(NUNAL) (EYEBALL)

The Second Annual Festival of Texas Fiddling is now officially scheduled at La Bahia Turn Verein, a dance hall built in 1902 in Burton, Texas. Washington County is a historic area which has long featureed a particularly driving kind of Texas-Polish music, a style of which is one of the central features of this festival. La Bahia has been the site of a functioning dance hall since 1884. I am very happy we are heading into the second year. I came up with the original idea of the festival and serve as Artistic Director of it, and have been really pleased and honored to work with Texas Folklife and Texas Dance Hall Preservation, Inc. in making it a reality. I will post more about the fiddlers involved soon.

This thoughtful piece on Nikki Haley from James Cobb is really worth reading " Lest we get a tad carried away here, let's note that, over the last generation or so, the GOP has gradually abandoned its old blatantly racialized "southern strategy" in favor of a new, ostensibly "colorblind" but hardly race-neutral conservatism anchored in the rigidly anti-tax, anti-welfare, anti-labor but pro-gun, pro-voter suppression, and indisputably ardent pro-corporate attitudes that essentially define Governor Haley's mindset. For Haley and her cohort, that mindset is unlikely to change anytime soon, regardless of what flag flies where."

gthis is worth reading both for the discussion of the important role of wild bees, and because of the way it frames the very welcome Obama initiative to reverse the terrible situation for bees  and other polliniators What bees can teach us about one of the biggest debates in conservation