said.
"Those we spoke to are not willing to move to Mea She'arim, or into Muslim neighborhoods," Mekonen-Dagu said. "It's not that they are racist – and I know there are some Israelis who believe in the principles of co-existence – but that is their choice. For these immigrants they were given no choice."
Mekonen-Dagu added that during a recent visit to Ethiopian families now living in Jaffa, she heard how the immigrants – who must undergo an Orthodox conversion to Judaism as part of the immigration process – are bitterly disappointed at being forced to send their children to mixed Jewish-Christian-Muslim kindergartens and schools.
"The teacher told them that it is an Israeli-style kindergarten, but the [olim] do not want to be celebrating with Santa Claus during Hanukka," she explained.
"It is simply not fair to say that one street or city is closed to new immigrants 'because it will create a ghetto' – but then force the people to buy in areas or streets where there are already social problems and serious crime."
During a meeting last month of the Knesset's Aliya, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee, Haviv Katsav, deputy director for housing in the Immigrant Absorption Ministry, explained that the policy was designed to prevent immigrants from moving into neighborhoods where Ethiopians constitute 9 percent of the overall population – including Rehovot, Netanya and Kiryat Malachi.
Katsav said the ministry wants to direct Ethiopian olim to areas where they presently constitute less than 5% of total residents.
He insisted that the core of the problem was more the size of the government grant/mortgage allocation, which "does not allow them to buy in areas that are not already in distress."
Under current government guidelines, new immigrants from Ethiopia are entitled to a combination grant and mortgage amounting to NIS 237,000 for a young couple; and roughly NIS 500,000 for a family of up to six people.
The lower amount, which Mekonen-Dago said is "not even enough to buy a one-room apartment in most decent neighborhoods in this country," has been greatly debated and criticized because it forces Ethiopian immigrants to buy in only poor areas.
In addition, a recent study by the Knesset Research and Information Department found that the number of Ethiopian immigrants utilizing the government grant/mortgage has dropped significantly in the last year, as housing prices in Israel continue to skyrocket.
Last year only 503 families managed to buy new apartments, compared to 750 the previous year. This year the numbers have fallen even more drastically.
On Wednesday, MK Danny Danon (Likud), chairman of the Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee, told the Post that his committee was working with the Treasury to increase the grant/mortgage allocation to NIS 700,000 maximum per family.
He also said he had given the Immigrant Absorption Ministry a grace period to create clearer guidelines for property purchases.
"No one should be telling them where to buy an apartment, but I do understand the policy of preventing them from buying in certain neighborhoods or streets where there are already large groups of new immigrants," Danon said.
A spokesman for the Immigrant Absorption Ministry said an inter-ministerial committee – with representatives from the Housing and Construction Ministry – has already been established to look into the matter.
"Under our current policy, which is based on a government decision, Ethiopian immigrants are entitled to a grant if they purchase property in areas with a strong socio-economic status, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics," said the spokesman. "This is also based on how well the cities can absorb the new immigrants, and on the percentage of Ethiopian immigrants already living there."
Even though Mekonen-Dagu is now working closely with ministry officials to redraft new housing regulations, she added Wednesday that the policy was symptomatic of the state's overall approach to the Falash Mura immigration.
Last November, the government approved measures to continue with the organized immigration of some 8,000 Falash Mura – Ethiopian Jews whose ancestors were forcibly converted to Christianity more than 150 years ago. Subsequently, several large international Jewish organizations came forward to help fund what is now being labeled as "the final phase" of aliya from Ethiopia.
However, Mekonen-Dagu contends, "this is really cosmetic. If the government has made a decision to bring in more immigrants, then it needs to take responsibility for helping those that are already here."

