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In the Barrelhouse Television Workshop, writers look at the way we tell stories across media, the way those "writer moves" work, and why they may or may not work in certain situations. Here, we're adapting the "Television Workshop" format to discuss S-Town, the new podcast from the producers of This American Life and Serial.
Our conversation was moderated by Barrelhouse Online Editor Erin Fitzgerald.
D. Gilson is the author of I Will Say This Exactly One Time: Essays (Sibling Rivalry, 2015); Crush with Will Stockton (Punctum Books, 2014); and Brit Lit (Sibling Rivalry, 2013). This fall he will begin as an Assistant Professor of English at Texas Tech University. Find D. at dgilson.com.
Brittany Hailer has taught creative writing classes at the Allegheny County Jail and Sojourner House as part of the Words Without Walls program. Her work has appeared in The Fairy Tale Review, Hobart, HEArt Online, and elsewhere. She is the Voices Unlocked writer for PublicSource and MFA program assistant at Chatham University. Read her work at BrittanyHailer.com
Dave Housley is a Barrelhouse Editor and the author of four collections of short fiction, most recently Massive Cleansing Fire, which was released in 2017 by Outpost 19.
Jared Yates Sexton is a writer, academic, and political correspondent whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, Salon, and literary journals around the world. He's a regular guest on television, radio, and podcasts, and the author of three collections of short fiction and the forthcoming political book The People Are Going To Rise Like The Waters Upon Your Shore from Counterpoint Press. Currently he serves as an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing in the Department of Writing & Linguistics at Georgia Southern University.
Sarah Shotland is the author of the novel Junkette, and a playwright whose work has been produced widely nationally and internationally. She is the co-founder of Words Without Walls, which brings creative writing classes to prisons, jails, and rehab centers in Pittsburgh, and teaches in Chatham University's MFA program..
Sarah Sweeney is the author of the essay collection Tell Me If You're Lying (Barrelhouse Books, 2016). Her poems and essays have appeared in Catapult, Oxford American, Barrelhouse, Greensboro Review, Cimarron Review, Lumina, Quarterly West, PANK, and others. She works as a freelance writer. Find her on the web at www.sarah-sweeney.com and on Twitter at @loosegringa.
Erin Fitzgerald: It's not really possible to talk about S-town without talking about its setting. Both in the physical world, and in how its people relate to each other, and how those two aspects work together. (Also: Raise your hand if you went and looked for the maze on Google.)
Dave Housley: I'm assuming that if we talk about this the way we would talk about a story or an essay (and that's kind of what we're doing here), then setting and place are going to be a big part of that discussion. I think one of the things the show does really well is create a full, three dimensional sense of the place of Bibb County and especially John B's conflicted relationship with that place. It changes as we move through the show and get to know more of the people in that place and what their lives are like. It changes as Brian spends more time there and gets to know John and the other people.
It's one of the things that changed for me as I listened to more episodes and the story became fuller and more three dimensional. At first (see my answer to the question about ep 2) I was really worried that what we were getting and would be getting was the "Coastal Elite Has Interesting Experience with the Rural Americans" story, or the "Rural American also Smart and Complicated" story. The thing I came to appreciate, as somebody who grew up in a rural place and currently lives in a small liberal bubble in the middle of Pennsylvania, is that over time the show wound up depicting the complicated south, the complicated rural people and their complicated history in this complicated place.
Sarah Shotland: I also agree that the show ultimately did a fair job of portraying a complicated Southern place. I'm originally from Dallas and then lived in New Orleans, so I'm still a little annoyed that the Southern spotlight is still largely put on the rural South. I'm mostly annoyed by this because people above the Mason-Dixon line often ask me if I grew up riding horses to school. (Dallas is a city of 7 million people, all of whom drive cars, if you're keeping score.) That said, this felt like an incredibly realistic portrayal of some Southern places I've had the misfortune to visit. I say misfortune, because I really related to John B and *know* that if I lived there I'd be the first to be calling it shit town.
Beyond my personal annoyance, here are some other place-y things I've been thinking about:
- I thought the portrait of place was interesting post-Trump-election. We've been hearing so much about the disenfranchised white voter, the forgotten America. This town felt very much like part of this idea that exists outside of Appalachia and the rust belt.
- I think the women of S-Town are great representations of Southern women, which added to the complexity of the place. There aren't many, but when they show up, they remind me of the Southern women I know. The aunt from Florida who unabashedly says "Hell yes I told him to shut the fuck up," and "I thought if he called him mama again I would hurt someone." There's such a lingering stereotype of the demure belle, and this aggressive defense of herself felt refreshing. Then there was the woman who John had gone into business with, who seemed like a pretty typical American working woman. Connected, ambitious, with-it. And Mama. Mama really resonated with me in the moment she said Brian could stay for dinner if he didn't mind eating like poor people. Meanwhile, everyone in town knows they have a bunch of money and property. This is so accurate in my experience of rural Southern attitudes toward money. The only thing worse than being rich is admitting you're rich. I'm so glad we didn't have any Southern women who felt really stereotypical to me (which I suppose is easier when you're dealing with real-live-human-beings.)
Jared Yates Sexton: I was really overwhelmed with how much S-Town reminded me of where I'm from: Linton, Indiana. The people, the culture, all of it, hit so close to home. There's a bizarre subculture to it all, the way so many of these people are resigned but also simmering with anger and bitterness, the personal feuds and how they're conducted. I had this bizarre sense of false nostalgia the entire time, like I'd just gone home and been sucked into some kind of odd situation, which is always the case when I go and stay too long. There are all these things that have happened there, in Linton, including the murder of a self-published author who worked in a metal teepee by her son, the abduction, torture, and eventual murder of my neighbor when I was a kid. Not to mention the neverending cycle of dysfunctional relationships that kick off blood feuds between families. It felt so familiar and sad and I couldn't believe a podcast, of all things, was able to bring that to life.
Erin Fitzgerald: What's problematic here? (This really can come up anywhere in all of this, but it does need to get talked about, I think.)
Dave Housley: I'm afraid I'm going to come off as not liking the show, because I did like it a lot, but it also pushed a few buttons for me. One is that I really felt like the first two episodes were kind of a head fake, a feint in the direction of what the people involved knew had worked so well in Serial. So it starts off as this true crime thing and it really stays in that direction for almost two full episodes until it morphs into what it's going to be, which is a character study of this fascinating person in this place that's full of contradictions for him and for the listener. But...two episodes of this kind of winky Serial 2.0 thing really feels like a lot to me.
I'm curious, actually, what the folks here who are accomplished nonfiction writers think about that, because I'm not one of those (accomplished nonfiction writer) and I wonder if my reaction has something to do with me being really used to writing and breaking down short fiction, where that kind of withholding would seem, to me, at least, to be pretty disingenuous, and any spinning wheels, especially at the beginning of a story, is just immediately cut because our inclination is always to get to the story part of the story as soon as possible. In this one, they very clearly delayed getting into the story part of the story for more than ¼ of the story, and that's a lot.
I also can't get it out of my mind that they know all of this as they're producing the show -- they know where it's going, that all of this supposed murder supposed investigating is being put here for a very specific storytelling -- or, at my most cynical moments, marketing -- purpose, and there's a part of me that feels like we got played there for two hours, feeling those dormant Serial muscles twitch again. There's a part of me where my Marketing-Radar is going off saying "you've been marketed." I'll be interested to hear what others thought of that, because although that's my honest reaction, I feel like it's a little strong and I haven't heard many others who feel the same way.
Sarah Sweeney: I didn't mind the head fake-ness Dave pointed out. As someone who also works as a journalist, this is what's fascinating--and often so rewarding--about pursuing a story: that is can change direction and morph into something else entirely. You want to be surprised, or else what's the point? I was once hired to interview a rock star, and I found him on his deathbed in a hotel in Southern California talking about aliens and life. So radically veering elsewhere was what I found most thrilling about S-town. It felt authentic to the investigative process. And because I've seen my fair share of Datelines, I was also ready for a big twist--or five. I didn't feel like Brian or the producers did anything disingenuous by giving us the Serial 2.0/murder plotline. They did play us, but that's because Brian got played too--he went down there looking to investigate a murder only to find out there was no murder and the story was much weirder and more fascinating. But the murder plotline sets John B up as this arcane small town whistle-blower. We needed it to understand him.
D. Gilson: Not to be contrarian to Dave, who shares my love of Arby's, but I ADORE the head fake-ness. Partially, this adoration is in agreement with Sarah, who points out that in journalism (and S-Town is certainly literary audio journalism?) the element of surprise that might lead interviewer, interviewee, and audience in an unexpected direction is rewarding. Though this element of surprise isn't new (it's by now cliche to quote Robert Frost arguing "No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader."). To Dave's point, however, I do wonder if there's something specific about the audio storytelling form (and especially from the uber control-freakishness folks stereotyped in public radio) that makes the surprise here feel manipulative?
Dave Housley: I was wondering that same thing, D! Maybe something about the intimacy of that feeling -- Brian is in my ears! -- that made me feel like in this case it was more manipulative. Sarah's right, of course, that it's really a standard storytelling/narrative Writer Move so even while I was feeling that way, I was kind of aware that it was maybe not a legit criticism of the show. Also I think the idea of production played into it -- that it's not just writing and narration but a whole lot of people working with lots of different elements to tell this story.
