Surfacing Water

When teaching about groundwater, I begin with Once in a Lifetime because of the "water flowing underground" refrain and because, well, because David Byrne. (April 2020 update: for more fun, watch Angelique Kidjo's fantastic version; I had the great privilege of hearing her perform this in Providence a few weeks before the world shut down.)

I usually next read McElligot's Pool to my students, even though it was written for people about 1/3 their age. I read this work from Dr. Seuss because it perpetuates the widespread misconception that water flows underground in open streams, a misconception that is reinforced by the dubious practice of searching for water with divining rods.

Water flowing underground in open streams is a  misconception, I tell them, except in karst landscapes. Where limestone is overlaid by harder rocks, the resulting caves and pits are sometimes connected by waterways that can be traced over long distances with inks or even fishing floats.

From the ever-fascinating Atlas Obscura comes a fascinating story about another kind of exception, and of some intensive geographic research with tangible benefits. Sarah Laskow reports on Eymund Diegel's research into the underground waterways of Brooklyn, New York.

Image: Atlas Obscura

He became aware that one of the earliest buildings in Brooklyn was along a brook that is no longer present, fed by an entire stream network that disappeared as the street grid was built up. Combining his expertise as a cartographer with his curiosity and some creative field work, Diegel has been able to identify water courses and to advocate for their restoration. In many cases, streams had been routed into pipelines, but after several centuries, many of those pipelines have failed and water has sometimes found its way to its pre-urban pathways.

It is neither feasible nor desirable to bring all of the surface waters back to the surface, but it turns out that careful mapping of these waterways can lead to better solutions to all kinds of problems, such as sustaining tree plantings to reducing the flooding of basements and subway tunnels. The more that is known about the fine details of the watershed, in other words, the more environmental resilience it will have.

Daylighting

A similar story has unfolded a few miles to the north, where the Saw Mill River had long been forgotten beneath the heavily industrialized downtown. Bringing this tributary back to the surface has been the proud achievement of Daylight Yonkers, which has shown the many ecological, social, and economic benefits of creating an urban waterfront park where there had once been only sewer pipe. I had the privilege of visiting this park when using the nearby Yonkers train station, and can attest to its aesthetic as well as ecological success.

Image: Daylight Yonkers

Confluences

I have gone more than a month without posting to this blog. To keep the blog alive, I'm going to cheat a little and point to a post I recently added on our EarthView blog. Written for middle-school geographers, this should be of interest to readers and explorers of all ages.

See Wedding of the Waters or Amazon Surprise to learn about the world's most famous and unusual river confluence -- which I was lucky enough to visit in 1996 -- and to learn about several around the world that are lesser-known but equally intriguing.

Lagniappe
And because yesterday I realized that nobody in my class had heard of Mr. David Byrne, I include this thematic song as a public service. (See all of the David Byrne geography references on this blog.)

Where Are the Songs?

Professor David Byrne is just one of the many musicians featured on Constantine Valhouli's interactive map of New York City. As explained on Mashable, he had friends help him use Google Maps to highlight locations mentioned in 200 popular songs of many genres, in and near New York City.

Small excerpt of the NYC Music Map

I call David Byrne of Talking Heads Professor Byrne because he teaches so much geography. Lessons on urban planning and world music are scattered throughout many posts on this blog that include his name. Without his pioneering work in cultural geography, my Musica project would never have happened. The subtitle of this iconic song is also one of several key quotes at the top of my Not-the-13th-Grade page.

I was so fortunate to have seen him perform this and other songs live one Halloween in Boston, about 30 years after the video above. His athleticism had scarcely diminished.

Creative Resistance

I first learned the story of the song "Calice" from the liner notes of Luaka Bop's Beleza Tropical album, the first installment in David Byrne's legendary Brazil Classics series.

The story of this song is remarkable -- bordering on incredible -- but numerous Brazilian friends have confirmed it for me. While many outspoken artists had to leave Brazil during a series of military dictatorships from 1964 to 1985, Chico Buarque de Holanda was able to stay and still publicly protest government oppression. He did so most famously with this song, which was a rallying call for millions in Brazil. On one level, it is a religious song, in which Christ prays for his Father to "take away this cup from me" in the Garden of Gethsemane. But on another level, the word "chalice" is the same as the phrase "shut up," and this song ends by mocking the military's insistence on a silenced citizenry.