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Currently in the process of celebrating a remarkable ten years of bringing cuddly/eclectic pay-what-you-can family music events to London (or, more accurately, of encouraging inspiring music to happen with the minimum of cynical compromises while ensuring that there's a family-friendly space for it to happen in), Daylight Music is back for another season of Saturday lunchtime gigs with all manner of different people playing.
The summer season launch gig, on 1st June, focusses on experimental brass-themed acts:
"West Yorkshire's The Slowest Lift (Sophie Cooper and Julian Bradley), present a new chapter in the long-running tradition of radical English music duos. Cooper (an accomplished solo performer and collaborator) and Bradley (from frequent VHF delinquents Vibracathedral Orchestra) play a kind of gentle post-industrial psychedelia, a ghostly tapestry of earthen whirring, phantasmal resonances, sheets of textured skree and touching, hazy vocals. The songs are a blend of straightforward performance and eccentric bricolage, with rude electronic interjections sitting comfortably alongside delicate guitar and keyboard melodies.
"Laura Jurd and Chris Batchelor will perform as a duo. Laura is a London-based, award-winning trumpet player and composer, currently a BBC New Generation Artist for 2015-2017: an active improviser playing regularly in the UK and more recently in Europe, she specialises in writing for hand-picked musicians in her own projects and ensembles. Her band Dinosaur has performed throughout the UK and Europe. Chris is an innovative and creative trumpet player and composer based in London: as well as leading several projects, including the avant-trad band Pigfoot, he is also featured as a sensitive and versatile soloist in many highly regarded groups on the European jazz scene, and is a prominent soloist and composer in the re-formed Loose Tubes.
"ORE is the drone/doom brass sound of tuba player Sam Underwood and baritone horn/trombone player Beck Baker. The pair create weighty dronescapes that evolve at a glacial pace. ORE's sound rewards the patient listener as their dissonant tones rub together; enhanced by the use of two custom-built resonant gong speakers. The audience slowly becomes awash with the sound of ORE.
"We're happy to announce that Jim Bishop will return to play the chapel's own Gothic synth – the Henry Willis organ, joining the dots between the other main performers. Jim came to Daylight as part of all-male 60's dance troupe The Action Men, who have returned a couple of times since. He plays in Ancient Egyptian instrumental group The Mirage Men, The Band Who Fell To Earth (who play Bowie in the style of Booker T. and The MGs) and The Fay Hallam Group, alongside another Daylight performer, Andy Lewis."
The 'Come As You Are' concert on 8th June sees the series dive into comfy covers again…
"Daylight Music goes to the indie disco in its own inimitable fashion with the Jam Tarts Choir and Independent Country, who will be teaming up for an unforgettable rendition of the Nirvana song of the event title, and expect a surprise or two on the Chapel's organ…
"Independent Country, a six-piece band from Birmingham, play your favourite indie hits in a country music style. Here are songs originally by the Happy Mondays, the Smiths, Blur, Jesus and Mary Chain, Pulp and Oasis as you've never heard them before.
"Now into their fifteenth barnstorming year, Brighton's Jam Tarts are an indie choral collective who perform unique and shimmering arrangements of post-punk, electro, Britpop and artrock classics. Four (or five or even eight) part harmonies, sixty pairs of mighty lungs and six degrees of celebration. Think choirs aren't your cup of tea? You've never heard your favourite songs quite like this before…Their set is likely to include big choral versions of songs by Ezra Furman, The Stone Roses, Tom Waits, Jesus and Mary Chain and Arcade Fire. Hungover commuters on the 8.18 from Brighton can expect the train to be packed with singing Tarts, complete with trumpeters and cellist!
"Indie and alternative music was the natural choice for the choir after director and musical arranger Li Mills bribed John Peel with chocolate to help write her music degree finals thesis on punk, obliterating her early teenage record collection of Dire Straits and Phil Collins albums. Praise be to the late Mr Peel, or Jam Tarts might be singing Another Day in Paradise arranged for sixty voices…
"Sarah Gonputh is a London-based keyboard player for Green Seagull, Manuela, Twink and The Lysergics. She has a special love for vintage organs such as the Vox Jaguar, Vox Continental, Farfisa Compact, The Philacorda and the Hammond Organ. Her keyboard-playing heroes include: Ray Mazareck of The Doors, Steve Winwood and Garth Hudson of The Band. Having performed several times at past Daylight Music events with Green Seagull, Manuela and playing piano for the "in-between" bits last year for The Left Outsiders, this will be Sarah's Union Chapel Organ playing debut, pumping out some indie hits."
Choral ideas are developed further the following week with the 'Call To Choir' event, including a chance for you to join in…
"What happens when the call of one voice captures the imagination of others? Starting with one singer and finishing with hundreds, this edition of Daylight Music will see numbers of voices grow to fill every corner of the Union Chapel.
"Dominic Stichbury (Chaps Choir, Bellow Fellows) and Ben See (La La La Records) are exploring the themes of expansion, commonalty and togetherness through the human voice; and are gathering singers together to celebrate its infectious power. The performance will include an eclectic mix of singers and songs, including new material written especially for the event, featuring female folk/jazz vocal quartet Archie, Ben See, Esmeralda Conde Ruiz and the GrandMother project, Chaps Choir, Bellow Fellows and Brixton-based "all girl, all awesome" close-harmony choir Electric Belles.
"Would you like to join the biggest ever choir to sing at Daylight Music? All welcome. No choir/performing experience is required, just fill in the online form, turn up for the preparation sessions (on Friday 14th) and take part in the final event. You will learn some short songs in harmony by ear and prepare to sing them with hundreds of other voices in the wonderful acoustics of the chapel."
More choral covers blend with pianos, pop and psychedelia on the 22nd when Piney Gir gets her hands on the reins…
"Piney Gir's perfect pop music is dipped in sunshine, so she was an obvious choice to curate a special event inspired by the Summer Solstice as part of our 10th Year celebration. She wants you to get playful, be creative, and come along for summertime inspiration and maybe even do a little white witchy spell with her in honour of The Longest Day.
"Originally hailing from Kansas, but having lived in London for many years, Piney is a prolific and prodigious musician. She has been touring with Gaz Coombes around the UK, Europe and America and is also one of Gaz's backing singers. She has recently been singing with Noel Gallagher and Danny Goffey, and supported Ride on tour around the UK just before Christmas. She's gearing up to release her seventh album, 'You Are Here', which is a celebration of analogue gear with a sound that nods back to when music was on the cusp of change, just before synth pop and just after punk rock.
"Her allies on this afternoon will be London women's SHE Choir who sing their technicolour version of songs from Destiny's Child to Fleetwood Mac.
"Oly Ralfe (Ralfe Band) will present music from his debut solo instrumental piano album. Sitting somewhere between the oscillating patterns of Philip Glass and the reflectiveness of Gavin Bryars, the album 'Notes From Another Sea' sounds like music for a film that has yet to be made.
"Finally, Piney presents a special acoustic set from Premium Leisure (a.k.a. Chris Barker) who has honed his own sound: a mix of experimental guitars and undulating rhythms reminiscent of late '60s English psychedelic rock with a bit of early Tame Impala or White Denim thrown in."
The last of June's gigs is a typically Daylight fusion of accessible classical and experimental ideas…
"What if you could play a note on the piano and have it last forever? Pianist, composer and improviser Xenia Pestova Bennett will curate a special afternoon featuring the Magnetic Resonator Piano, an exciting new instrument designed by the radical inventor Andrew McPherson. A grand piano will be completely transformed into a stunning acoustic cyborg with electromagnets suspended above the strings, allowing for control of minute details of shimmering resonance and gorgeous sustained tones. (Click here for an article on the instrument, from 'Keyboard Perspectives', and here for a 'World Piano News' article on its use in the soundtrack for last year's film 'Christopher Robin'…)
"Also performing will be string ensemble Ligeti Quartet who, since their formation in 2010, have established a reputation for breaking new ground through innovative programming and championing of today's most exciting composers and artists.
"Completing this afternoon line-up, Xenia presents Snowpoet's debut at Daylight. The London-based band, led by "mesmerising" vocalist Lauren Kinsella and bassist Chris Hyson, have released two critically acclaimed albums to date, with the most recent being 'Thought You Knew' on Edition Records. Blending sweet hook-laden vocal lines with warm and lush arrangements, the music is infectious, delicate and tasteful.
"Joining the dots this week between the other artists is something a little bit special. We're pleased to welcome Muted Summer Landscape, an audio/visual collaboration between electronic music composer Brian Robinson and visual artist Steve Lee who transform and shape their audio/visual field recordings, melodies and rhythms into delicate electronic portraits that often reflect the natural environments that surround them. Inspired by the simple and complex patterns that present themselves when manipulating source material, msl create immersive narratives that evoke emotions, stimulate imagination and provoke thought. Taking into account the architectural surroundings and the nature of this event, Brian will deliver a solo performance of live ambient/spectral transformations based on material taken from MSL's forthcoming audio/visual release, expected later this summer."
All gigs are at the usual place – Union Chapel, 19b Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, England – with a suggested donation of five pounds (as ever, an absolute bargain). Dates below:
Daylight Music 307: The Slowest Lift + Laura Jurd & Chris Batchelor + ORE – Saturday 1st June 2019, 12:00pm – information here and here
Daylight Music 308: 'Come As You Are' with Jam Tarts Choir + Independent Country – Saturday 8th June 2019, 12:00pm – information here and here
Daylight Music 309: 'From Call To Choir' with Dominic Stichbury & Ben See with Esmeralda Conde Ruiz + Archie (plus members of Chaps Choir, Bellow Fellows, Electric Belles and the Grandmother project) – Saturday 15th June 2019, 12:00pm – information here and here
Daylight Music 310: Piney Gir's 'Midsummer Madness' with She Choir + Oly Ralfe – Saturday 22nd June 2019, 12:00pm – information here and here
Daylight Music 311: 'Magnetic String Resonance' with Xenia Pestova Bennett + Ligeti Quartet + Snowpoet + Muted Summer Landscape – Saturday 29th June 2019, 12:00pm – information here and here
Details on July's Daylight concerts to follow in due course…
Tags: Andrew McPherson (technologist), Archie, Archie (band), Arctic Circle (promoter), Beck Baker, Bellow Fellows, Ben See, Chaps Choir, Chris Batchelor, Chris Hyson, Daylight Music (event), Dominic Stichbury, Electric Belles, Esmeralda Conde Ruiz, Independent Country, Jam Tarts Choir, Jim Bishop, Lauren Kinsella, Li Mills, listening to women, London (England), Loose Tubes, magnetic resonator piano, Muted Summer Landscape, Oly Ralfe, Piney Gir, Premium Leisure (Chris Barker), prepared piano music, Sam Underwood (ORE), Sarah Gonputh, SHE Choir, Snowpoet, Sophie Cooper, The Slowest Lift, Vibracathedral Orchestra, women of heart and mind, Xenia Pestova
Categories 2019 music, acoustic music, acoustic pop, alternative pop, ambient music, Americana, chamber music, choral music, classical (Western art music), classical fusion, comedy music, country-and-western, cover versions, crossover, DIY music, drone music, easy listening, electro-acoustic music, electronic, experimental music, folk music, improvisation, instrumental music, interactive performances, jazz, New Music, pop, post-bop, previews, process music, rock, singer-songwriter, vocal music
At a time when our politics are tangibly darkening with currents of bigotry and nationalism and vicious, exclusionary stories, you might consider that looking at fascism within magic is a frivolous exercise.