Sarah Shotland: I also didn't mind the "head fake." I agree with Dave, that as a fiction writer I don't think I'd ever do this in a short story, or even in a longer narrative. It would feel, as he put it, manipulative. Or maybe even simpler than that: confused. ("You have two stories here," I can hear a fiction workshop deciding.) But in CNF, it feels much more authentic to the experience of "real" life. You think you're doing one thing-you realize it's actually something different-you get a tattoo and drink some whiskey-someone dies and oh, shit, now you're in deep. One other thing that occurred to me as I read everyone's comments is that while I understand we're discussing this as though it's a kind of writing, my relationship to podcasts is much closer to my relationship with television than it is to my relationship with journalism or essays. I go to podcasts largely to be entertained, and generally listen while I'm doing something else (mostly the treadmill). Because of that, I engage with them in a very different way than I do with a book or essay. For example, although I was riveted by S-Town, I was engaging with it while I was running, so I'm using it as a means to an end (I can only run if I'm distracted from my own hatred of running). That may pose some challenges in terms of the form and how we're "reading" it or what standards we're holding it to. In terms of simple entertainment, I thought S-Town was almost a perfect marriage of what I love about Serial (suspense and intrigue) and This American Life (nerding-out-on-obscure-America).
In terms of what's problematic about the piece, I'm feeling it more now that we're discussing it. And that problem for me is the issue of despair. I've been hearing these pieces lately about "deaths of despair," which is in reference to the rising numbers of white, middle-aged deaths from addiction and suicide. While I understand that in some ways it's our job as writers to examine and analyze them, it feels slightly weird to talk about the problems of story structure or marketing when this story is about a man who was in deep despair. The last episodes, in particular, put this into a pretty stark light. He's getting tattooed with empty needles--that's some real junkie shit. I've known junkies who would just shoot up with water after they got clean because they were so addicted to the ritual of needles and the attachment to pain. He's piercing and re-piercing his nipples and calling it his church. That's some *real* junkie shit. And I say junkie with no judgment. It's the part of the story I connected with the most. This deep, deep longing to disappear, and yet, he's doing it in communion with other people. He calls a reporter from New York, he talks for hours on end. He's deep in the addiction paradox of wanting so desperately to be known, and so desperately to detach. Dave brought up his hesitation with the "Coastal elite encounters rural America" problem, and while that didn't happen, there was a bit of "Coastal elite discovers despair and makes it into art" going on. That feels a little uncomfortable to me. It doesn't feel unethical, per se. I don't think it should stop a writer or reporter from following the story, but it does feel like in polishing the story and packaging it, we distance ourselves from the despair, which puts us in danger of diminishing it.
EDIT: I came back to slightly edit this because I've been thinking about it all weekend. I think my problem was actually that we learn about the most disturbing parts of the story at the end. It's that final episode that gives us all the information about the piercing and the tattooing and the going to church. It felt a little messed up that we get all that at the very end. It seems like it would be a really different story if that information came in Episode 4 or 5, and then the last episode included Olin's monologue about the truck and wanting to kiss his belly. Getting that most desperate part of him last makes it feel icky. I don't think I have anything smarter to say than icky right now. :)
Jared Yates Sexton: So, the head-fake was something I struggled with, but there was also something kind of amazing about that change from the murder-mystery to the profile of John, who, the first time I heard him speak, I was instantly fascinated with. The way they edited this thing, the way they didn't completely tip their hats to the fact that this was going to be about John's life and what an anomaly he was, kind of let me find the thread organically and I really dug that.
Brittany Hailer: RE: Head-fake. So, I've been interviewing people who have been incarcerated and/or work with incarcerated persons for a couple of months now. On of my subjects was murdered four days after interviewing him. Because the profile was originally about how he was trying to better himself and what his relationship was like with his teacher--we kept the format of the story. I went back and interviewed the subject's teacher after his death, then added the murder and it's aftermath to the already written piece.I am not sure how else we could have written the story, because that is how it happened. That's how life happens. That's how the story unfolds. I understand that Brian produced this thing knowing it was going to twist and turn and shock its audience. (I was brushing my teeth when I found out that John B. had killed himself and nearly choked). I don't know if it's really a matter of ethics or morality--It's good storytelling. I also honestly think John B. did this to shock his inevitable audience.
I do agree with Sarah about the self-harm and leaving the darkest revelation about John's psyche for the end. Why is that? Why did they save that for the end? Were they afraid listeners would be turned off if they realized just how fucked up this guy was? His voice and humor is so lively (though what he fixates on is depressing and bleak). He carries the podcast, obviously. If we were given this information about our tragic hero earlier, would we have felt to "icky" to continue?
One more thing: If I ever die and someone I met online does an interview in a hotel room about me--I am telling everyone in the world right now, everything they say is bullshit. That's the section of the podcast that actually made me feel the most uncomfortable: John never mentioned this man to anyone. I realize that they knew each other for a very long time and the interview opened up this tragic John-Didn't-Have-Country-Song-Love, but still, when listening, I really felt like I was invading. Like I was listening to Bobby Brown discuss Whitney's favorite underwear color.
CONT: Now that I read everything, I realize I am the only person that finds Olin's inclusion uncomfortable.
Sarah Shotland: I hadn't thought of what Brittney brings up: the fact that maybe listeners would be turned off by getting the darker information before the end.
Erin Fitzgerald: Discuss episode 2! (A writing workshop would spend half an hour on foreshadowing, natch.)
Dave Housley: Again, I think I'm going to come off as a real grump here, because 2 was the episode I liked the least. I think what most of us will talk about is the big reveal at the end, which really turns the show around and points it toward its eventual real direction. But...for me, episode 2 was really brushing right up against the stereotype of NPR Coastal Elite Reporter Sent into Trump Country to Talk to the Locals. Putting all of that in sarcastic capital letters because I'm so sick of those stories and have been since before the election. There were times when it felt to me like he was on a safari, reporting about these most fascinating creatures and all in the most NPR-ish possible way (I am in the tattoo parlor's secret room...I am smoking a....oh my goodness this gentleman just…). Halfway though I was thinking, is this an entire podcast about how people in small towns in the south can have thick accents and still be complicated people? Is this a super popular podcast about cultural tourism?
I don't think I would have listened to another episode if it hadn't made that turn at the end. It DOES make that turn, though, and for me that's when I really started to dig the show because it became clear that it was going to be about John B, who was the most interesting part of the first two episodes and was clearly just a fascinating, tragic, funny, crazy, complicated, weird, brilliant person. As you can tell, I'm a real grump about those first two episodes….
Jared Yates Sexton: I'm actually with you on this one, Dave. There's a definite sense, in all these "Trips to Trump Country" that come from these metropolitan sources that feels like a trip to the zoo, which definitely gets my roots buzzing and has me raise my antennae. The end was heartbreaking in a way that made me click on episode three instantly, but the tone was just a little bit on the uncomfortable side.
Erin Fitzgerald: Genre! You could say it's pretty fluid (coming-of-age, legal thriller, true crime, longform CNF, etc etc). Does the form help/hinder? Also: Is this podcast truly like no other?
D. Gilson: I think the longform nonfiction podcast helps this story so much! It's segmented, which makes the jumps in point of view plausible, along with the shifting rabbit holes of focus (John B. to the town clerk to the cousins to the mother to the lover to the clocks etc. etc.).
I'm teaching a creative nonfiction class this semester (Creative Nonfiction: The Podcast), where students both study the form and make their own podcasts. S-Town coming to us was a pleasant surprise, to say the least, because to me it is truly like no other podcast. I'll go out on a limb here and think aloud about why that might be: largely because it is both southern and queer. And by queer, I mean it's not stereotypically "gay." First of all, we never know if John B. is gay in any normative sense that we have (he won't be appearing on any Ryan Murphy television show anytime soon). It's a type of queerness that is connected to both sexuality (Tyler does tell us, lovingly, that John "has a little sugar in his tank") and the place of the deep south. So it's queer in both sex (which oozes out in all types of way throughout the chapters) and in that it could not have taken place anywhere else. In this way, it reminds me of one of the most famous southern queers, Truman Capote. That voice, those tangents, that passion, that simultaneous love and disdain for the south itself... John B. is joining Capote in a long lineage of us queers with a lot of feelings about everything and nothing all at once. I haven't seen another podcast that captures that unique queerness with so much compassion, empathy, and honesty.
Sarah Sweeney: I love D. Gilson's answer, and I'll say that the podcast was also the perfect avenue for this story because we needed to hear these people -- the accents, of course, but really all of it. Hearing their voices told us as much about their personalities as anything they said. I'm thinking of Tyler's gruff confusion to the way his voice softened to childlike and searching when talking about John. Of course, I loved the scathing preacher's voice John B assumed when he was soapboxing about the world -- it was almost pentecostal -- to the way he could be so daintily exasperated, using the same southern expressions as my mother. Those expressions can often seem gimmicky on paper, but are indisputably authentic when you hear them coming from John B's lips.
Sarah Shotland: I'd add Tennessee Williams to D's list of Southern queers this podcast channels.
Brittany Hailer: John B and Capote drinking whiskey in the sky is my new favorite thing to dream about. (And maybe Frank Underwood is there, too. I am assuming he's going to die at some point)
Erin Fitzgerald: Binging! What do you think S-Town gained or lost from the decision to drop all 7 episodes at the same time?
Sarah Shotland: I love that we live in the age of the binge. I think it raises the production value of both television and podcasts in terms of unified thinking from the producers and writers. I have friends who write on television shows, and they say their job has gotten harder (and better) because now they can get away with less since people remember all the details episode-to-episode. Continuity, resolution, believability all mean more. It means that writers really have to know where they're going, which generally means where they start is better.
Dave Housley: I thought this was a really good and important decision. I'm guessing it was a hard one to make, because Serial is really the precedent for S-Town, and a lot of the same people were involved, obviously, and part of the whole Serial phenomenon was the way it rolled out weekly and built and went viral. I feel like they gave up part of that when they decided to drop them all at once, but that decision also really suited the subject material, which wasn't a true crime twist-by-twist caper and more of a character study.
Sarah Shotland: This is just my curiosity, not something for the blog--do people have opinions or know facts about how much of an audience binges even if they're released episode by episode. For example, I binged Serial rather than listen episode-by-episode, and I wonder if that makes any difference in the decision of the production team.
