Thursday, August 29, 2019

Run, Nina


From the today's episode of BBC Witness History, I learned that Nina Simone had lived in Monrovia, Liberia for a three-year period when she was quite a prominent performer in the soul genre.

BBC reporter Lucy Burns combines her interview of Simone's friend James Dennis with archival interviews of Simone herself to tell the story of how personal and political motivations came together to lead the singer to a country that was at the time attractive to many African Americans. The discussion moves on to changes both in the singer's personal circumstances and in the country itself, which has fallen into very difficult times since its cultural heyday in the 1970s.

Liberian Calypso was written by Simone, but draws heavily on Maya Angelou's marvelous 1957 calypso tune Run Joe.

Lagniappe

When I am rowing in New Bedford harbor, we often see the word Monrovia on the stern of ships at anchor, and fellow rowers will ask about the name, or about the Liberian flag, which looks vaguely like the U.S. flag. Although it is a small country with a proportionally even smaller economy, Liberia is the registry of record for many ships; it is one of the world's most important flags of convenience.
This ship is not registered in Brazil.
Photo: Maritime Studies

Thursday, August 15, 2019

¡Feliz Cumpleaños, Nacho!

Today's Google Doodle honors culinary hero Ignacio Anaya García on what would be his 124th birthday. I did not know his name, but we all know his nickname: Nacho. And yes, he invented nachos. As a quick-thinking maitre d' in Piedras Negras, he did exactly what is shown in the gif above, for the wives of U.S. soldiers who had wandered across the border looking for a snack.

Bonus: he used Wisconsin cheddar!

The origin story of nachos is yet another reminder of the interdependence of borderlands communities along the entire U.S.-Mexico border. Without both the creative Señor García and the peckish visitors from across the river, nachos themselves would be impossible!



Lagniappe: A Literary Coincidence

If Nacho is short for Ignacio, then it follows that Nacha is the nickname for Ignacia. In Laura Esquivel's smoldering Like Water for Chocolate (film, book, and food) she is the household cook who "who presides over the story before and after her death as spiritual adviser," according to reviewer Janet Maslin. Coincidentally, Esquivel's story takes place in Piedras Negras and Eagle Pass, when Nacho was a young man.

Friday, August 09, 2019

Baby on the Shelf

Writing for NPR's Planet Money, journalist Greg Rosalsky brings to mind -- perhaps inadvertently -- the annoying Elf on the Shelf craze in his discussion of recent research in demographic economics. He begins his explanation of the current Baby-Less Recovery in the United States, by citing the tendency of some economists to put babies in the "durable goods" category, alongside cars and refrigerators.
This reporting draws on research that shows significant correlations between declines in birth rates and subsequent economic recessions. In other words, people anticipating economic put off baby-making early in economic slowdowns. They put, as it were, the baby on the shelf.

The research further finds that the sensitivity of potential parents to economic stress is far from uniform across demographic groups. For the first time, in fact, married women aged 30-34 are now the most likely to have children because they are less susceptible to economic woes than their younger sisters. For the first time, student loans are cited as a significant demographic factor. The pernicious ramifications of Grover Norquist's politics of austerity, in other words, are showing up in population figures.

The article is a good illustration of details that sometimes arise in discussions of the later phases of the demographic transition model. Broad patterns in population change result from fundamental shifts in the economy, from rural to urban, agricultural to manufacturing. Smaller but still significant shifts then occur as a result of important but less profound economic cycles or social changes.

I found this article via another story I had heard on air -- Less Sex, Fewer Babies: Blame The Internet And Career Priorities. In this lighthearted but very important segment, journalist Sam Sanders explores several reasons that the United States -- along with other economically prosperous countries -- faces a growing need for immigration. That's right: while politicians exploit xenophobic fears of migration in the short run, our current reliance on millions of immigrant workers (regardless of legal status) will only increase in coming decades.

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