Anthropologist Dr. Amy Hale (Atlanta, US) would disagree with you. She's delivering the spoken-word part of an upcoming "night of magical resistance" at the Horse Hospital (London's home of esoterica, underground cinema, public magick and wild frocks) for which the musical aspect's being provided by Leeds-based Hawthonn, made up of "dual star daemons" Layla and Phil Legard, who specialise in "twenty-first century moon musick… underground spectralism meets edgeland herbalism…"
This isn't necessarily a new thing. Plenty of the frowning white-nativist movements in Europe and the States force parasitic roots into ideas about submerged culture, or ideas of a purity predating Christianity, liberalism and rationalism, into which disappointed or indignant people drift in the hope of finding and defining themselves. If you've dabbled in Nordic revivalism, for example, you may well have brushed up against it: racism smudging the runes. Similarly, some sonic pagans have always pushed back (having always associated their own musical explorations with a live-and-let-live freedom or a rejection of the controlling homegenisations of fascism), and even more of them are pushing back now.
Amy's lecture, 'Is A Progressive Magick Even Possible?', examines what happens when "as the world takes an awkward lurch towards right wing authoritarianism, underground and fringe cultures, organisations and scenes are becoming increasingly attuned to the attempts by radical right wing groups to infiltrate and coerce their members… Modern occult practice, for many, relies on structures, ideas, values, and aesthetics that are inherently linked to conservative and reactionary thought. Examples of this are the valorisation of tradition, the idea of an initiated spiritual elite and the notion of a highly-ordered Neoplatonic universe, where everything is in its right place – including people and cultures.
"These conservative traits create opportunities for activists to use the social mechanisms of occult subcultures – for example festivals and conferences, book publishing, the music and fashion industries – to promote radical political and cultural agendas without people even noticing that it has happened. Tonight's presentations discuss how, and why, contemporary magical cultures have become attractive territories for recruitment and expansion by far right organisations… I will discuss how ideas of tradition and "nature" are exploited, and how the discourses of "free speech" are deployed to create and justify platforms for radical, intolerant politics in an occult milieu… We will also learn to recognise such entryism in action, and how to stop it."
As for Hawthonn, this is their first London appearance; their first live musical ritual within the M25; and their first chance to present their particular stance to the capital. Delving (in the tradition of Coil) into post-industrial esoteric drones and vocalisations, their work has so far embraced edgeland/feminist associations on 'Red Goddess' and implied erotic ritualisations on 'The Well Head', with more associations and purposes evolving. I don't know what they'll be coming up with on this occasion; but I'm assuming that it's going to pull on their increasing conviction that ritual needs to engage (if not necessarily with materialism) with the fabric of daily practical necessities and practical history.
To quote them – "as esotericists we often believe that we have stepped beyond 'mere politics' – that our minds are turned to a higher world, which has little relation to the mundane – despite, paradoxically, believing that our magical actions influence the phenomenal world. Yet many contemporary scholars of esotericism and religion analyse the currents of occultism, paganism and the New Age as socially constructed phenomena: elaborate mythic structures enforcing certain norms, beliefs and practices, while justifying themselves through appeals to authority, lineage and experience, even science and rationality. Such historiographic or sociological approaches have been accused by many practitioners of base reductionism, undermining the authority of their particular traditions.
"Yet, what if practitioners of esotericism were to accept – or at least entertain for a moment – a constructivist, rather than transcendentalist, paradigm? We posit that such an acceptance can lead to another form of practice, which acknowledges the way in which esotericism is inseparable from the historical, social and economic fabric of our lives and which – rather than denying the viscerality of ritual and experience – uses them as tools to question the traditions and assumptions of the esoteric worldview, leading to a fluid and reflexive 'critical magick'."
Drifting through Kings Cross – away from the cosy confines of the Harrison and back to its spiritual home at Westminster Kingsway College – and still driven by joint organisers Chlöe Herington (V A L V E, Knifeworld, Lindsay Cooper Songbook, Hirvikolari) and Keith Moliné (Pere Ubu, Prescott), the Overlaps "six musicians on the spot" concert series continues to burnish its particular niche. Improvising, but outside of the usual free-jazz grammar; perhaps owing something to art rock, but tearing one end wide open. Assimilating injections of the wilder shaggier side of experimental pop. Tag-teaming, but with a little friendly risk; part-prepared, but mostly of the moment.
In addition to Chlöe's avant-rock reeds and home-made noiseboxes and Keith's startling bricolage guitarwork, the debut Overlaps evening back in January also featured jazz/art-rock-toned drum-and-bass artist Farz and fringe-pop experimenter/spoken-word persona shifter Merlin Nova; plus another British art rock guitar mainstay in Chloe's Knifeworld bandmate Kavus Torabi and creative sideslip drumming from Keith's Prescott bandmate Frank Byng (also of Snorkel and This Is Not This Heat). Chlöe, Keith and Frank are all back for round two, with the remaining three players coming in from other assorted corners of noisework, avant-garde and New Classical – often simultaneously.
While performing her dramatic, noisy electric cello soundscapes, Jasmine Pender usually goes under the alias of Rotten Bliss, sousing her sound in effects and singing along with a terrifying gorgeousness: storm-strings and surreal marine tales. For Overlaps, though, she's performing under her own name. Perhaps it's in solidarity with the other, unmasked performers not hiding behind their project names or band tags; or perhaps it means she's going to be trying something a little different. You'll need to turn up and see.
Originally coming up through the New York downtown arts, in her time Kay Grant has sung pop, jazz, rock, choral classical and opera (and built the ranges for each). She still touches on several of them today – most notably the jazz, with her own vocalise-based Kay Grant All-four and song duo Living Standards, and via guestings with the more standards-slanted Cyril Bass Quartet and Big Swing Big Band. But when she gives herself full improvisatory range her voice is an untethered exploratory device – coasting, feinting and arcing with the full subliminal structural knowledge of her training, but completely free to embrace a scattering palate of noise, tones and intimations.
Tim Hodgkinson, of course, is best known for his 1970s work as a founder and consistent member of Henry Cow: foundational art-rock radicalism within which he and his bandmates pursued a continuous course of questioning, dissonance, learning and overturning. Since then (usually armed with reed instruments, tapes, lap steel guitar and keyboards), he's maintained a core Cow method: exploring, playing and composing via a cerebral and committed musicality which initially challenges and overwhelms his own technical skills but constantly forces him to advance. He's equally likely to be found at work in art-house shows worldwide or in ferociously experimental British pub gigs, stretching his skills between improvised blowings, committed collaging or the conduction of post-classical chamber music which sounds like the skitterings of unruly ghost feet pursuing an unfinished argument.
Again, I've little idea of what he'll be doing – it could be solo clarinet, it could be something with tapes and counterpoint, it could be something which bridges his interest in shamanic music and cultural anthropology.
There's also time to mention (in brief) the concerts and chat around the sprawling Sonic Electronics Festival coming up at IKLECTIK and straddling late May and early June. Fascinated by coding and by digital evolution, the event's as much academic as it is instinctive and will contain far too many ideas, implications and theory to be easily abridged and listed here. So this is a quick sketch of what's lined up rather than a definitive description.
On 31st May, the evening concert is a London live AV performance incorporating toys/scrabbles/tapeloops collective Morphogenesis (bolstered by audio sculptor John Wall and electro-acoustic/noise performer Mark Durgan), the electronic-junk-assisted dronescapes of raxil4, woodwinder-turned-synth minimalist Bernhard Living and masked audio-visual circuit-building ritualists Isn'tses (the last of whom will also be running a Fort processor building workshop on the morning of Saturday 1st June). The Saturday evening is a pass-it-on event of international live audiovisual performance with VJ and visual/sonics encoder Chris Speed, videomapping performance artists Blanca Regina, extended vocal/multimedia performer Alessandra Eramo and feminine-industrial explorers Slow Slow Loris
The show on the evening of 2nd June involves the 4.1 Soundsystem. Here you can hear and watch a teaming of sound foleyist Rebecca Glover and the squelchy Fritha Jenkins (who's inspired by shorelines of sand and mud);
spacial-stereo sound artist Bioni Samp (whose work and subject matter is informed by his own beekeeping and by concerns about bee extinction); the "theogynous" industrial/classical polyphonic vocals of Vera Bremerton; "grainyl"-ist Tony James Morton (who takes the cut'n'plunder techniques of hip hop DJs and feeds them through the alterations of granular synthesis); and the deep-listening drones of Johannes de Silentio (a.k.a. Lucius Works Here, a.k.a. Barcelonan sound art DJ Shak Benavides).
If you want to immerse yourself in theory, debate and other verbals, you'll be wanting to go along to the event launch on the evening of 30th May. Here, there will be talks from Lucia Farinati, Nina Power and Giles Greenaway (about the intersections, overlaps and interferences of audiovisual technology with philosophy and live culture, and about process patterns taken from living creatures). There'll also be a live AV performance of experimental electromagnetic power noise from Laura Netz, using hand-built technology.
Strange Attractor presents:
'Towards a Progressive Magic' (featuring Dr. Amy Hale + Hawthonn)
The Horse Hospital, The Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London, WC1N 1JD, England
Thursday 30th May 2019, 7.00pm – information here and here
Sonic Electronics Festival: Digital Arts & Analogue Devices
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Thursday 30th May 2019 to Sunday 2nd June 2019, various times – information here, here, here, here, here and here
Westking Music and Performing Arts presents:
'Overlaps' #2: Kay Grant + Keith Moliné + Jasmine Pender + Tim Hodgkinson + Frank Byng + Chlöe Herington
Westminster Kingsway College, 211 Gray's Inn Road, Kings Cross, London, WC1X 8RA, England
Wednesday 5th June 2019, 6.30pm – information here
Tags: Alessandra Eramo, Amy Hale, Bernhard Living, Bioni Samp, Blanca Regina, Chloe Herington, Chris Speed, contrabassoon, Frank Byng, Fritha Jenkins, Giles Greenway, Hawthonn, Henry Cow, Isn'tses, Johannes de Silentio, John Wall, Kay Grant, Keith Moliné, Laura Netz, Lisa McKendrick, London (England), Lucia Farinati, Mark Durgan, Morphogenesis, multimedia, Nina Power, Overlaps (concert series), raxil4, Rebecca Glover, Rotten Bliss (Jasmine Pender), Slow Slow Loris, Tim Drage, Tim Hodgkinson, Tony James Morton, V A L V E, Vera Bremerton
Categories 2019 music, ambient pop, art pop, art rock, ceremonial music, circuit bending, deep listening, DIY music, DJ sets, dream pop, drone music, electro-acoustic folk, electro-acoustic music, electronic, electronica, experimental music, experimental pop, festivals, folk music, freak-folk, hip hop, improvisation, industrial music, instrumental music, interactive performances, LGBTQIA+ music, musique concrete, New Music, noise, performance art, plunderphonics, political music, polyphonic singing, pop, previews, process music, psychedelic ambient music, rock, sacred music, sampledelia, sound collage, soundscapes, spoken word, synth pop, turntablism, vocal music