Dave Housley: I wonder about that, too! I think the give and take is that you don't get that episode by episode buzz, people live tweeting an episode, that weekly swell that we got with Serial. But you maybe get that all at once? You maybe get people like us being able to try to break down certain elements because we binged it and we're through it and we can talk about it and process it as a whole piece of art. It's an interesting question that I don't think was a Thing until a few years ago. I don't think there's a "right" way to do that, but I do think the dump helped the way we experienced it, and our ability to talk about it now, in this way. In my real job I do internet strategy so I'm interested in this question just in general.
Jared Yates Sexton: I admit, I'm kind of a contrarian when it comes to all forms popular culture, so I'm always late to the party because I can't get over myself in terms of actually digesting things that have caught fire. S-Town came late for me, but I have to admit, I love the feeling of binging on these things. What people don't really talk about, I think, when it comes to podcast is that these serialized forms are just audiobooks with more immersive production. I get after these things in chunks because I'm driving across country or looking for something to listen to while working on larger projects. Not all hit that mark - obviously Serial did - but this was as addictive of a podcast as I've ever heard.
Brittany Hailer: I saw an interview with Kevin Spacey at some point comparing binge watching to reading a novel. Some people read books chapter by chapter, some are so engrossed they read the book all in one sitting. Kevin Spacey thinks that's our right and I agree with Kevin Spacey.
I think giving audiences what they want is the smartest thing Netflix has done. Shows like House of Cards are the film industry's largest competitor. I think S-Town is tapping into that and making podcasts a cultural phenomenon and perhaps appealing to people who don't normally listen to the same podcast week to week. I listened to S-Town in one weekend because I COULD NOT STOP. Sure, we kind of miss out on the cultural, "Today is S-Town day!" but then again, we all get to type into this Google doc because we consumed the thing as quickly as we could. I think when you make something bingeable, you create arcs and episodes much like a good book. You're less worried about getting people to tune in every week. You allow characters to slowly build over time. You're not packing all this exposition into each episode for new people tuning in. Cliff hangers feel natural and not forced. It just feels like a book.
Sarah Shotland: Wow, I also agree with Kevin Spacey. And I much prefer being able to read a book in one sitting.
Erin Fitzgerald: Characters! Even though these are real people, of course. How does likability work/not work?
Dave Housley: I thought this was one of the most interesting parts of the show, because your point of view about the characters really changes. Or maybe it changes with Brian's point of view, since the narration of the story really works through his POV. Or, I think the way you feel about most of the side characters changes. John B is just kind of this bright crazy light from the first time you hear his voice, and the way I felt about him really never changed -- you learn to feel differently after his death, which can have that effect on anybody, but as a character, my reaction to him is the same throughout.
The rest of them are changed throughout (I guess the cynical way to look at that is that the producers had enough material to mold them in this way and that as it suited the storytelling, but I really didn't feel that as I listened). Tyler is in that tattoo studio/safari scene and that's before we really learn that he's got this really deep relationship with John B. I think the way I regarded Tyler changed on an episode by episode basis. The Florida cousins have a real arc, starting off as total money-stealing, hospital-driving-by villians, and then ending up as very sympathetic characters who are also giving us a totally different viewpoint into some of the other characters. Also they kind of gave me a different viewpoint on Brian, who had been our eyes and ears and, we learn, maybe had not been the most clear lens with regard to this place and these people.
I thought that was one of the things that really made S-Town work -- there's an arc, or several smaller arcs, and in their own ways each of these characters was it's own little mystery to be solved and also part of the larger story of John B.
Also I just have to say: love love love the clock guys. I really could have done with a few more episodes about those guys and their work and John's vaunted place in that super interesting, very specific, certainly disappearing world.
Sarah Sweeney: I had more of a personal take. Streaming S-town was like being transported back in time to my family holidays and get-togethers in North Carolina. On the outset, everyone seems pretty agreeable; then the moonshine arrives, and suddenly some folks are ready to reveal themselves as a sexist, racist jerk.
I really felt like I really knew S-town's people--because I do. They're my family members and they're people I know from back home. When Tyler locked that guy in the shed and threatened to chop off his fingers, it scared me that I currently know a few people who also believe that's a reasonable way of going about things.
I didn't particularly like any of S-town's characters. Yes, they are 'complicated,' which just seems like a facile way to gloss over bad behavior from white men, like how Tyler is prone to violence, and John B himself was racist and sexist. That Tyler consented to lashing John B, and that John B requested it, was one of S-town's most disturbing moments for me.
Sarah Shotland: I agree with Sarah #1 on all these points. And I'll add there was an intimacy between John B and Tyler that was painful and poignant, and an intimacy between John B and Olin that was equally heartbreaking to me.
Jared Yates Sexton: I'm in absolute agreement. This felt like home and I couldn't have asked for a better vehicle to get that experience, though I will say that I wish I could have gotten more in regards to the characters. Maybe it would have lengthened the podcast, but I could have used a lot more exploration into Tyler's life, the cousins, the veteran at the end who had had that ill-fated "romance" with John. I wanted so much more so badly.
Erin Fitzgerald: Point of view thoughts. What's your take on Brian, and on the S-town production team's decisions?
D. Gilson: Brian is one of the best narrators (though he becomes a character in and of himself, which is a good thing, I think) public radio has ever produced. He's empathetic without being dishonest or manipulative. When he finds out at the end of episode 2 (an episode I otherwise disliked) John B. killed himself, his reaction is guttural, reaching through the headphones and wrenching straight to the gut of the listener (I'm being dramatic, but it's one of the most honestly heartfelt moments in radio I've experienced). Where Brian's affective prowess works most effectively for me is in my favorite episode, chapter 6, which centers on the very queer friendship between John B. and Olin Long. Brian, who longs for John B. to have that country music, Mississippi River type of love Sarah speaks to as well, explores John and Olin's relationship with an ethics of care I've rarely seen any journalist or writer take when telling the story of someone else (perhaps, especially and pleasantly surprising to me since Brian is neither a gay man, nor a woman). He's sweet (to use a southern-ism) without losing his generative curiosity that is driving, along with John B.'s irresistible personality, the podcast itself.
Dave Housley: One of the moments that really stayed with me is at the end of episode 2 when Brian is on the phone with Skylar (spelling?). I agree with D that it's a really affecting moment -- I had a big old lump in my throat on the stupid YMCA elliptical machine on a Saturday morning. One thing that scene does is really suck Brian into the story. It's just after she's broken the news about the suicide and he's reticent, not really sure where he fits into the lives of John and Tyler and Skylar and Bibb County. He's gotten involved but he's still a reporter and he's standing in New York somewhere and had the foresight to hit the record button before they started talking. He says something to the effect of "I'm not sure where I fit in this," kind of wondering if he "deserves" to go to the funeral, I thought, or if he would be welcome, or something like that. She says something really lovely, along the lines of "if you weren't important enough I wouldn't have called." In that moment I think he kind of gets invited in through this doorway and he's really a part of the world of Bibb County from there. (I also wish I was smart enough to make those kinds of things happen in a short story because it really works and I'm not.).
Sarah Shotland: I totally agree with Dave that the moment when Skyler invites him in is a critical moment in Brian's ethical permission to follow the piece to its conclusion.
Jared Yates Sexton: I love Brian, but there's a part of me that kind of got caught on that emotional hitch in his voice. His reaction to John's suicide is one of the best moments from anything ever, but over the course of the podcast I got to this strange place where I couldn't always tell if his reactions, because that hitch was so omnipresent, were completely organic or for dramatic purpose. I might not be the best judge of this, however, because I was one of those people who was completely convinced Sarah Koenig was hopelessly in love with Adnan.
Erin Fitzgerald: Since BH is all about pop culture, let's talk about the pop culture references and ties.
Sarah Sweeney: For me, one of the most heart-rending moments (and pop culture moments) happened in episode 4, hearing Brian wonder whether John B had ever found love in his life. "The kind of love I hear about on the country music station," Brian says, before a clip of Canaan Smith's "Love You Like That" plays. Contemporary country is so schlocky and syrupy and over-the-top, and so much about wanting that it's practically slobbering. I thought employing it was such an effective counterpoint to John B's love life -- a way to highlight his longing and chronic romantic void in what's arguably the South's most popular medium.
When Olin admits to feeling desire for John, Brian spins his words about wanting to kiss John inside his F150 in the parking lot at his mother's doctor appointment into would-be lyrics. "Too bad that didn't really happen," says Brian, "because that's something you can write a country song about." That line just broke my heart. Music can instantly comfort us, but it can also remind us of what we're missing. And because country music is inescapable in the South, it becomes yet another world where John's an outsider.
D. Gilson: 100% agree with Sarah here! The country music is poignantly used, and that moment with Olin in the F-150 both breaks my heart and sets it back aflutter.
Sarah Shotland: Best pop culture moment for me: Olin dating life events pre-and-post Brokeback Mountain. YEEEESSSSS.
Erin Fitzgerald: Does S-town end where and how it should?
Dave Housley: This is another one where I'm conflicted. On one hand, I'm happy to have this audio longread, so incredibly well produced and artfully done, about this singular human being and the place he loved and hated and never left. On the other, I do think it retained just enough of that Serial DNA to keep on trying to present as a mystery or true crime show. There was the town clerk and the "hidden treasure" (which is the part of the marketing I can confidently call bullshit on: that was Tyler digging holes and not a "treasure hunt" but I get it in terms of SEO and marketing and the value of throwing "hidden treasure" in with "murder" and having a top rated podcast, I guess). There was the mercury poisoning theory, which seemed kind of spot-on to me, but still -- all of these half steps in crimey directions. Some of this rounded out the story and I'd say those things that really worked for me were the ones that had to do with place. Some of them seemed like time fillers to get to a certain number of podcasts, and some seemed like, again, that Serial DNA just wanted to assert itself no matter what. In the end, the story that stuck with me, which I loved, was about this complicated, brilliant, flawed guy in this place he both loved and hated but could never bring himself to really leave, and who probably kind of hated himself for that, as well. That was the story that stayed with me and the rest, I don't know whether it needed to be there or not.