Many versions of the song continue to be posted on YouTube, including a version created for a geography class that features provocative imagery from the military period  and a more recent version that features imagery from recent protests triggered by bus-fare increases.

Alt-dot-musica

See Alt.Latino main page to search stories or to listen live

I have been interested in the music of Latin America for more than a decade, and have incorporated some of the rich variety of the region's music in my teaching and outreach.

My very first exposure to the musical traditions of Brazil and Cuba was even earlier, through the production work of David Byrne at Luaka Bop. My interest really grew through  friends and colleagues who shared their favorite music during my visits to Latin America, Once I started listening to these songs (mainly on CDs), I started to make connections. I must confess, though, that my seven years in the border area were wasted, musically speaking, as I did not even attempt to understand Tejano or Conjunto music until I moved north.

I continue to appreciate the incredible variety of music from Latin America, but must admit that my pursuit of coffee, tea, and now chocolate have distracted me a bit in recent years, so that my Musica web pages have experienced a bit of neglect.

This is where Alt.Latino comes in. I first started hearing about it a few months ago, around the edges of my habitual NPR listening and reading. When I decided to fluff up my pages this week, I decided to have a look around, and I was richly rewarded. Hosts Jasmine Garsd and Felix Contreras have put a name to a pattern I had started to notice but could not articulate: From them I have realized that Latin Alternative is a way to describe many of the musics to which I was being drawn.

Like the music, the program seems to be evolving, from its chance beginnings near the NPR vending machines, into a major force with several different manifestations, including hour-long produced shows, blog posts, various social-media and spots on other NPR programs. It also has a continues internet radio stream. As I browsed through the weekly shows, the first I found was an interview with Manu Chao, whose Clandestino CD each member of my family has memorized to varying degrees.

The wide-ranging interview is a genuine treat, mixing insights about politics and art with samples of his work and the work of others whose music he enjoys. It was my first encounter with the song "Me gustas tu," a silly and catchy tune that is as close to pop as I've heard him. As with many of his songs, the "VIDEO OFFICIAL" version is a visual feast, and the best way to enjoy the music. This track is from the Proxima Estacion: Esperanza (Next Station: Hope) CD. On my first perusal, I noticed many songs that sample his own earlier works.



On YouTube, it was not difficult to find an unofficial version of the song with printed lyrics (albeit with a few typos). For those learning a language, such videos are a real blessing.



More about my own thoughts on Manu Chao and some similar artists is on my Musica - Eclectic page.

Muertos

¡Que Miedo! was the Halloween 2012 episode of the program, which explored the intersection of folklore and contemporary Latin music, including sexy horror that predates Twilight. The discussion includes, of course, both the chupacabras and various versions of the La Llorona tale. The Chavela Vargas version they play is used in a popular Frida Kahlo tribute video; my 2010 La Llorona post includes two other variations -- a spoken-word reading and television advertisement.

(In addition to the musica web page, this blog includes a number of posts with a musica label. I am available for presentations on this topic at high school and college campuses, as I am for presentations on the geography of coffee, tea, or chocolate. )

How We Ride

I knew that David Byrne was an avid cyclist and blogger, in addition to being the founder of the Talking Heads and in many ways the founder of world music as a commercially viable enterprise in the United States. I knew that he and I share a love for Brazilian music and I had thought that we both lived in Landsdowne, Maryland, though in different decades. According to Wikipedia, that shared hometown was actually Arbutus -- separated by 15 years or so, which is one reason we never met. From that same font of truths I also learned that he and I are both Scottish (more on my Scottishness coming to this blog on Friday, June 1), though I missed meeting him there by about ten generations.

Our paths did eventually cross at the Wang Theater one Halloween night almost four years ago, though his memory of me is probably not as vivid as my memory of him and his exceptional musical companions.

Today I learned from fellow geographer extraordinaire Jeff Anzevino -- himself a renaissance person who helped to create the bike-able Walkway over the Hudson -- that Byrne is really in many ways a geographer. In a New York Times op-ed piece last week, Byrne extolls a new bicycle sharing program in The City: This is How We Ride, he writes. He goes on to explain -- both in his article and in the accompanying video -- the environmental, social, artistic, and even mental-health benefits of widespread biking. He provides a quick survey of the many approaches cities around the world have promoted bicycling -- celebrating some accomplishments in the United States, but making it clear that we are far from the most developed country in the world in this arena.

He even makes bike racks!