The last Kammer Klang concert of the current season is slipping its usual moorings, forsaking its usual London home at Café Oto in favour of the ICA, and staging a reconstruction (and UK premiere) of 'GLIA', Maryanne Amacher's work for seven instruments and electronics.
As a fully-formed artist slipping into the realms of avant-garde composition, Amacher was best known for installation work and psychoacoustic ideas… although that's a little dry and reductive. She was interested in exploring the ways in which humans perceive sound (including ways in which a listener can be subtly deceived by its manipulation and displacement), and in particular the perceptions induced by sounds generated within the ear. She'd use particular high-frequency sounds, volumes and sonic displacements to excite unusual tonal responses within the physical structure of the inner ears of her listeners; in effect, she benevolently transformed them into part of the sonic ensemble (or, perhaps more accurately, into instruments who could perceive themselves being played).
This from the archives at the ZKM (Center for Art and Media) in Karlsruhe:
"The work bearing the title 'GLIA' (named after the glial cells in the brain that control the transmission of stimuli between the synapses) was performed once in the Berlin multimedia centre TESLA. This first exhibition was (still) instructed and supervised by Amacher herself in collaboration with the former director of Ensemble Zwischentöne, Peter Ablinger, as well as with current director Bill Dietz.
"In 'GLIA', Amacher imagines the audience as a kind of glial cell representing the interface between the electronic and acoustic-instrumental elements of the work. In a narrower sense, she imagined the "otoacoustic emissions" (the sounds within the ear radiating once again from the electronic devices and instruments as if "by magic") emerging in the audience's ears as precisely this "neural interface". This corresponds to the same approach Amacher had previously intended with her piece for the Kronos Quartet in the 1990s which was never performed (and probably never completed). In fact, the material for this string quartet had been partly newly arranged for 'GLIA'. After the Berlin premier, Amacher returned to Kingston, New York, and took home with her all the material for the performance of this work. In 2009, the Zwischentöne ensemble invited Amacher to return to Berlin to further develop 'GLIA'. Unexpectedly, Amacher tragically died shortly before this planned reencounter."
'GLIA' has been performed at least twice since then (with Zwischentöne performing it twice in 2012, at ZKM and at Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof-Museum für Gegenwart), but this will be the British premiere; with members of Zwischentöne joining another Swiss New Music ensemble, Ensemble Contrechamps and with Bill Dietz returning to direct. The performance will be preceded by 'Ghost Written Scenarios & Unnamed Sensibilities', a discussion between Bill and Amy Cimini, the contemporary music performer and academic historian Amy Cimini whose book 'Listening in the Future Tense' "examines the use of biological and ecological sound sources in late 20th century experimental music circles."
It's no coincidence that this subject overlaps with Amacher's work: Amy was a friend and collaborator, as well as being part of the ongoing Supreme Connections collective which reengages with Amacher's legacy and her back catalogue of music and ideas. Amy's also a defender against over-casual summings-up of her friend's intentions and achievements: "(Listeners are) like: 'O.K., I totally get what this music is about — it's about this crazy inner-ear sensation, she understood that intuitively, end of story. And that's not the story, actually." OK… I stand corrected…)
The concert and discussion will be preceded the previous day with a screening of Charles Atlas' 'Torse' documentary from 1977 – a multiple-camera study of the choreography of Merce Cunningham's 'Torse' dance piece, performed to Amacher's composition Remainder (1976). As with the performance of 'GLIA', there'll be a pre-screening conversation between Bill Dietz and Amy Cimini.
Kammer Klang/Ensemble Contrechamps/Institute of Contemporary Arts presents:
'Maryanne Amacher at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, 30th-31st May 2019'
Screening of 'Torse' (plus pre-screening conversation between Bill Dietz and Amy Cimini) – Thursday 30th May 2019, 6.30pm
'Ghost Written Scenarios & Unnamed Sensibilities' (Bill Dietz and Amy Cimini in conversation) – Friday 31st May 2019, 7.00pm
Maryanne Amacher Focus (featuring Ensemble Contrechamps, members of Ensemble Zwischentöne and Bill Dietz) – Friday 31st May 2019, 8.00pm
All events at Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, St James's, London, SW1Y 5AH, England.
More/ongoing information here, here and here
Tags: Amy Cimini, Bill Dietz, Ensemble Contrechamps, Ensemble Zwischentöne, Kammer Klang (event), London (England), Maryanne Amacher, Merce Cunningham
Categories 2005 music, 2019 music, chamber music, dance, dance performances, deep listening, documentaries, electro-acoustic music, electronic, experimental music, film & cinema, films, interactive performances
When landlords and developers mark a city building for extra, blander profit – and when they put the squeeze on an existing tenant – they don't only change and narrow the future, they can also asphyxiate the past. I don't mean that they somehow delete what's come before, it's more that they pinch it off and remove its potential for continuance. The meaning that's associated with a building and what goes on inside it, its history, becomes obscured to people who've not had the chance to discover it yet; or to people who might, in the future, grow up nearby never knowing what used to take place there.
For myself, I feel pretty damn ignorant for not having known about Hackney music space Total Refreshment Centre until, ooh, last year. It seems that, in various forms, it harboured and encouraged music for at least half of my lifetime, curating the historical while encouraging the current and never losing touch of the ethos that music should be inherent to and conversant with its community rather than being a little rarified enclave. The fact that sometime, quietly, last summer, the TRC was forced to shut down (presumably to make way for luxury flats or something which can generate a greater ground rent) makes me angry. Fortunately, the place is resilient enough as an idea – effectively, as a movement – not to rely entirely on bricks and mortar. Scheduled gigs have continued (still run by the existing team but moved to other venues), the programs still run; the concept of the place still has legs.
In some respects the people involved with the TRC are making a virtue of their new and more itinerant existence, using it to spread the word a little wider; extending their ongoing work in what 'Clash Music' has called "a means of pursing social engineering, a way to build communities up at a time when the political establishment seem content to break communities apart… Music can be used to re-imagine your surroundings, to transform concrete, glass, and brick into something magical." Still, it must make life a little tougher, a little more challenging, that much more of a forced hack at a time when it's already pretty exhausting.
With that in mind, it's good to see that the TRC gets its own jazz tribute – more accurately, its own self-propelled celebratory showcase – this coming weekend at one of London's more inviolable culture fortresses, the Barbican. There's an opportunity here to carp about centralization, or about how certain establishments are protected while others are not (and for distasteful reasons – race and class also have a role to play here), but let's just sound the obvious note here and move on. Better to bounce back and roll on as the TRC are doing; better to celebrate the recognition and cooperation which such a show also represents.
There are still a few tickets available for what's promising to be one of the events of the London jazz year. Blurb follows:
"Total Refreshment Centre is part and parcel of east London's recent music history. The building's musical journey started as a Caribbean social club and studio and evolved into the musical hub that it is today. On April 13th, the Barbican Centre will host Dreaming The City, celebrating a previously untold story in east London's music history. To mark nearly thirty years of influential music in the building, TRC has teamed up with Boiler Room – the revered global music broadcasting platform – who will broadcast the gig live.
"The concept of the show is a live mixtape exploring three decades of musical excellence that took place inside an Edwardian warehouse in Hackney. The building began life as a confectionary factory and by the 1990s had become Mellow Mix, a Caribbean social club and rehearsal space. In 2012 it began running as Total Refreshment Centre, an influential studio and venue that has played an integral role in the upsurge of new London jazz, which is now gathering worldwide attention. The narrative of 'Dreaming The City' is inspired by the history of this building, made special by the communities that inhabited it over the years. This story, researched by writer Emma Warren, is explored fully in her new book, 'Make Some Space: Tuning Into Total Refreshment Centre (And All Places Like It)'.
"Over thirty musicians from the thriving jazz scene (including Cassie Kinoshi and her Seed Ensemble, drummer-producer Kwake Bass, Jazz Warrior Orphy Robinson, Tom Skinner's Wildflower, folk-crossover artists Rozi Plain, Alabaster DePlume and Joshua Idehen) will team up to perform. Also on the bill – Chelsea Carmichael, Cherise Adams-Burnett, Crispin Spry Robinson, Deschanel Gordon, Donna Thompson, Dylema Amadie, Emma-Jean Thackray, Idris Rahman, James Howard, Joe Bristow, Leon Brichard, Maria Osuchowska, Miguel Gorodi, Mutale Chashi, Noriko Okaku, Oscar Jerome, Patrick Boyle, Rai Wong, Rio Kai, Sheila Maurice-Grey, Shirley Tetteh, Tyrone Isaac-Stuart, Yael Camara Onono, Yohan Kebede and more special secret guests to come. This milestone event will unfold over five chapters, blurring the lines of what jazz is and creating new, exclusive and unexpected collaborations.
"There's a strong link between club culture and live music in today's vibrant music scene – what some have called 'jazz-rave' – and Dreaming The City will offer an energetic journey through time, space and London's rich culture. The evening will start with a celebration of Caribbean sounds, recognising the community that first established the space as a musical hub. Following this, we trace the contemporary lineage of jazz music between inner-city London, West Africa, the Caribbean and continental Europe. Expect a session showcasing household names premiering new outfits, dropping old classics and brand new tunes. The music will reflect the diversity of sounds that have been danced to at TRC, from reggae and dub, to Krautrock via jazz and West African grooves."
Some glimpses…
…and here's a short film about the state of London jazz (with plenty of TRC-ing) which was released into the wild a few months ago in January…
Back in January I did some praise singing for Steam Down, the south London jazz collective who bring regular African-inspired but London-cooked communal music events to Deptford. For the benefit of those north and east Londoners who for some reason never cross the river, they're playing Shoreditch's Village Underground towards the end of the month.
"Join Steam Down as they take over Village Underground, with members on the decks and some very special guests joining them on stage. Jumping off from the sonic springboard of Afrofuturism, grime and future soul, all fused together with the fearless spontaneity of jazz, Steam Down is an arts collective comprised of Ahnanse, Alex Rita, Brother Portrait, Sawa-Manga, Theon Cross, Nadeem Din-Gabisi, Benjamin Appiah, Dominic Canning and "Nache. The collective congregates mid-weekly for a live performance where healing vibes and compulsive dancing are just as important as the music. Previous sessions have included guest appearances from Kamasi Washington, Sampa The Great, Nubya Garcia, members of Ezra Collective, SEED Ensemble and Sons of Kemet. Every week proves to be a co-creative piece of magic where everyone's participation matters."
There's a new Village Underground interview with Steam Down here, but below is part of what I wrote about them three months ago:
"(An) African-inspired collective ethos… a diverse, voluntary hive mind, their individualities fused and encouraged by common purpose… a simmering pot of phuture soul, West African rhythms and cheerful Afrofuturism, the rapid offset breakbeat-splash and electrophonic edge of grime and broken-beat, and (in particular) spiritual jazz. That said, they're well aware that they should steer clear of romantic oversimplifications about roots. As Ahnanse remarked in an interview with 'The Vinyl Factory' last year, "the roots of what we are creating starts outside of that context, jazz is not the only source of improvised music in the world. It happens in many forms and many cultures, we all come from different spaces and cultures, and it isn't black American culture, none of us were born there, so actually we are bringing all of those other experiences into this… In a society that is so hegemonic and monotonous it's nice to surprise yourself and be surprised, by people that you know well." More than anything else, Steam Down work is inspired by the interlocking of Afro-diasporan culture with week-by-week London life – the information-rich bustle and challenges of a world city made up of people from everywhere, many of them sometimes pushing (or knocking heads) against half-invisible restrictions and oppressions as well as providing broad-mindedness and opportunity."
Also this spring, guitarist/composer Chris Montague revs up his jazz trio Warmer Than Blood (with bass guitarist Ruth Goller and pianist Kit Downes) for a couple of month-apart gigs in London and Cardiff. As I noted when I wrote about them in February, between them they can draw on a massive range of potential influences (including Sephardic music, manouche, punk jazz, Latin folk and Maghrebian sounds, the bouncing imagined world-jazz of the F-IRE Collective, Chris' six-string avant-mapping in Future Currents) but in practise tend to go somewhere else – somewhere more uprooted and peril-flecked. Compared to the broad communality of Steam Down or the TRC community, they're coming from a different place – tenser, more abstract and (if we're being honest) whiter – but it's still a collective communal effort, just shrunk down to a smaller chamber and a slender triangular format.
As I wrote last time, "all three are longtime friends and collaborators, seeking yet another new approach. They seem to have found it with Chris' newest batch of compositions and improvisation-seeding situations, which he suggests consist of "intricate textures, dark pools of harmony, layered melodies, kinetic group improvisation and percussive prepared piano… fractious composed passages can inhabit the same sonic space as spare, ambient melodies, often described as melancholic and uplifting at the same time…" Introverted and ominous, their name-track's a quiet etiolated piano exploration over a minimal pulsing guitar-chord cycle and locked-in bass rumble. The excerpt from a longer piece, FTM, is a gradual evolver in which Chris hovers in menacing sustain/volume-swell textural clouds and momentary dust-devils over ghost-Latin clicks and bass piano thuds (Kit muting the piano at both ends) before the trio expand into what's partly a kind of haunted country music (like a Bill Frisell ensemble scoured to the bone by plains wind), and partly like a salsa band coming to terminal grief in a badlands dustbowl."
Here's a rare recent live recording and an album taster for their imminent debut…
Boiler Room and Total Refreshment Centre present:
BR x Total Refreshment Centre: 'Dreaming The City'
Barbican Hall @ Barbican Arts Centre, Silk Street, City of London, London, EC2Y 8DS, England
Saturday 13th April 2019, 8.00pm – information here and here
Warmer Than Blood:
The Vortex Jazz Club, 11 Gillett Square, Dalston, London, N16 8AZ, England – Monday 22nd April 2019, 7.45pm – information here, here and here
The Flute & Tankard, 4 Windsor Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BX, Wales – Tuesday 21st May 2019, 9.00pm – information here
Steam Down
Village Underground, 54 Holywell Lane, Shoreditch, London, EC2A 3PQ, England
Wednesday 24th April 2019, 7.30pm – information here, here and here
Tags: Ahnanse, Alabaster DePlume, Alex Rita, Benjamin Appiah, Brother Portrait, Calabashed, Cassie Kinoshi, Cassie Kinoshi's Seed, Chelsea Carmichael, Cherise Adams-Burnett, Chris Montague, Crispin Spry Robinson, Deschanel Gordon, Dominic Canning, Donna Thompson, Dylema Amadie, Emma-Jean Thackray, Idris Rahman, James Howard, Jazz Warriors, Joe Bristow, Joshua Idehen, Kit Downes, Kwake Bass, Leon Brichard, Maria Osuchowska, Miguel Gorodi, Mutale Chashi, Nache (Edward Wakili Hick), Nadeem Din Gabisi, Noriko Okaku, Orphy Robinson, Oscar Jerome, Patrick Boyle, Rai Wong, Rio Kai, Rozi Plain, Ruth Goller, Sawa Manga, Sheila Maurice-Grey, Shirley Tetteh, Steam Down, Theon Cross, Tom Skinner, Tom Skinner's Wildflower, Total Refreshment Centre (promoter/venue), Tyrone Isaac-Stuart, Warmer Than Blood, Yahael Camara-Onono, Yohan Kebede
Categories 2019 music, acoustic music, Afro-funk, Afrobeat, big-band jazz, blues, Caribbean music, chamber jazz, club music, cross-cultural music, crossover, dance, DIY music, DJ sets, documentaries, drum and bass, dub, dubstep, electro-acoustic music, film & cinema, films, folk music, folk-jazz, free jazz, funk, garage soul, garage soul, grime, hard bop, hip hop, improvisation, instrumental music, interactive performances, jazz, jazz fusion, jazz-funk, kosmische & Krautrock, post-bop, previews, reggae, rhythm'n'blues, slam poetry, soul, soul-jazz, space-jazz, West African music
Usually busy in New York or Berlin, multimedia musician and performer Joe Snape drops back into England this week and next week for a five-date tour of his 'Joyrobix' project – "a suite of nimble, polychrome post-pop songs" which "(pay) weird homage to a musical America that doesn't quite exist. Part soft-rock guitars, part gospel grooves, part Broadway aria, this is music that's resolutely strange and oddly familiar at once."
Amen to that. I might not hear much Hall & Oates or Mahalia Jackson in what he does, but 'Joyrobix' is an enchanting experience – pitch-bent fragmentary experimental pop arranged in a jaunty shatter. Joe sings wordlessly in a gentle, sensual welter of jazzy, Autotuned melisma amidst a cavalcade of perky noises and thumbed guitar, echoes of doo-wop and looming noise clouds, kinked brass and woodwind and broken-beat invention. Stemming from "a danceable refix of pieces for chamber ensemble", its final form is apparently inspired by how his move to America went wrong: a crisped-up experience of "dislocation and burnout… dejection and displacement" which resulted in a sheaf of pieces which are as uplifting as their inspirations were sad.
Consequently, 'Joyrobix' is part musical diary, part therapeutic bounceback and part meander: too elusive to pin down easily, but a kaleidoscopic tapestry of complicated feelings expressed through pop tunes which wink and beckon at you around extra-dimensional twists. You'll find yourself humming along even as you get lost. Live, the music's being performed by a trio of Joe plus Jethro Cooke (electric guitar, electronics) and Louise Snape (trumpet and vocals), and Joe has collaborated with witty Swiss video absurdist Leonie Brandner to provide a set of ten short films as backdrops.
On all five dates Joe is headlining an evening of mingled multi-media music and performance art. At each gig, he's joined by Laurie Tompkins and Suze Whaites – a.k.a. simply Laurie & Suze, two of the three co-directors of Newcastle's hybrid electronic/improvised music label Slip (which is both promoting the tour and releasing much of the music involved in it). As a performing duo, they're presenting their 'Coop' project, a first substantial step into collaboration (though I'm not sure whether that should be 'Coop' as in "co-operative" or as in "chicken"). Laurie deals with the music, Suze the visuals, with 'Coop' offing "a meshing of Tompkins' sonic negotiations of pop cultural trauma, ritual self-abasement, and gunky funk, with Whaites' illusive video renderings of the alien, microscopic, and fleshy.".
The third act on the bill varies from city to city. In Birmingham, it's Belgian experimental composer and former Acid Police Noise Ensemble member Maya Verlaak. I've heard nothing about what (or how) she's going to perform, but previous live outings have had her picking and choosing from an arsenal of voice, melodica, keyboards, recorder, light sources, self-built electronics, cow horns, nail violin and bicycle. This – plus her preference for creating contextual compositions around factors of "place, musician, instrument, etiquette, conventions, history" – suggest that she'll have scoped out the venue (Digbeth's Vivid Projects space) and created something enigmatically appropriate.
In Brighton, battle is joined by local dark-space "electro-acoustic muck" noiseniks Blood Stereo, who base their disturbing atmospherics around "feral hissing and rumbling tape loops" including field recordings and home conjurings, plus electronics and objects. The object is to voice – or suggest – deep disturbances and anxieties seeping to the surface of the psyche and from there out into the broader world. Should rattle and chip a few teacups over in Hove.
In London it's performance duo O Yama O, within which a "micro-orchestra" of small domestic objects, toys and mechanisms manipulated by Rie Nakajima ally with the body and voice performance of Keiko Yamamoto. They probe and map a (very) Japanese landscape of everyday life and noises, underlaid and informed by myth, tradition and national folk music, attempting a philosophical marriage of "the non-spectacular and the sublime"; a soundtrack for friendly or indifferent spirits floating across the tatami in a danchi apartment.
On album, O Yama O tend to incorporate more instrumentation and melody in a kind of skittering avant-garde Noh-dub. Live, it's a strangely matter-of-fact immersive affair, domestic, dramatic and keyed to the performance space, with Keiki alternately tiptoeing, romping and stamping around using a full range of vocalisations ("chanting, incanting, thundering, whispering").
In Bristol, it's Orxid, a spinoff of visually-triggered, immediate-response Glaswegian rhythmic randomists Still House Plants, who finesse garage rock and Fine Art influences into something which sounds like neither (and who were once cheeky enough to release a live album consisting solely of them being introduced onstage before a cut to the aftershow chatter: check here for a long breakdown of their complex ethos).
Orxid is a solo project for SHP singer Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach, who adds the tattered fragments of song expression to their clangs, hisses and staggers. What she does on her own is less clear, but you could glean some clues from her general art-mission statement of "being concerned with value in the immaterial and everyday… the translation of experience" and by her summary of the project as "Orxid is, Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach is, triumphant when barking, flirting with misdirection, with weak knees, malfunctioning. All brushed up when just-heard through bedroom doors."
Update, 11th April – I've just noticed that there's a fifth date, in Newcastle, so am adding it in a hurry while I'm supposed to be doing something else… and it looks as if I missed two earlier Bradford and Manchester dates as well… Nuts.. oh well, here's what's left. Ripping the Newcastle support acts' blurbs here…
"Competition (a.k.a. Craig Pollard) makes (mild) pop music and performs live with a sampler and voice. The songs think about smallness and vulnerability, and build hooks from within their own limited means. Most recent tape 'You Turned Into A Painting' was released by Slip in November 2018."
"Gwilly Edmondez is a person-project forced into a pop packaging that inevitably gets mangled up by person-to-person cataclysmics. Because Gwilly is influenced by anybody you can possible think of (Billy Joel, Coil, Lucinda Williams, Laurie Anderson, AIDS Wolf…) there's no point trying to categorise… Abstract Exhibitionism? Troubled Intimacy? Wild Pop… Gwilly Edmondez represents a coagulation of multiple character strands derived out of one private/public individual whose corporeal manifestation carries it through live shows, albums, videos and numerous collaborations in improvised music. Born in Lake Fear, Pen-Y-Bont, Gwilly has returned. Other incarnations include Radioactive Sparrow co-founder Bill Bargefoot, JRMY PAXMN out of YEAH YOU and the writer/composer/artist Gustav Thomas which is probably his real name. In all guises he is a purveyor of reaLFake Wild Pop, tearing open the terrified quotidian regimes of colonized consciousness (through, and in, his own brain) in order to plunge intensities between the cracks exposed. This doesn't actually, necessarily, work – per se – but it's the in engagement of attempts where the drama takes place."
Finally, Mariam Rezaei is a turntablist and vocalist with a yen for making electronic theatre soundtracks: she's part of Gateshead DJ-haunt turned mixed-arts incubator TOPH (or The Old Police House). Below is a taste of her esoteric clubtronica, although on this occasion I think she's just playing other people's music…
And while I'm making additions, here's a Snape video from 'Joyrobix'…
Joe Snape's Joyrobix + Laurie & Suze's 'Coop':