D. Gilson: I'm want to agree with Dave here, as I, too, believe S-Town is best when it's focused on character and place (and place as character) as opposed to latching on too tightly to its Serial crime story roots (which thank god, IMHO, it loses for the most part after chapter 2). The murder mystery falls away (literally it has to, since it's a non-starter) and instead we get this, as Dave points out, beautifully flawed and complicated man who restores antique and rare clocks, something few people care enough to think deeply about, and builds an extensive garden maze just because he can. If anything bothers me about the end (even if I find the mercury poisoning plausible, which I do), it's the sense that Brian (and we?) need to justify John B.'s suicide, a reinforcement of suicide as cultural pariah, as if it isn't sometimes what a person might truly desire or need. Part of me doesn't what the last chapter at all, but rather to end on the poignant interview with Olin, who, along with Brian throughout, paints this complex, moving portrait of his friend John B.
Sarah Sweeney: I love Dave's point about the "Serial DNA" and feeling like a mystery/true crime show. Looking back, I definitely think that was intentional, and I didn't mind it, because like D. Gilson says, the murder mystery falls away, and a new one takes its place. And it's John B -- clocks, gold, and all. Just WHO is this person? I think by the end of the podcast, I still didn't know, and I think the mercury poisoning theory was thrown in there so we'll never really know. Was John B the way he was because of brain damage or because he insulated himself in Woodstock all his life? I do think it's an ending John B would've appreciated because he was playful and he seemed to enjoy being cagey with people (the buried treasure, his private relationships with both Boozer Downs and the town clerk).
Still, I have to echo some of D. Gilson's comments here. I also buy into the mercury poisoning, but I didn't see any reason to save it for the last episode. Ending with yet another of John B's friends coming out of the nowhere -- and a would-be lover, at that -- would've been far more poignant. Not to mention, Olin discovering that John B was dead mimicked both men's love affair with Brokeback Mountain, and the scene where Ennis finds out that Jack has died.
D. Gilson: Oh Sarah! I hadn't thought about the potential of mirroring Brokeback Mountain as a final scene. That would have been brilliant. Especially if Brian would have read part of Annie Proulx's short story.
Jared Yates Sexton: You're all dead-on. The end, honestly, was a little bit flat for me and I could have used a little more of a hook or final note for the end. That being said, I was emotionally exhausted having listened to the last three episodes back-to-back-to-back and maybe my disappointment with the note has more to do with just being heartbroken that John hasn't survived/found love.
Erin Fitzgerald: Recommended next step podcasts or reading, if you were into this, and why (how the recommendation is attached to the show).
Sarah Sweeney: Mark Richard's short story "Strays." It could've been set right in Woodstock. The story's quirkiness belies its tragedy, for sure, but it's a quick read and one my mind always returns to when I think about the more unsavory aspects of the South. In terms of music, S-Town made me long for the Marshall Tucker Band and the Outlaws.
D. Gilson: I don't think we have S-Town or Serial or any of the character driven podcasts we now have if The Kitchen Sisters hadn't started their style of interviewing and storytelling back in the late '70s. And for anyone interested in teaching the podcast as a form of creative nonfiction, I'd be glad to share my syllabus :), but also highly recommend the edited collection Reality Radio, edited by John Biewen and Alexa Dilworth and in its second edition from the University of North Carolina Press.
Sarah Shotland: Maureen Gibbon's Swimming Sweet Arrow, which is a heart wrenching novel about a shit town, murder, sexuality, intimacy, secrets, narrated by an unforgettable young woman named Vangie who goes down as one of my all time favorite fictional characters.
Dave Housley: Whenever I think about the south I think about Flannery O' Connor, of course. I read Good Country People about once a year and it always just knocks me off my feet. Still the best story I've ever read. More recently and taking a left turn, I'd recommend the most recent Drive by Truckers album, American Band, which is a smart, tough take on our the moment we're living though/in right now, especially with regard to race and the South.
Also if they weren't on this thing with me I would recommend both of the Sarah's books. Junkette by Sarah Shotland is the book I've recommended more than any other over the past few years. We started this off talking about place and Junkette is the book I tell people to check out if they want to know how to use place, especially w/r/t sensory details. That book just drips sweaty New Orleans and it stays with you long after you put it down.
I can't be remotely impartial about Sarah Sweeney's Tell Me if You're Lyingbecause Sarah's my friend and Barrelhouse put it out. But everything Sarah said in her answer about the characters of S-town is a good reflection on what you'll get in her book. It's great.
Jared Yates Sexton: Big Bad Love by Larry Brown is one of my oldest and closest friends, and I reached for it the second I finished this thing. Honestly, that and the early cuts of Hayes Carll are the things that remind me the most of home besides, now, the addition of S-Town.
Brittany Hailer: Sarah Shotland's Junkette should be mandatory reading for everyone.
But also: Bonnie Jo Campbell's Once Upon a River is a wonderful female Huck Finn novel: guns, river rafts, budding sexuality, complicated and sprawling family etc.


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Baltz Family | Batavia Children's Photographers/
Meet the Baltz Family
Mom contacted me about having her family photographed and mentioned that she had not had any professional photos done since her oldest was 7; he is now 16. Of course as a family photographer I was sad, but as a mom, I understood. Life happens, and as your children get older they are more active in sports and extra curricular activities that just surviving the day is a victory in itself. Upon mom's inquiry I investigated a little further about her children; names, ages, etc. When she mentioned that she had teenagers I was nervous. A majority of the families I work with have younger children usually ranging from newborn to about 10. I was nervous because teenagers, generally speaking, 'have it all figured out'. They don't usually enjoy being photographed, and when I say they I mean boys, and they DEFINITELY don't like to be photographed with their siblings, and even more-so........{gasp} TOUCHING!
These kids were the exception to the rule. They seemed to really enjoy each others company and totally went with anything I asked them to do. Mom was so very awesome during the whole process and you could definitely see how much she loves her children. She was so kind to them and had fun cracking silly jokes with them. You could tell that they have a wonderful bond.
Mom drove all the way out from Henrietta, N.Y. to have these portraits done with me; a photographer in Batavia, N.Y. and I am so grateful that she trusted me to capture some really genuine and beautiful portraits of her children. Have a look at a few of the images she hand selected to share and display in her home. {psst....my personal fave is the last one.}

subset: commoncrawl


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Introductory Program - Discover SCUBA Diving
The Discover SCUBA Diving program is an easy introduction into the world of diving. It combines a brief review of diving theory, equipment set-up and function, and basic diving skills so that you can safely and comfortably take your first breaths underwater. Although not a certification, it will be credited towards your open water certification if you like diving and continue on to the Open Water course.
This program is divided into two sections. The first is a review of the necessary information including basic diving theory, equipment use, hand signals and diving skills. The second section is the in-water practice, typically performed in a pool, although it can also be performed in very shallow, clear and calm water of a lake or ocean if available.
This program is perfect for anyone interested in trying SCUBA diving for the first time. Remember, this is not a certification course, so if you'd like to get certified, the Open Water course is for you.
Introductory Program Outline
- 1 hour theory, equipment review
- 1 hour SCUBA diving skill review and practice
- 1 additional dive in open water (*optional)
Introductory Program Price
Private - $100/student
*Optional additional dive - $50/student


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Goodness Snow's Artisanal Truffles and Chocolate
Sometimes it can take a few years for dreams to come true, but for Gwen Snow Goodness Snow's Artisanal Truffles and Chocolate it was better late than never. "I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when I was 10," she said. "And at age 54 I decided to become a chocolatier."
The most fun items on Gwen's table are treats dunked in Belgian-style chocolate, like chocolate covered marshmallows and chocolate covered pretzel sticks. "I got yelled at last week because I ran out of chocolate covered oreos," she said. She also sells nut clusters, white chocolate peppermint bark, and her real specialty: truffles.
The individually wrapped chocolate balls are filled with different flavors, like raspberry, Irish cream, coffee and hazelnut. Some are covered in dark chocolate, which, according to Gwen, highlight the flavors of the filling. Her favorite treat on the table are the limoncello and white chocolate truffles dipped in milk chocolate.
But come find out which chocolate delicacy is your favorite. Gwen will be glad talk with you about her craft. "I love chocolate, and I want to share my passion with people," she said.


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If you travel in New England, you will notice that so many of the outdoor lighting styles hearken back to our colonial past. In our opinion, NOBODY manufacturers this style of lighting better than Northeast Lanterns Ltd
Northeast Lantern Ltd. began doing business 20 years ago when the President, Skip Heal, had a dream to manufacture and sell solid copper and brass fixtures. Starting out in a little rented space, he slowly grew the business into what it is today. Employing over 25 people, the company now works out of a new 15,000 square foot facility. From the simple to the simply elegant, Northeast Lanterns has it all! Northeast Lanterns is known for its tradition of quality lighting at affordable pricing. This Exeter, NH-based company produces all of its products on-site, and each year introduces new styling and innovative products to meet most lighting needs. Northeast Lantern Ltd. has been manufacturing lighting fixtures since 1987. From colonial to contemporary styles, Northeast Lantern provides a comprehensive range of products and finishes.
For 20 years, Northeast Lantern has provided high quality reasonable priced lighting fixtures, made of solid copper and brass, that have colonial characteristics. The craftsmanship and personalities of all employees, along with the acceptance in the marketplace, provide the distinctive collection that sets Northeast Lantern apart from the competition.