His cogent geographic thinking is along two lines. First, he understands the importance of cartography -- especially modern, digitally-enabled cartography -- in supporting bike-sharing. Second, he deftly explains the feedback loops that allow a small bit of traffic replacement to become a substantial, even dominant contribution to traffic replacement. Enough bike lanes and bike parking, and we can eliminate space dedicated to automobiles.

His article is very timely for my campus at Bridgewater State University, where collaborative research centered in our Movement Arts, Health Promotion, and Leisure Studies program is leading to a very serious expansion of bicycling. At the same time, our Department of Geography has brought back a dedicated course in cartography, with campus mapping as the first major project, and is as I write in the process of acquiring cutting-edge tools for distributing maps online.

Incidentally, when I downloaded a copy of the aforementioned video -- which really is quite worth watching -- I noticed something I see as ironic, given Byrne's message about bicycling in order to become deeply connected to one's surroundings. The RealPlayer download screen actually encourages deeply distracted automobile driving! See the bottom line of the screen below:

University of Tish, Passim Campus

Toward the end of the time we lived in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas in the mid-90s, we learned of a South Texas musician named Tish Hinojosa. (Actually, she was from San Antonio, about 250 miles to the north of us, where the core of Texas meets South Texas.) We learned that she had just played at a local festival in Harlingen, and that we really should have been there.

Over the years since then, we bought several of her CDs, and nearly wore out Cada Niño/Every Child when our kid (formerly known as Paloma) was young. We love Taos to Tennessee, which really exemplifies Hinojosa's position at the exact midpoint between the country music I grew up with and the Latino music I most enjoy as an adult.

I knew that we would love to see Tish some day. I did not know that my wonderful wife -- and fellow Latin Americanist -- Pam was checking online periodically for the chance to make it happen. A couple of months ago, she announced that she had found a listing for Tish at the Club Passim in Cambridge. This is a coffee house that has brought great performers to small audiences for a half-century, like our own Off the Common but a bit more famous! I was delighted that we would have a chance finally to see Tish and learn more about her work and life.

When we arrived at the club this past Tuesday, we saw just how small the tables at Club Passim are, meaning that our second-row seats were practically on stage with Tish and the amazing Marvin Dykhuis. What Tish is to poetry and voice, Marvin is to guitar and mandolin. He is a big Texan who can make a tiny mandolin sing, and he was the perfect accompaniment to the fluid vocals of Tish Hinojosa.

I remember that at the David Byrne show in Boston a couple of years ago, there was some tension between the audience and the artist, as he wanted to play his newest material and we were all there for our old favorites. A friend tells me Van Morrison goes even further, almost never playing crowd-pleasing oldies. I was wondering how this dynamic would play out with Tish, as she -- like Byrne -- plays in a lot of different genres to begin with, and has a (relatively) new CD that was unfamiliar to me.

I should not have worried. Tish played old favorites from across the spectrum of Spanish ballads, Tex-Mex conjunto, and country-western. She did play quite a bit from her newest album, which immediately became a favorite. The song "Mi Pueblo" (My Town) from the 2008 Our Little Planet hit a strong emotional chord and made me think, "I could teach a whole course with this music." As I told Tish during intermission, I use a lot of Latin American music in my teaching, including hers. "Mi Pueblo" will be perfect for my geography courses, as it beautifully describes the longing for familiar landscapes that is experienced by people who migrate far from home in order to work. It is a theme that recurs several times on this magnificent collection, which reminds us both of the distinctiveness of places and the fact that the whole world turns under the same sun and moon.

On the ride home, listening to our new favorite CD, Pam said that this concert would end up costing us a lot of money, because now we have to buy all the rest of Tish's work. It will be money well spent, though; we are happy to support an artist with such grace and insight!

Lagniappe

See my 2017 Donde Voy post for more about the beautiful and important music Tish Hinojosa continues to make.

Pura Vida -- Coffee for Good

Although I've been without television for close to seven years now, I don't miss out, because friends look out for me and let me know whenever something really important is on. Two different friends let me know about this story, which aired on PBS a couple of days ago.

It concerns Pura Vida, a coffee company that was started by a former Microsoft executive and that directs all of its profits toward development projects in coffee-producing communities.

This video report describes some of the projects the company has sponsored, and explains that the coffee is sold on several hundred college campuses. Once I saw the story, I remembered buying some of this coffee at Emerson College just before heading over to the David Byrne concert last Halloween. As we move toward fair-trade on our own campus, this is one company to keep in mind!