Vivid Projects, 16 Minerva Works, Eastside, Birmingham, B5 5RS, England – Thursday 11th April 2019, 7.30pm (with Maya Verlaak) – information here and here
The Rose Hill, 70-71 Rosehill Terrace, Brighton, BN1 4JL, England – Saturday 13th April 2019, 7.30pm (with Blood Stereo) – information here and here
Stour Space, 7 Roach Road, Fish Island, Bow, London, E3 2PA, England – Wednesday 17th April 2019, 7.30pm (with O Yama O) – information here, here and here
Café Kino, 108 Stokes Croft, Bristol, BS1 3RU – Thursday 18th April 2019, 7.30pm (with Orxid) – information here and here
Star & Shadow Cinema, Warwick Street, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE2 1BB, England – Friday 19th April 2019, 7.30pm (with Competition + Gwilly Edmondez + DJ Mariam Rezaei) – information here, here and here
Tags: Acid Police Noise Ensemble, Birmingham (England), Brighton (England), Bristol (England), Competition (Craig Pollard), Gwilly Edmondez, Joe Snape, Keiko Yamamoto, Laurie & Suze, Laurie Tompkins, Leonie Brandner (artist), London (England), Mariam Rezaei, Maya Verlaak, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (England), O Yama O, Orxid (Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach), Rie Nakajima, Still House Plants, Suze Whaites
Categories 2019 music, 21st century classical music, ambient music, Americana, anti-music, broken beats, chamber music, cross-cultural music, cross-disciplinary pop, dance, dance performances, DIY music, doo-wop, drone music, electro-acoustic music, electronic, electronica, experimental music, experimental pop, experimental/avant-garde rock, field recordings, film & cinema, films, folk music, funk, improvisation, instrumental music, interactive performances, loop music, musique concrete, New Music, noise, outsider music, performance art, pop, previews, process music, psychedelic ambient music, R&B, rock, roots music, sound collage, soundscapes, world & indigenous music
If you just took Lilith Ai at her word as being the possessor of a "pretty mouth and a dirty tongue", and you'd also heard that she rapped, you'd be expecting a London version of Nikki Minaj.
Not the case. A more accurate parallel would be a latterday Joan Armatrading, or perhaps a lower-key Lauryn Hill; Lilith's an accomplished and intimate singer-songwriter drawing subtly on folk, soul, hip-hop and R&B and pulling them onwards. Comparisons will only get you so far, though, since Lilith bypasses Armatrading's discreet '70s reticence and instead owns a lippier and punkier streak; and although she shares Hill's love of a street beat, a bent note and a woke stance, she lacks the latter's self-righteous, self-sabotaging chippiness. Dirty tongue claims notwithstanding, she's also less of an out'n'out cusser than she might suggest. The occasion f-bomb strike is part of the no-nonsense, "you-can-stop-right-there-boy" feminism which provides the steely core to what she does: offset by the engaging warmth of an artist who is as much interested in people as in stances.
The British music biz isn't always kind to talented black girls with guitars – Joan might have done OK, but whatever happened to Peppercorn? – but Lilith isn't the sort to be eaten alive. Untangling her past provides some interesting complexities and clashes. There's some fine material for legend-building here – her mingled Afro, Chinese and Indian ancestry, and the fact that she spent part of her early twenties sleeping rough and near-penniless in both Tottenham and Queens (at one point in a wrecked car, later towed away in a scenario that wouldn't have been out of place in a Tom Waits song). Set against that is her additional background as a music school grad who can hang with and work alongside a surprising breadth of allies, from fearsome bluespunknoise grrlforce Skinny Girl Diet to rising fashion aristocracy in the shape of Georgia May Jagger.
The key to understanding how this all fits together is in how Lilith structures her approach to art and community. With artistic roots in comic-writing geekery, she's always had a strong sense of mood and detail. Later along the line, as a developing songwriter, she's allied it to a fervent desire to create a mostly female (and queer-friendly) movement which rejects counterproductive competitive bitchery in favour of an ethic of sympathy and mutual support, stepping up to political solidarity. All of this also needs to be seen through the arty barrier-trashing lens of punk spirit, which explains her Fight Like A Girl crew. A loosely-defined friendship-in-art arrangement, F.L.A.G. is a feminist/LGBT+ art/music collective inspired equally by late '70s summers of Britpunk, by the political ferment of '90s Olympia and by latterday movements like #TimesUp. It involves zinework, recording and enthusiastic intimate gigs in makeshift scratch locations, all within a fearless female atmosphere allied to a sense that rigid genre (and rigid gender) boundaries are less important than constructive intent and political engagement.
While Lilith's upcoming Bare Radical mini-tour isn't explicitly a Fight Like A Girl event, it bears all of the hallmarks. It's packed with other female artists (plus assorted sympathetic male players and a hefty proportion of non-binary artists) and takes place in a dissimilar scatter of formal venues and found spaces in bookshops, community centres, cafes and co-operatives up and down England. Lilith will also be laying off on her beats and concentrating on the acoustic/unplugged side of things as she performs and promotes her new 'Bare Radical' EP. She's still budding, still climbing, poised on the lip of the excellence her early work promised. Now is a perfect time to join the event, while she's still in venues close enough to share breath.
Along for most of the dates is the delightfully energised craft-popper Myles McCabe (generally best known as guitarist for London pop punkers Fresh), who's playing at Cambridge, Bradford and Nottingham with his Me Rex project. On the surface Myles has got a pretty high tweeness count. All of his Rex albums and EPs are named after prehistoric creatures from mammoths to stegosauri, most of his pet sounds are cheap ones (synth parps, guitar clunks, snatches of bedroom rave, a little piano), and his voice is sweetly vulnerable, bending under a little rhotacistic twist and folding like paper on the high notes.
On the other hand, there's a blazing articulate passion to what he does, his songs volcanoing out of an initial small hotspot and expanding into broadening emotional tapestries in which simple ideas link inexorably to others like agitated mercury blobs, layering into a gorgeous pop outburst. He describes himself as "kind of like a cross between Art Brut and Kraftwerk. That started off as a pun about arts & crafts but then I really liked the way it sounded." It's a good gag, but self-deflating indie jokes aren't really what he's about.
At Cambridge, a couple of singer-songwriters are hoppping on board. There's local girl Helen Robertson, an enthusiastic music homecrafter and constant collaborator who (although she seems to have been a bit quiet recently) released a twelve-month sprint of EPs across 2014. Hers is an unfussy, chameleonic, DIY hobby-table approach which embraces strummy-or-noisy kitchen-sink indie, blobby instrumental synth pop, pub gig comedy, and various overdubbed a cappella work from solo folk-pop chorales to patter songs. There's also Sophie Foster, the self-professed teenaged "lever harp megababe" who usually lurks behind the name of The Sunday School. To be honest, I'm baffled about her: this brief appearance on YouTube and the couple of Soundcloud demos below suggests that rather than harping she blip-pongs away on a little keyboard and murmurs reflections on uncertainties and diary notes; while other Soundcloudings suggest a lo-fi guitar trudger, and there's something else on Spotify which I don't know about thanks to my still holding out on the platform. Her Twitter presence suggests someone fierce and grrly behind the whispering.
I'm guessing that Sophie's someone whom you have to discover and to follow live for quite a while, picking up scraplings before you get the full story. As for Helen, attempting to pick a key track seems to be a waste of time, so I'm just throwing three together at random here.
It's the same at Bradford, where self-propelled onetime busker-for-a-bet Liam Jarvis joins the bill, alongside gently punk-oustic Leeds folkie Sarah Carey (whose music is divided between disaffected urban acoustica and committed folk baroque instrumentals, groping between them for a doorway to somewhere better). I've got nothing for Liam, but here's Sarah:
In Nottingham, Lilith's supported by both Jemma Freeman & The Cosmic Something and Matt Abbott. Once the guitarist for heavy dream-rockers Landshapes, Jenna now offers up sardonic psychedelic glam-rocking with a band featuring Furniture/Transglobal Underground drummer Hamilton Lee, moonlighting producer/bassist Mark Estall, and Krupa on synth and backing vocals. Wakefield wordsmith Matt runs the spoken word label Nymphs & Thugs and both writes and performs poetry for kids and adults replete with "socio-political commentary, human struggle and kitchen sink realism" (plus, for the kids "playful rebellion (and the) challenging (of) societal stereotypes").
Matt and Me Rex both resurface for the London date, which also features a pair of junior traditioneers in the shape of "teenage lo-fi soul singer" Charlie Mburaki (who sang with Lilith on the latter's recent Warrior Queen) and drawling junior-Dylan-esque folk rocker Oliver Rodzianko
There are more fierce, plangent words at the Bristol gig. It's a free event in a bookshop in which punk and slam poetry have an equal presence to musicin the shape of Bridget Hart (teller of tough, gritty tales and compiler of a poetic "love-letter to women and female solidarity") and in the sliding, pulsing genderqueer cadences of Aiysha's accounts and explorations of "mental illness, love, trauma and gender identity".
Also on hand is the slow, sad, beautiful "shimmer pop" and voiceloops of Georgie Biggins, a.k.a. GINS, who from one angle sounds like a lo-fi gender-swapped bedsit Blue Nile passed through an a capella dream-pop filter and from another like f.k.a. Twigs morphing into '90s goth-wispers Cranes. Don't be entirely misled by the soft and introverted textures, though. Underneath Georgie's apparent mournfulness, the gossamer delicacy and the blurred, haunting visuals there's both resistance and outright challenge, just framed in a different way; the secret thought that's a couple of steps away from a marching flag.
GINS is also onboard for the Reading show, where Lilith is joined by the fluttering acoustic pop-soul singing of Amya-Ray; by the sometimes-psychedelic, sometimes-instrumental acoustic-indie-folk of Colours & Fires (who've placed themselves firmly on the gender-equality frontlines); and by the mysterious, frankly undocumented RIYA (who could be punk or poet, first-person singular or group, for all the info they've provided… but the open-ended mystery's at least in keeping with the rest of the Bare Radical openness).
Full Lilith Ai 'Bare Radical' tour dates:
The Blue Moon, 2 Norfolk Street, Cambridge, CB1 2LF, Cambridgeshire, England – Tuesday 9th April 2019, 9.00pm (with Me Rex + Sophie Foster + Helen Robertson) – information here and here
The 1 in 12 Club, 21-23 Albion Street, Bradford, BD1 2LY, England – Sunday 14th April 2019, 7.00pm (with Me Rex + Sarah Carey + Liam Jarvis) – information here and here
City Arts, 11-13 Hockley, Nottingham, NG1 1FH, England – Friday 19th April 2019, 7.00pm (with Me Rex + Jemma Freeman & the Cosmic Something + Matt Abbott) – information here and here
Hydra Books, 34 Old Market Street, Bristol, BS2 0EZ, England – Wednesday 1st May 2019, 7.00pm (with GINS + Bridget Hart + Aiysha) – free event – information here and here
Reading University Students Union, Whiteknights Campus, Reading, Berkshire, RG6 6AZ, England – Friday 3rd May 2019, 7.30pm (with GINS + RIYA + Amya-Ray + Colours & Fires) – information here and here
VFD, 66 Stoke Newington Road, Shacklewell, London, N16 7XB, England – Thursday 9th May 2019, 8.00pm (with Me Rex + Matt Abbott + Charlie Mburaki + Oliver Rodzianko) – information here, here and here
Tags: Aiysha, Amya-Ray, Bridget Hart, Bristol (England), Cambridge (England), Charlie Mburaki, Colours & Fires, GINS, Helen, Jemma Freeman & The Cosmic Something, Liam Jarvis, Lilith Ai, London (England), Matt Abbott, Me Rex, Nottingham (England), Oliver Rodzianko, Reading (England), RIYA, Sarah Carey, Sophie Foster (The Sunday School)
Categories 2019 music, acoustic music, acoustic pop, agit-pop, DIY music, folk music, folk-pop, hip hop, interactive performances, LGBTQIA+ music, neo-soul, performance art, poetry, political music, pop, previews, protest songs, rapping, rhythm'n'blues, rock, singer-songwriter, spoken word, synth pop