Northeast Lantern began doing business when the President, Skip Heal, had a dream to manufacture and sell solid copper and solid brass fixtures. Starting out in a little rented space, he slowly grew the business into what it is today. Employing over 25 people, the company now works out of a new 15,000 square foot facility. The experienced craftsmen and women fabricate, solder and finish each lantern by hand.
Their intention is to continue to grow the business by offering current and potential customer hand-crafted, U.S.-made products at an outstanding price. Northeast Lantern is an environmentally friendly manufacturer and is a state permitted facility. Like Carolina Rustica, Northeast Lantern prides itself with excellent customer service and backs up each and every product with a lifetime guarantee, something you will rarely find in today's discount economy. Only the glass is not covered (for obvious reasons).
CollectionsThere are many captivating collections in the Northeast Lantern group of lighting just waiting to be explored. You will find our pricing on these outstanding collections to be the most competative possible, and all Northeast Lantern items have free shipping.
The Onion Collection is certainly one of their most popular...so much so that it is incorporated into their logo. This is a traditional design that Northeast Lanterns has enhanced with their own particular touch of hand-crafted quality. These collections showcase some of the aspects that make Northeast Lanterns unique: the fixtures are solid brass or solid copper, each backed by a lifetime guarantee. All glass is removable, replaceable, and washable. Several types of glass are offered, depending on the look you are going for: clear, optic (creates a "banded" look), seedy, and optic seedy. The "seedy" glass tends to give the fixture more of a maritime look. Other popular colonial style collections include the Adams Collection, the Heal Collection (named after the founder) and the Suffolk Collection.
Links to:
The Heal Collection
The Adams Collection
The Suffolk Collection
Northeast Lanterns finishes are applied by hand and can vary from fixture to fixture. They try to match each as close as possible. They do not lacquer their fixtures so the will age naturally and evenly in the same environment. All outdoor fixtures, no matter what finish is ordered, will turn dark and in time will "verdi", depending on the location. The color of their applied Verid finish can vary depending on what mixture and time of day the finish is applied. Some of the Verdi will wear off when placed outdoors. When installing interior fixtures, care should be taken to keep oily fingerprints off the finish. If in time the fixture shows prints, they may be removed with a metal polish applied to a cloth and rubbed gently.


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Venom, A Star is Born: Shine In Your Own Way/
Simply put two movies this weekend and both are supposed to be heavy hitters not sure which will win. You have Venom anti-hero movie coming from Sony Pictures. An alternative to the Spider-Man universe. And Bradley Cooper directorial debut in A Star Is Born. Featuring the multi-talented Lady Gaga.Read More


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Just joined, say 'Hello' in here
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Been away for a long time good to be back
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Welcome back. Better late than never
And the Lord said unto John "Come forth and receive eternal life", but John came fifth and won a toaster!
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Welcome back.
Enjoying freelance modelling in 7mm narrow gauge Feel free to ask questions relating to the Mountain Goats Waggon & Carriage Works thread.
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Ahh nice to be back in a comfortable place again ..........ugggh that social media world is cold
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Hi fistful, look forward to hearing more from you when you have warmed up a bit. R-
Not sure if I have plenty of time on my hands - or I've simply forgotten to do something really important.
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Welcome back.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
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Hello FG welcome back to the new forum ................John
If only there was enough hours in the day..................John
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Hey folks thanks for the "welcome back" posts.......now i'm gonna annoy you lot with questions
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, if I do say so myself. I've got a new wool in stock: Wensleydale! It's dyed in smooth gradients, perfect for spinning into lace weight and knitting beautiful shawls!
"Rococo" Just so you know - if you don't buy this one, I'm keeping it for myself!
"There and Back Again"
Also, superwash Blue Faced Leicester in sock gradients. The roving is folded in half when it's dyed, giving you two equal gradients to play with - perfect for navajo plying and knitting into socks or mitts!
"Year of the Dragon"
"Rose Garden"
And for the non-spinners - laceweight! I absolutely LOVE this base - Stratus has 875 yards per 100g skein, and the superwash merino sucks up colour like you wouldn't believe.
"Beautiful Briny Sea"
"Radioactive Raspberry"


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DARBY, TEXAS. Darby was near an old Indian trail and campground about four miles west of Moscow in central Polk County. The area was settled by Europeans before the Civil War; among the early settlers was an Irish family named Criswell, who arrived in 1835. The community was eventually named for Augustus Darby, a slaveowner who moved to the area during the 1850s. It is unique among Polk County settlements, as many of its early residents were from Ireland and Germany. Darby had a Catholic church and became a leather-tanning center for local hunters. A school was also established there. Residents formed the Darby Farmers Alliance, which met from at least 1886 to 1890. Darby was still a rural community during the 1930s, and in the 1940s it had the only Catholic cemetery in the county. Maps from the 1980s do not show the settlement.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:Emma Haynes, The History of Polk County (MS, Sam Houston Regional Library, Liberty, Texas, 1937; rev. ed. 1968). A Pictorial History of Polk County, Texas, 1846–1910 (Livingston, Texas: Polk County Bicentennial Commission, 1976; rev. ed. 1978).
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All copyrighted materials included within the Handbook of Texas Online are in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 related to Copyright and "Fair Use" for Non-Profit educational institutions, which permits the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA), to utilize copyrighted materials to further scholarship, education, and inform the public. The TSHA makes every effort to conform to the principles of fair use and to comply with copyright law.
For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.Handbook of Texas Online, Robert Wooster, "DARBY, TX," accessed September 18, 2019, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hvd08.
Uploaded on June 12, 2010. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
For more information about towns and counties including physical features, statistics, weather, maps and much more, visit the Town Database on TexasAlmanac.com!
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Call for Papers: Texas Center for Working-Class Studies
Events, Symposia, and Workshops
Hi all! You may be interested in this call for papers I received from the Texas Center for Working-Class Studies at Collin College...
Katy Jennings' Ride
Scholarly Research Request
I'm doing research on Catherine Jennings Lockwood, specifically the incident known as "Katy Jennings' Ride." Her father was Gordon C. Jennings, the oldest man to die at the Alamo...
Texas Constitution of 1836 Co-Author- Elisha Pease?
Ask a Historian
The TSHA profile of Elisha Marshall Pease states that he wrote part of the Texas Constitution although he was only a 24 year-old assistant secretary (not elected). I cannot find any other mention of this authorship work by Pease in other credible research about the credited Constution authors...


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Currently alive, at 68 years of age.
Categories: echo $strCat;?>
1951 – Born on April 5th. An American engineer and inventor of the Segway Human Transporter, a pedestrian vehicle.
1972 – Dean Kamen invented a portable, programmable pump that automatically delivers accurate doses of medicine, such as insulin, over extended periods. It's small enough to allow people who'd previously been bedridden to be mobile enough to live normal lives.
1981 – He started DEKA Research & Development Corporation, which introduced a portable dialysis machine, and the HydroFlex Irrigation System — a multi-purpose pump that replaced the expensive separate pumps that used to be required for arthroscopic (interior joint), endoscopic (colon, bladder, tummy, or other hollow interior organ), or gynecologic examinations.
– Kamen also invented a better stent (tube for supporting damaged arteries).
1999 – Kamen came out with the IBOT, a computerized wheelchair (though Kamen insists it's not a wheelchair) with a built-in computerized gyroscope for balance.
2000 – Received the National Medal of Technology.
2001 – He introduced the Segway, a two-wheeled mobile device — don't call it a scooter, he implores — that whisks a rider along, standing, with impeccable gyroscopic balance.
– George W. Bush, trying one out, famously fell, but only because he forgot to turn the Segway on.
2002 – He won the Lemelson-MIT Prize.
2005 – He was inducted in the National Inventors Hall of Fame.


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Fri, 23 December 2016
Today's betting buzz, big name interviews, plus free best bets. Host Pauly Howard, David Malinsky & Steve Fezzik broadcast from ESPN studios in Las Vegas. The picks and tips sports bettors start with for Friday December 23, 2016
Direct download: fridayfp23.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:25pm EDT


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Or is it? With such a slim selection – only 26 stories – there are bound to be worthies left out. But how does this "best of" list stack up?
"Captain America and the Riddle of the Red Skull" (from Captain America Comics #1, Mar. 1941). Grade: B. You can see the Red Skull's potential dripping from the page, though this early Simon/Kirby work looks fairly primitive compared to what comes later, and the story itself has its weaknesses. Cap's origin story from the same issue is much, much better.
"The Vision [vs. the Werewolf]" (from Marvel Mystery Comics #14, Dec. 1940). Grade: B. Rushed, sometimes confusing story, but with a great backstory to it that would have been even more exciting.
"Sandman: The Villain from Valhalla" (from Adventure Comics #75, Jun. 1942). Grade: A. Here is the fantastic, dynamic art that we expect when we see Kirby. The fight scene is all of one page long – but what a page! You just wish there was more, or that the villain didn't have to wind up being so ordinary in the end.
"Stuntman: Killer in the Big Top" (from Stuntman Comics #1, Apr. 1946). Grade: A. Great art, a terrific set-up for a series filled with excitement, humor, and mystery – the only weakness is that Stuntman himself is a little boring (and his origin seems to be cribbed from Robin!).
"Fighting American: Assignment: Find the King of the Crime Syndicate" (from Fighting America #2, Jun. 1954). Grade: B-. A fun little story, though too short and strains the suspense of disbelief. Though this was generally true of Fighting American, several of his stories would have been stronger choices.
[The Fly:] "Come into My Parlor" (from Adventures of the Fly #1, Aug. 1959). Grade: B+. A technically proficient preview of the Marvel Age of Comics Kirby would soon introduce…but there's just not that level of excitement here.
