Posts by Guest Blogger

What it’s like to be a Patient Navigator for abortion services: “It’s post-Roe, 2022. I’m on a trip from Texas to New Mexico, accompanying 15 people seeking abortion, one a minor. The clinic forgets to tell us to buy her mom a ticket, and the two get separated at the airport. Mother sobbing, daughter stone-faced and angry. I’m exhausted.”

In There Must Be Other Names For The River, we ask ourselves about our personal and structural relationships with the drying river that today we call the Rio Grande. In this sound performance, listeners hear the voices of six singers channeling the river. Each singer represents a point where streamflow data have been collected from the 1970s to now and into possible futures.

Nate and Ben of Iska Dhaaf chat with Sam Miller about their latest album: “I think writing about dark things is healthy. Our first album had themes about drone warfare and disconnection. The new EP is more about communication and wanting to be close to others, even though we often fall short.”

Guest Blogger Lucas Romero shares his experience of traveling to the US-Mexico border with his family and fellow high school students to bring supplies and assistance to shelters housing asylum-seekers.

If you are new to craft shows, or even if you have been doing it a while, consider these elements to help improve your displays.

We are hoping that we can recover these fumbles and reach a new generation of women. For this reason, we also took the time to modernize language and thinking about gender within the book, to include nonbinary and transgender people.

Musicians and the music they create are critical to halting further attacks on net neutrality. When net neutrality protections were at risk of being destroyed in the past, musicians came out in large numbers during a multi-year campaign to save it. And we are needed this time around too.

Guest Blogger Katie Alice Greer: “OK Sadness means the machine in my head is working just fine and Not OK Sadness means, just like a runny nose, upset stomach, or a hacking cough, that I am currently sick. Plenty of factors both genetic and environmental mean I’ll always need to keep an eye on how things are going in my head.”

Guest Blogger Maggie Vail: “Musicians are leaders. Music has been at the forefront of every massive cultural movement from civil rights to feminism to anti war movements.”

Guest Blogger Jeff Andersen: “We work with students in local classrooms for an entire year teaching them how to write and perform their own plays. I see the students make the same connections I did. They realize that they can not only participate in the world around them but also, even better, help to shape it.”

Guest Blogger Meredith Graves shares: “I swim, because I would rather persist than drown, and because I know that since I am my own life raft, once in awhile, when the rapids abate, I can kick up my heels and float.”

Guest Blogger Juli Hendren: “Artists are not insignificant trinkets that people can take or leave. Artists reflect the world. They tell our stories. They bring us together. They show us what we have done and what we can do. They empower us. They teach us.”

Guest Blogger Larry Crane, founder and editor of Tape Op Magazine: Don’t try to work longer hours than you can really be productive during. I work 10-hour days. I’ve worked 14-hour days. Guess how much work we really got done in 14 hours? 10 hours’ worth.

Hutch Harris of The Thermals: Part of being an artist is being constantly unsatisfied. It’s what keeps us going. It is through art that we are able to process sadness and search for happiness.

The music industry is not going to end, of course. In fact, I feel positive that it could become the biggest it’s ever been. The demand for music is high. So what needs to be done to get there and how can musicians like me survive in the changing times?

Of course I want us all to “do the work” and I want us to avoid the ahistorical bullshit that is part and parcel of Making America Great Again. But I also want those who can be saved through art alone to be saved.