We put extra thought into driver comfort as well. Because if you spend all day at the wheel of a commuter bus or van, comfort is of extra importance.
Sharp styling makes the face lifted Toyota Tarago one of Australia's desirable people-moving vehicles. Capable of seating seven adults in premium comfort is what the Tarago is all about.
The ceiling was set high for bigger headroom to create a feeling of spaciousness. It has big windows more interior brightness during the day. The seats are very comfortable and attractive (recliners). It has modern safety measures. It's a very good bus, performance-wise.


text:
Q: Serialize DataTable to GeoJSON object? I've been having trouble converting a datatable into a GeoJSON object.
The datatable looks like this:
Name       Status       imageUrl          lat       lon
Joe        Dev          markers/Dev.svg   34.21092  -77.59384
Mary       Dev          markers/Dev.svg   32.49323  -78.43144

The GeoJSON should look like this:
{
    "type" : "FeatureCollection",
    "features" : [
        {
            "type" : "Feature",
            "properties" : {
                "Name " : "Joe",
                "Status" : "Dev",
                "imageUrl" : "markers/Dev.svg",
                "lat" : 34.21092,
                "lon" : -77.59384
            },
            "geometry" : {
                "type" : "Point",
                "coordinates" : [ -77.59384, 34.21092 ]
            }
        },
        {
            "type" : "Feature",
            "properties" : {
                "Name " : "Mary",
                "Status" : "Dev",
                "imageUrl" : "markers/Dev.svg",
                "lat" : 32.49323,
                "lon" : -78.43144
            },
            "geometry" : {
                "type" : "Point",
                "coordinates" : [ -78.43144, 32.49323 ]
            }
        }
    ]
}