"Solar Patrol [vs. The Tree Men of Uranus]" (from Silver Streak Comics #2, Jan. 1940). Grade: D. Kirby barely had a hand in this very early, very campy tale, and it shows. Almost unintentionally comical, in a Fletcher Hanks way.
"Blue Bolt [shrinks]" (from Blue Bolt Comics #4, Sep. 1940). Grade: B+. There's a surprising amount of moral ambiguity here. Which is the evil one, the Green Sorceress, who wants to conquer, but loves Blue Bolt; or Dr. Bertoff, who will stop at nothing – even murder -- to thwart the Green Sorceress? It's almost a shame that a character as boring as Blue Bolt is stuck in the middle.
"The Thing on Sputnik 4" (from Race for the Moon #2, Sep. 1958). Grade: B+. Perhaps based on the Arthur C. Clarke stories 2001 a Space Odyssey would be based on, this story is about as confusing as 2001, though mainly because of its brevity.
"Satan Wears a Swastika" (from Boy Commandos #1, Win. 1942). Grade: A-. What a wild ride! In the meta-comic part of the story, Simon and Kirby are in trouble at DC Comics when their best-selling characters, the Boy Commandos get killed in Germany. They get the news from their other characters, the Newsboy Legion, and get help from their version of the Sandman to find out what happened! This part is spliced not-quite seamlessly with a more normal story of midgets being mistaken for the Boy Commandos, while the Boy Commandos hunt a club-footed Nazi killer.
"The Duke of Broadway: My City Is No More" (from Black Cat Comics #5, Apr. 1947). Grade: A. More of a parable against nuclear weapons than a real adventure story, which is good because it's pretty weak on details.
"Booby Trap" (from Foxhole #2, Dec. 1954). Grade: A. Short, but near-perfect story about the senseless carnage of war.
"Weddin' at Red Rock" (from Western Love #1, Jul. 1949). Grade: C-. It's a Western! It's a love story! It's got a twist ending! But, at 3 pages, it's not much of any one of those things.
"The Savage in Me" (from Young Romance #22, Jun. 1950). Grade: B. This one's a weird critter. It starts, rather remarkably, with the attempted rape of a pretty missionary in Southeast Asia, and then follows her descent into shame for the first three pages. That's all well and good by today's standards, but then the would-be rapist "turns out" to not be such a bad guy, saves her and her dad from invading soldiers. Now she sort of feels obligated to love him and, more disturbing still, her father practically pushes her on the guy. In the middle of all this weird "love" garbage is a pretty suspenseful story about the political scene in Southeast Asia circa 1950.
"Trapping New England's Chain Murderer" (from Headline Comics #24, May 1947). Grade: C-. I kept expecting a twist ending! This is a fairly pedestrian police procedural, worthy of the first half of an episode of Law & Order.
"Mother of Crime" from Real Clue Crime Stories v. 2 #4, Jun. 1947. Grade: B-. A mundane mini-bio for Ma Barker is elevated by its framing device of Ma speaking to the reader from Heck.
"The Case against Scarface" from Justice Traps the Guilty #1, Oct. 1947. Grade: C+. I'm not that impressed by this Scarface bio. It also makes me think that maybe Kirby couldn't draw a pie…
"Apache Justice" from Kid Cowboys of Boys' Ranch #6, Aug. 1951. Grade: B+. A sometimes intriguing cowboy ranch soap opera with some action and adventure mixed in. The Indian stuff is horribly cliche, but the mystery of Angel is intriguing and I wonder if more was ever revealed.
[Bulls Eye:] "Doom Town" from Bulls Eye #4, Feb. 1955. Grade: A. An intriguing scenario, plenty of action, and some compelling backstory are marred, mainly, by Bulls Eye being upstaged by the more interesting Major Calamity.
"Scorn of the Faceless People" from Black Magic #2, Dec. 1950. Grade: B-. An intriguing dream sequence segues into a dull love story.
"Up There!" from Black Magic #13, Jun. 1952. Grade: A. An effective supernatural mystery, mildly horrific, but with a powerful ending; marred only by being too short and not having a more interesting protagonist.
"Woman in the Tower" from Strange World of Your Dreams #3, Nov. 1952. Grade: B-. Atmospheric and creepy, but way too abbreviated -- almost as if they found out while drawing the last page that they had a smaller page count than promised and had to rush an ending.
"Rainy Day with House-Date Harry" from My Date #4, Jan. 1948. Grade: C+. Eh. Really only mildly amusing.
"20,000 Lugs under the Sea" from From Here to Insanity #11, Aug. 1955. Grade: A. Quite funny and visually inventive -- if not original, since it reads just like a Mad magazine parody. The lines they give Kirk Douglas' character from the movie are laugh out loud funny. Could have used a stronger punchline ending, though.
Friday, April 3, 2015
The Best of Simon and Kirby reviewed
Labels: comic books, DC comics, Harvey comics, Marvel comics, Prize comics, reviews
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Just some random pictures to share from my garden (araceae flower, loquat and a baby rose) ************************************************************************************************ Algunas fotos que quiero compartir de mi jardín (flor de alcatraz, nísperos y rosa bebe)
Nov 8, 2015
Flowers and Fruits from my garden
4 comments:
- AnonymousNovember 16, 2015 at 10:21 AM
Really wonderful!ReplyDeleteReplies
Thank you @ladyfi !Delete
Have a nice day1
these are lovely.ReplyDelete
i looked through some of your posts and realize that you do DC sometimes. I have added your name to my list. But not everyone else uses my list. In case you do not know this weeks word is: Calm Veronica is hosting, it would be lovely if you would like to join us.Replies
Hi Tammie Lee,Delete
Thanks for considering me in your list and for this week DC, I´m totally in for this week DC!
Have a nice day!
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Big Song. Big Dance. Big Band. BIG ENTERTAINMENT!
Adam J
rOSE S
Brian H
hunter r
zach S
Hunter H
Devon P
Ricky s
matt h
Wisconsin Singers is UW-Madison's professional entertainment ensemble. Featuring the top singers, dancers, and instrumentalists on campus, the Singers performs a family-friendly revue of the past four decades of American popular music.


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After aspiring novelist Francis Scanlon is expelled from a prestigious graduate creative writing program, he is forced to become a spin doctor at the Prock Chocolate Corporation while he awaits the publication of his masterpiece.
But Francis's expectations of easy money and literary glory are thwarted by a paranoid boss determined to run him out of the company, a charlatan writing coach, a snarky reporter, a sanctimonious public health crusader more Goebbels than Gandhi, an oily U.S. Senator with presidential aspirations, and a radical Muslim cleric with absolutely no sense of humor.
As the story unfolds in San Francisco, Washington, New York, Krakow, Mumbai, Jakarta, and a series of lush equatorial corporate jet refueling stations, Francis is swept up by market forces and transformed from pretentious literary cliché to reluctant executive to master practitioner of the black art of corporate power-politics. The story ends up, rather unexpectedly, as a surprisingly sweet romantic comedy as well.
A unique exploration of the way business, politics, career trajectories and interpersonal relations intermingle, Corporate America is a smart, literate comedy that deftly blends bone-dry satire, high ideals and bad taste without ever showing its seams.
About the Author
Jack, please tell us a little about yourself as a person and as author.
I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. I am from a gigantic Irish-Catholic family. Youngest of eight with seven sisters ahead of me—which is why I enjoy writing female characters.
I began my career in politics, writing speeches for members of the Missouri House of Representatives, then moved to Washington, DC, and did similar work on Capitol Hill. For a few years I worked as a staff writer for a DC-based NGO, one focused on helping high school dropouts get back on track. After that, I worked for a big PR firm and then went on to work as an executive inside two Fortune 500 corporations.
What is your connection or fascination with Eastern Europe? Or where is your fascination coming from?
When I was 22 a girlfriend turned me on to Milan Kundera and I got seriously hooked. I got very heavily into Czech and Polish literature. I suspect the books awakened in me my dormant Jewish gene: Though I was raised 100% Irish-Catholic (Archie Bunker division), my maternal grandmother was a Polish Jew. I think I simply had an eerie biological connection to the place.
How did you come up with the title of your book?
The marketing guy in me thought something "high concept" would telegraph to the readers what the book was about.
How did you create the plot for this book?
Soon after the Berlin Wall fell, for my birthday, I treated myself to a roundtrip ticket to Auschwitz.
Loaded down with my Eastern Euro lit, I stopped on the way from Prague to Krakow in a little village called Šumperk, in Czechoslovakia. Tiny place. No more than ten buildings. And, the Czechs being the Czechs, eight of them were pubs. I checked in to my hotel, this grim Communist hostel holdover. Next to the bed is this tiny little radio. Cheap, plastic—from the 1960s. I pushed the first preset station button and I got a talk show. Two people, a man and a woman, very distinct voices. Then I pushed the next button saw that I jumped a few inches down the dial—but I got the same talk show. So I pushed the third button, and I got it a third time. Then the fourth and …you guessed it. Now, this wasn't like an annoying teenager who hijacks the stereo in your car and programs all the stations to his favorite one. Each station was at a different place on the dial. You were given the illusion of choice, but behind curtain number one, curtain number two and curtain number three the state put the same cheap prize. It was so sinister. Yet comically sinister, in my view. Somehow, in my imagination, I began to fuse my experience in the East Bloc with my corporate work at the time (I was doing PR work for a Fortune 200 company). It became a comic shotgun-wedding of sorts.
How do you come up with your ideas? Who or what inspired you?
I basically cooked up about 20 different scenarios—some informed to a certain degree by experience yet wildly embellished, others made up entirely.
Did you have it all planned out before you wrote it or did the characters and story surprise you?
Yes! I storyboarded the book. (I actually wrote the final chapter first—just so I'd know where I was going to wind up.) The characters, who were thin and sketchy at first, emerged organically as I wrote (and re-wrote, and re-wrote, and re-wrote).
Is your main aim to entertain or relay a message?
Entertain. Great quote from the British novelist Henry Green: "If you can make the reader laugh he is apt to get careless and go on reading."
Would you say your book has a message and could you hint at it – for the confused?
I was very interested in exploring the never-ending tension between the political Left and Right in the US. I set the story in a chocolate company because "Foodism"—if I may invent a term—is the new battleground on which the culture war in America is being fought: the fast food slobs versus the slow food snobs. The food industry is a delicious backdrop against which to set this story because it bundles all of America's class war issues into one glorious, landfill-clogging Styrofoam box:
- It's the unscrupulous capitalists at the food companies versus the insufferable do-gooders of the public health community, the news media, and Capitol Hill.
- It's the wealthy, wicked, white guys in the corporations against poor, undereducated, people of color and children.
- It's the paternalistic Left against the personal responsibility Right.
- The obesity battle, in particular, has my personal favorite ingredient—that uniquely American class war issue that dare not speak its name—the skinny people against the fat people.
How could a satirist possibly resist this topic? And setting the story inside a chocolate company seemed to me the pinnacle of ridiculousness.
What do you like best about writing? What's your least favorite thing?
Best: Writing jokes. Least: Cutting jokes, because I think all my jokes are funny (which they are decidedly not.)
What is your writing environment like?
My wife and I live in a 150-year-old former train station in rural VA. Great place to write!
How have you found the experience of publishing? What type of publishers are your publishers? What were your highs and lows?
I published with a major house (my first book) and for Corporate America (my second) I did an exclusive deal with Amazon, which has a new program for writers represented by literary agents. Frankly, the experience was almost identical. In short, if you are the writer today, you own it: You must submit a 100% perfect book, because no one in the publishing industry has the time, budget or editorial staff to help you "craft" a novel anymore; you own marketing and PR; you own distribution; you own making reviews happen.
What is your advice to new writers?
Read poetry.
Who are your favourite independent writers?
I don't distinguish. Increasingly, I don't think other readers do either. Either people write well or poorly. Either they tell a good story or they do not.
What three books have you read recently and would recommend?
One of the most powerful books I can recommend is Under a Cruel Star, by Heda Margolius Kovaly. It's on my desert island list. If you read one book before you die, read her memoir. A Czech-Jew, Kovaly escapes from Auschwitz and returns to Prague, marries, and then gets caught up in a notorious Soviet show-trial in the early 1950s.
Hanna Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem heavily informed my novel, as did Hitler's Airwaves: The Inside Story of Nazi Radio Broadcasting and Propaganda Swing by Horst J. P. Bergmeier & Rainer E. Lotz. Joseph Goebbels created an ersatz swing band called "Charlie and his Orchestra" comprised of German musicians who were technically competent but utterly soulless, lackluster improvisers. Only "master-race" Goebbels would have the audacity to rip off an artform invented by African-Americans, and later wildly popularized by two American Jews (Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw). This, to me, makes the story all the more ironic, fascinating and diabolical.
Who would you say are the biggest influences?
The Gloomy Slav (Bohumil Hrabal, Milan Kundera, Jerszy Kosinski) and The British Satirists (Evelyn Waugh, Kingsley Amis, David Lodge).
What books have you read more than once or want to read again?
I have read Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet at least five times.
Which character did you most enjoy writing?
Trudy Tylor, the glamorous, elegant, unreconstructed right-wing spokeswoman for the fashion industry. My aim was to make her "irresistibly detestable" to readers.
Are you like any of your characters? How so?
Every character in the book—except for the CEO—is a scoundrel. So, naturally, I identify with everyone except the CEO.
What song would you pick to go with your book?
"Charlie and his Orchestra's" cringe-making rendition of "Makin' Whoopie"
How do you handle criticism of your work?
My first book was extremely well reviewed and I was shocked at how much I could have cared less. You write what you write, you do your best, and you know when you're done if it's crap or something to be proud of.
What are you working on now?
This interview.
Here is a sample/excerpt from the book:
The Scene: At the Willard Hotel's "Round Robin Bar," in Washington, DC. The hero of Corporate America, aspiring novelist Francis Scanlon, has just explained the plot of his novel-in-progress to a woman he's trying to seduce, Trudy Tylor, a self-described "libertarian fashionista." Here is their exchange.
"Just ….oh, please…not another tedious story about the Nazis. Yet another doomed love affair between a Nazi commandant and a camp inmate. Haven't we heard quite enough already?" said Trudy. "Why is it that no one affords equal time in literature to the atrocities of the Left, which, in my view, were far more sinister? The Germans—they only held on to power for fifteen years. Do you know how easy it for propagandists to play to an audience's vanity? Parades and scapegoats and what not. That's not so hard. But the Russians—they were about breaking the audience's will; they terrorized the audience—and lasted seventy. They'd knock down a 500-year-old baroque treasure and erect a grotesque cement box up in its place without blinking an eye. What discipline!"
Even though I had been forced to take a corporate job, I was still a progressive who sided with the wretched of the earth. "At least the Left is motivated by ideals. Their leaders were, admittedly, deeply flawed. But the initiatives of the Left, no matter how misguided, started out as an effort to do the right thing."
She waved her champagne flute in the air. "That sentence is proof positive that the Left perpetrated the greatest P.R. scam of the twentieth century, and quite possibly in history. The communists killed a hundred million people. The Nazis killed twenty million. Yet Mao gets immortalized on a T-shirt; Hitler does not," said definitively, clinching the argument.
Trudy Tylor gulped more champagne. "You're a bloody awful debater, but I'll grant you that the fascists occupy a more prominent place in the collective imagination for one reason and one reason only: They knew how to dress. For second only to the Left's crimes against humanity were their unspeakable sartorial crimes. The Left has absolutely zero fashion sensibility. That dreadful little man Khrushchev, slapping his cheap plastic shoes on the counter. Pol Pot outfitting his rebels in Capri pants and those poufy gingham kerchiefs tied about their necks. What was that man thinking? Where did he think he was fighting his guerilla war? In Chelsea? No right-wing dictator would allow his men to be debased that way. And let's not even start on their grooming. Positively hideous. Look at Fidel Castro's beard. Beans, rice and maduros caked in it. Bloody awful."
I licked the corners of my mouth; no maduros on me.
"Wretched, all of them. And that greasy Che Guevara, vile man. Take a bath and have a shave. Pluck your eyebrows, Comrade Brezhnev." She flipped her wrist and the vintage men's Cartier Tank slid down her twiggy arm. "Ah, but the look of the right!" she exclaimed. "Smart and snappy. Well groomed. Pressed uniforms in fabulous menacing colors—loads of reds, browns and black. Pinochet looked like a million pounds in his uniform." She pulled a long, philosophical drag off the Dunhill. "I'd rather be thrown out of the airplane by him than sentenced to the gulag by that dreary Mr. Stalin," she said wistfully.
Find the book on Amazon:
Corporate America, Eastern Europe, Jack Dougherty, satire, writer


text:
Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Strategist, Publicis Groupe
Tamsen Webster, CMO, Oratium
Tom Webster, VP Strategy and Marketing, Edison Research
Alan Wolk, Senior Analyst, The Diffusion Group
Bob Knorpp, Host, The BeanCast
Importance of Live Events
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Collecting Children's Data
Sources: Adweek on VTech response
Paying Off Ad-Blockers
Sources: BI reports
Facebook Leads
Sources: Analysis on HuffPo
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This year, legendary Latin Jazz pianist, bandleader, composer and NYC native Eddie Palmieri released, Sabiduria, his first album in over a decade via Ropeadope. KPCC's Take Two called Sabiduria "a rollicking affair, encompassing the full range of the maestro's more than 60 years in the business — everything from classic salsa to modern funk, New York sophistication to New Orleans strut, small-combo conversations to big-ensemble workouts."
Born to Puerto Rican parents in Harlem and raised in the Bronx, the 80 year old 10-time Grammy Award winner is considered the "reigning patriarch of Afro-Latin music in the U.S." A recipient of the Latin Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences Lifetime Achievement Award and a National Endowment For The Arts Jazz Master, two of his performances have been recorded for the Smithsonian National Museum of American History archives, and his song "Azucar Pa' Ti" has been added to the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress.
(Complete Bio Coming Soon)


text:
(Updated yet again, 19 June, 2011: Here is a technical report from Biodesic based on the post below (PDF). "Microbrewing the Bioeconomy: Innovation and Changing Scale in Industrial Production")
(I used this data as part of my report on the bioeconomy and biosecurity for the Biodefense Net Assessment: Causes and Consequences of Bioeconomic Proliferation.)
Ah, beer. The necessary lubricant of science. Always the unacknowledged collaborator in the Nobel Prize. Whether critical to the formulation of quantum mechanics in the pubs of Copenhagen, smoothing the way to the discovery of the double-helix in Cambridge, or helping celebrate an iGEM victory in that other Cambridge (congratulations again, almost-Dr. Brown and team), beer is always there.
And now it is helping me think about the future of biological manufacturing. Not just by drinking it, though I can't say it hurts. Yet.
Anyway, the rise of craft brewing in the US is an interesting test case, and a proof of principle, of distributed biological manufacturing successfully emerging in a market dominated by large scale industrial production. To wit, Figure 1:
Figure 1. The number of US large and small breweries over the last century. The (official) count was forced to zero during Prohibition. (Click on image for full-size.)
Before Prohibition, the vast majority of beer produced in the US was brewed by relatively small operations and distributed locally. There was no refrigeration, nor were there highways and trucks, so beer had to drunk rather than produced and stored in large quantities (modulo some small amount of storage in basements, caves, etc.). Moreover, the official count of breweries went to zero during the years 1920-1933. After Prohibition, brewing was regulated and small scale producers were basically shut out of the market.