I've been searching everywhere, but have yet find a solution. I've been using NewtonSoft for serializing a DataTable to a JSON object, but GeoJSON is a much more complex format.
The most difficult part is having to include categories within other categories. In any case,  this is what I've tried:
Using Newtonsoft, I'm able to convert the datatable to a JSON. Obviously, it's not the solution:
string callback = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(dataTable);
[] resultBytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(callback);
return new System.IO.MemoryStream(resultBytes);

One step forward, this is what I tried to add some geojson properties:
var envelope = new
{
    type = "FeatureCollection",
    features = result.Tables[0]
};

string callback = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(envelope);
byte[] resultBytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(callback);

This returns something closer, but it's still missing the {"type": "Feature", "properties" within each array.
And finally, I posted a similar question here, and it was very helpful, but it takes as parameter the actual json instead of the datatable, which brings a host of other issues, mainly this one here.
So I decided to just start from scratch and post a question asking how I can take my source (a regular datatable) and convert it into a GeoJson object like the one above.
Any help is appreciated.

A: You need to map the dataTable records into a multi dimensional object structure. I suggest doing so with LinQ.
To iterate on a dataTable, use the .AsEnumerable() on the dataTable object.
Solution : Create a function that convert the DataTable into a GeoJSON string.
Make sure to imports the System.Linq namespace in your .cs file
public static string DataTableToGeoJSONString(DataTable dataTable)
{

    var envelope = new
    {
        type = "FeatureCollection",
        features = dataTable.AsEnumerable().Select(record => new {
            type = "Feature",
            properties = new
            {
                Name = Convert.ToString(record["Name"]),
                Status = Convert.ToString(record["Status"]),
                imageUrl = Convert.ToString(record["imageUrl"]),
                lat = Convert.ToDecimal(record["lat"]),
                lon = Convert.ToDecimal(record["lon"])

            },
            geometry = new
            {
                type = "Point",
                coordinates = new[] {
                    Convert.ToDecimal(record["lon"]),
                    Convert.ToDecimal(record["lat"])
                }
            }
        }).ToArray()
    };
    return JsonConvert.SerializeObject(envelope);
}

And the just get the JSON string out of it
string geoJson = DataTableToGeoJSONString(dataTable);

Note that this code sample uses anonymous classes new {}. It works but I would recommend to use strongly typed class that you'll have to create.
That should serialize in the expected GeoJSON format.

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Last Sunday I left Ontario for the red sand of Prince Edward Island with my parents and one of my brothers to take Meme back home to be buried. The trip was a mixture of feelings, as it was of course sad to have to say a final goodbye to Meme, but at the same time it was peaceful and good to know that she was able to find rest where her heart always belonged.
The one thing I was really not looking forward to on this trip was the big, scary Confederation Bridge. I hate bridges with a passion! Since I can remember I have ALWAYS hated bridges….It might have something to do with reoccurring nightmares as a child of a bridge that opened up, causing my family's van to plummet into icy waters, leaving us trapped with no way to escape… Or maybe I just don't like them. :) Anyways, the Confederation Bridge is an 8 mile bridge *shudder* that crosses from New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island. Back in the day, we used to take a ferry across, which I prefer… though I do remember having heart palpations every time my younger siblings would climb the rails and look over into the ocean. I can't imagine how much more overprotective I'm going to be with Muppet…Man, I need to learn to breathe. ;) Anyways, as soon as we crossed that bridge, I felt happiness just spread across my body. I was back in my 'other' home, Prince Edward Island!
Prince Edward Island has always felt like a second home to me. Every visit feels so comfortable and familiar that it's hard not to feel at home. The people are amazingly friendly, the landscape is beautiful no matter where you look and the pace is so relaxed that you instantly feel the change from the usual hustle and bustle of regular life. All you really want to do is smell the salty sea air while walking along the beach or harbour, or in my mother's case, eat a cone of grape nut ice cream. She sure loves that stuff! A really important thing for me on this trip was to rub some red sand on my belly to officially welcome Muppet to the island. I didn't feel that it would be a real visit without getting my feet wet in the ocean, or a little stained from the dirt. So I walked along the ocean collecting sea glass and shells for Muppet's nursery, and then rubbed earth all over my belly. Some collected in my belly button. Maybe Muppet was hoping to take some home.
We were able to see the red sands on Tignish Shore while staying with the best hosts on the island, Bill and Lil'Cec (truly, you have never met more wonderful people than these two), and the white sands of Cavendish Beach.
A very important stop for tourists on the island is the Cows store. That place is always hopping, and I think it was especially busy since Regis and Kelly were filming their show on the island that week. Apparently, during their visit, PEI was second most googled thing on the internet! I expect an increase in tourism next summer for sure! The day they got there, the Cows store released a new shirt in their honor. I took a picture while I was in one of the stores…we visited many. ;) The Cows store sells really fun merchandise, ranging from t-shirts, to mugs, to pens, to calendars and more! They also have a-moo-zing ice cream! Hahahaha…*Ahem* While I was there, I also found some gifts for Muppet! I got an adorable bib, a t-shirt and a little onesie that is just perfect, as we are doing a Winnie the Pooh theme. I just couldn't resist!
While in Prince Edward Island, I went through week 17 of my pregnancy. During that week, the baby is able to yawn, weighs the same amount as a boneless chicken breast, is more conscious of sounds surrounding him/her and the nerves in the brain are working hard on developing the rest of the 5 senses. At 17 weeks, Little Muppet was the size of a sweet potato, so we thought it only fitting to take a picture in a potato field. Oddly enough, my mom has a picture of me sitting in a potato field when I was just a wee one, so next summer we'll be sure to get a photo of Muppet playing in the red earth, surrounded by potato plants. I cannot wait to see Muppet's first reactions to the feel of sand between it's fingers, the waves lapping at it's little chubby legs, or the sounds and sights on the harbours. I know, it too, will come to look at this peaceful island as it's second home.
I'm glad we have such a beautiful spot to visit Muppet's Great-Meme and Great- Pepe and I know we can look forward to spending many family vacations there. It's comforting to know that Meme's spirit will live on there, and that she'll never be too far away, and well, she'll probably enjoy watching Little Muppet's island adventures… especially the first little fist full of dirt in the mouth. Yuck!
*When I got back home to my pets and husband, Little Muppet jumped around again. I think it missed it's Daddy! Awwww!
This post was a good and long one, but it made me cry! I too am so excited to bring little girl to Norway, to experience the peaceful waters and fjords. It's such a wonderful thing that you have such a beautiful place to visit as well :) It's funny because P.E.I is very much like the Norwegian countryside and it would be awesome if we could take our little families on a trip out that way.
I would love to check out the Anne of Green Gables house and the things you love over there. I know I was there for a short time, but I loved crossing the bridge as the sun was coming up and the wonderful, warm-hearted people there.


text:
Sheetz named top chain for 2017
ALTOONA, Pa. — Sheetz, one of America's fastest-growing family-owned and operated convenience retailers, has been named Convenience Store Decisions' 2017 Chain of the Year, an annual award honoring a convenience chain displaying industry innovation and superior retail experience.
"We are so proud to be recognized by Convenience Store Decisions as the 2017 Convenience Store Chain of the Year," Joe Sheetz, president and chief executive officer, said in a news release. "This recognition truly belongs to our employees and to the customers who have supported us for the past 65 years. Sheetz would not be the company it is today without great employees and loyal customers."
The 2017 honor marks Sheetz as the first convenience store in the award's 28-year history to hold the title for a second year. Sheetz was first honored as Chain of the Year in 1994, after a decade of rapid coastal expansion with the chain spanning 190 locations.
Sheetz has since expanded to more than 550 locations in six states. In the past year, Sheetz has been recognized by Fortune as one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For, a Top 12 Best Places to Work for Women and Top 35 Best Workplaces for Millennials.
"Sheetz remains a beacon of innovation that every convenience store chain can admire. It is a family-owned business that remains true to its employees and the communities it serves" said John Lofstock, editor-in-chief of Convenience Store Decisions. "Family businesses made this industry what it is today and as long as outstanding companies like Sheetz continue to thrive, the convenience store industry will continue to reach new heights."
Sheetz remains one of America's fastest growing family-owned and operated retailers, with eight Sheetz family members spanning three generations serving on the Executive Committee, and eight family members holding a role in the business.


text:
Le château de Beaurecueil est situé sur la commune de Nonette (France).

Localisation
Le château est situé sur la commune de Nonette, dans le département du Puy-de-Dôme, en région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.

Description

Le château de Beaurecueil a été modifié depuis sa construction, notamment par le percement de fenêtres à différentes époques. L'édifice a conservé son plan de masse général (quadrilatère garni d'une tour circulaire à chaque angle), la poterne et la galerie en bois de la cour intérieure. Le château est précédé d'une cour fermée, au nord de laquelle s'élèvent les bâtiments d'exploitation ; au sud les communs précédés d'une chapelle.

Historique

Le château est une demeure fortifiée édifiée près des bords de l'Allier par le duc de Berry au  qui en fit l'une de ses résidences favorites.

Le château en totalité (y compris les intérieurs avec leurs décors, le grand commun sud avec la chapelle, le pigeonnier, le mur de clôture avec son portail) fait l'objet d'une inscription au titre des monuments historiques  par arrêté du .

Notes et références

Voir aussi

Bibliographie

Articles connexes
 Nonette (Puy-de-Dôme)
 Liste des châteaux du Puy-de-Dôme
 Liste des châteaux en France
 Liste des monuments historiques du Puy-de-Dôme (M-Z)

Beaurecueil
Monument historique inscrit en 2010

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