With the aid of refrigeration and transportation, large scale breweries took off. Consolidation took its toll -- beer is pretty close to a commodity, after all -- and the number of breweries in the US shrank until about 1980. In 1979, Jimmy Carter signed legislation reopening the market to small brewers. This is an interesting and crucial point, because as far as I can tell nothing else substantive changed about the market. (OK, so it was more complicated than this -- see updates below.) Deregulation reopened the market to craft brewers and the industry blossomed through organic growth and the preferences of consumers (more on this in the Update below). (Conclusion: Emerging small scale, distributed production can compete against an installed large scale infrastructure base.)
(Update 18 Aug 2010) There seems to be some upset out in blogland about the idea that Carter deregulated craft brewing. See the first comment to this post. I don't think it changes my story about biological manufacturing at all, but for the sake of clarity, here is this: On February 1, 1979, President Carter signed the Cranston Act, which allowed a single adult household to brew up to 100 gallons of beer per year. A household with two adults could brew up to 200 gallons per year. For more, see here, or this nice 2009 article from Reason Magazine by Greg Beato, "Draft Dodgers: For DIY brewers, Prohibition lasted until 1978. But onceunleashed, they revolutionized the industry." From Beato's article: "After Prohibition ended, the Federal Alcohol Administration Act of 1935 laid out a new set of liquor laws. Home winemaking for family use was granted a tax exemption; home brewing was not. If you were making any amount of beer, you had to obtain a permit and comply with a long list of regulations." Prior to the Cranston Act, brewing beer at home, or in small volumes anywhere, was hard to do because of federal regulations. After the Cranston Act, people could concoct all kinds of interesting liquids at home. So it sounds to me like Carter deregulated craft brewing.
(re-Update 19 August, 2010: Tom Hilton, at If I Ran the Zoo, makes some nice points here. Namely, he observes that there were additional changes at the state level that legalized brewpubs. Note that not all craft brewers are brewpubs, and this distinction appears to be glossed over in much of the criticism of this post. Anyway, it is pretty clear that reality was more complicated than the summary I gave above. No surprise there, though, as the heading of the section contains the word "oversimplified"...)
Better yet as a reference is a peer-reviewed article by Victor Tremblay and colleagues entitled "The Dynamics of Industry Concentration for U.S. Micro and Macro Brewers." (Link. Review of Industrial Organization (2005) 26:307-324) Here is their description of what happened in 1979 (the original text contains an obvious typo that I have corrected in brackets):
Changes in government policy also benefited micro brewers. First, the legalization of home brewing in February of [1979] stimulated entry, since most early micro brewers began as home brewers. Second, states began lifting prohibitions against brewpubs in the early 1980s. Brewpubs were legal in only six states in 1984; Mississippi was the last state to legalize brewpubs in 1999. Third, the government granted a tax break to smaller brewers in February 1977. According to the new law, brewers with annual sales of less than 2 million barrels paid a federal excise tax rate of $7.00 per barrel on the first 60,000 barrels sold and $9.00 per barrel on additional sales. Brewers with more than 2 million barrels in sales paid an excise tax rate of $9.00 on every barrel sold. In 1991, the tax rate rose to $18 per barrel, but brewers with annual sales of less than 2 million barrels continued to pay only $7.00 per barrel on the first 60,000 barrels sold annually. This benefited the specialty sector, as all micro breweries and brewpubs have annual sales of less than 60,000 barrels and all of the larger specialty brewers have annual sales of less than 2 million barrels.
So a combination of changes to federal regulations and federal excise taxes enabled small players to enter a market they had previously been prohibited from. That home brewing had been almost non-existent prior to 1979 points to another interesting feature of the market, namely that the skill base for brewing was quite limited. Thus another effect of legalizing home brewing was that people could practice and build up their skills; they could try out new recipes and explore new business models. And then, wham, in just a few years many thousands of people were participating in a market that had previously been dominated by large corporate players.
(end Update)
The definition of a "craft" brewer varies a bit across the various interested organizations. According to the Brewers Association, "An American Craft Brewer is small, independent, and traditional." Small means less than 2 million barrels a year (at 26 Imperial gal or
30.6 31 standard gal per barrel); independent means less than 25% owned by a non-craft brewer; traditional means either an all malt flagship beer or 50% of total volume in malt beer. There is a profusion of other requirements to qualify as a craft brewer, some of which depend on jurisdiction, and which are important for such practical concerns as calculating excise tax. Wikipedia puts the barrier for a craft brewer at less than 15,000 barrels a year. According to the Brewers Association, as of the middle of 2009 there are about 1500 craft brewers in the US, and about 20 large brewers, and about 20 "others", with brewpubs accounting for about 2/3 of the craft brewers.
Show Me the Hops. Or Wheat. Or Honey (if you must).
Brewpubs and microbreweries are so common that the majority of Americans live within 10 miles of a craft brewer, and it is a good bet that there is one quite close to where you live. The Beer Mapping Project can help you verify this fact. Please conduct your field research on foot.
Beer generates retail revenues of about $100 billion in the US (brewery revenues are probably less than half that), contributing combined direct and indirect jobs of about 1.9 million. But craft brewers account for only a small fraction of the total volume of beer brewed in the US. According to the Beer Institute's "Craft Brewers Conference Statistical Update - April 2007" (PPT), three brewers now supply 50% of the world's market and 80% of the US market. See Figure 2, below. The Brewer's Association clarifies that only 5% of the volume of beer brewed in the US is from craft brewers, who manage to pull down a disproportionate 9% of revenues. (Conclusion: Small scale producers can command a premium in a commodity marketplace.)
Figure 2. US beer market share. (Click on image for full-size.)
Here is an interesting question to which I do not have an answer: how much beer brewed by large producers is actually bottled and distributed locally? "Lot's of beer", where I don't have any real idea of what "lot's" means, is produced via contract brewing. It may be that "large scale production" is therefore not as centralized as it looks, but is rather the result of branding. This makes some sense if you think about the cost of transportation. As beer (regardless of its source) is mostly water, you are paying to ship something around that is usually plentiful at the destination. It makes a lot of sense to manufacture locally. But, as I say, I have yet to sort out the numbers.
Brewing as an Example of Distributed Biological Manufacturing
All of the above makes brewing an interesting test case for thinking about distributed biological production. Craft brewers buy feedstocks like everybody else, pay for bottles and probably for bottling services, and ship their product just like everybody else. They may be much smaller on average than Anheuser Busch, but they survive and by definition make enough money to keep their owners and employees happy. And they keep their customers happy. And their thirsts quenched.
Above, I identified two important conclusions about the craft brewing market relevant to this story: 1) Craft brewing emerged in the US amidst an already established large scale, industrial infrastructure for producing and distributing beer. 2) Small scale, distributed production can command a premium at the cash register.
As we look forward to future growth in the bioeconomy, more industrial production will be replaced by biofactories, or perhaps "industrial biorefineries", whatever those are supposed to be. Recall that the genetically modified domestic product (GMDP) now contributes about 2% of total US GDP, with the largest share for industrial products.
This story becomes particularly relevant for companies like Blue Marble, which is already producing high value, drop-in replacements for petrochemicals using biological systems. (Full disclosure: Blue Mable and Biodesic are collaborating on several projects.) As feedstocks, Blue Marble uses local waste agricultural products, macro- and micro-algae, sewage, and -- wait for it -- spent grains from the microbrewery next door. (How's that for closing the loop?) Products include various solvents, flavorings, and scents.
The craft brewing story tells us that consumers are quite willing to pay a premium for locally produced, high quality products, even before they learn -- in the case of Blue Marble -- that the product is organic and petroleum-free. It also tells us that small scale production can emerge even amidst an existing large industry.
Can Blue Mable and other companies compete against enormous, established chemical and petroleum companies? In my experience, the guys (and they are nearly universally guys) at the top of the oil industry don't even get this question. "It is all about steel in the ground", they say. In other words, they are competing based on the massive scale of their capital investments and the massive scale of their operations and they don't think anybody can touch them.
But here is the thing -- Blue Marble and similar companies are going to be producing at whatever scale makes sense. Buildings, neighborhoods, cities, whatever. Any technology that is based on cow digestion doesn't have to be any bigger than a cow. Need more production? Add more cows. This costs rather less than adding another supertanker or another refinery. Blue Marble just doesn't require massive infrastructure, in large part because they don't require petroleum as a feedstock and are not dependent on high temperatures for processing. Most of the time, Blue Marble can do their processing in plastic jugs sitting on the floor, and stainless steel only comes into the picture for food-grade production lines. This means capital costs are much, much lower. This is a point of departure for biomanufacturing when compared to brewing.
(Update: Perusing old posts, I discovered I did a decent job last year of putting this scale argument in the context of both computers and the oil industry, here.)
Beer is close to a commodity product, and it is the small scale producers who get a better price, even though their costs will be roughly the same as large scale producers. Blue Marble generally has substantially higher margins than petrochemical producers -- and by focusing on the high margin portion of the petroleum barrel they are going to be stealing the cream away from much larger companies -- but Blue Marble's costs are much lower. What is the financial situation of a large petrochemical company going to look like when they lose the market for esters, which can have margins of many hundreds of dollars per liter, and are left with margins on products closer to gas and diesel at dollars per liter? This is a different sort of play than you would see in brewing.
Now, I am not guaranteeing that distributed biological production will win in all cases. Large beer brewers clearly still dominate their market. It may be that biological manufacturing will look like the current beer industry; a few large players producing large volumes, and a large number of small players producing much less but at higher margins. But craft brewing is nonetheless an existence proof that small scale, distributed production can emerge and thrive even amidst established large scale competition. And biological manufacturing is sufficiently different from anything else we have experience with that the present market size of craft brewing may not be that relevant to other products.