Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl-Review

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book review, Carrie Brownstein, DIY, informal economy, makerculture

 

A slim memoir from Portlandia’s Carrie Brownstein, but be warned: it is definitely not about that work. Instead, this is about her early family life in the Northwest and her young woman life in one of the best unknown bands of the 1990s/2000s, Sleater-Kinney. Of course, they are still around and releasing good music, but their unknown status is probably past, largely because of Brownstein’s new TV fame and because the teens that found them then are now critics and paid writers and can reciprocate with open love and respect and everyone else can pretend to have followed them for years. For those who do follow them, this book will be familiar in its existentialist language, even as the actual events are presented plainly, dramatically and only rarely as funny.  All of that seems perfect for a book about this painfully present band that was always more about intense performances with alternately obscure or in-your-face lyrics and was much less- if it all- about any rock posturing or god(dess) complex. Brownstein certainly understands and communicates that just being in a band was a lifesaver, but that she used it respectfully to find her adult voice to say something rather than just using it to seem cool is also clear.

Brownstein writes about herself in a rush, seemingly annoyed by her own youth and spends more time and positive energy on the others who make up that time, like her father, her bandmates Corin and Janet and even legendary bands around her such as Bikini Kill or known names like Eddie Vedder (was oddly glad to hear that he is a good guy). That makes sense because the best descriptions in the book are of seeing bands and in describing the scene (maybe the first era that this term was used without irony) in the staplegun marketing of rock and politics back then. Those chapters definitely brought that time back clearly and does so without false nostalgia. Those pieces reminded me of the best writing of Ellen Willis, which to me is saying something.

Brownstein can dazzle with phrases and apt opinions such as “Within the world of the band there was a me and a not me” and “Anything that isn’t traditional for women apparently requires that we remind people what an anomaly it is, even when it becomes less and less of an anomaly” but also can run circles around herself and an opinion so long that it makes you put the book down for a bit. I can relate to that as a writer and I suspect that she is both afraid of revealing too much and unable to resist showing the many sides of any situation that she notices. Both can be disconcerting for autobiographical writing, but lucky for us, she does her best to curb those impulses and her undeniable charisma comes through at almost all times. I hope for many more books by Brownstein, and much more of Sleater-Kinney and yes, many more seasons of Portlandia.

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Getting Used to It

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job

Author Gwendolyn Knapp on creativity, work and New Orleans in an interview on NOLA Defender:

“It’s easier to live here and survive,” she said. “Rents are going up, but it’s probably easier to live here than in New York or lots of bigger cities and still have time to work on your creative pursuits.”

But it’s not always easy in The Big Easy.

“New Orleans has lots of distractions to keep you away from your writing. There’s always a festival, there’re always people out and there’s always some reason why you’re turning away from working on your writing,” she said. “It’s important to establish a routine and keep at it. That’s really the only thing you can do if you want to become a writer. You just have to keep writing and make a pact to do that.”

Knapp is the editor of Eater NOLA.

Find her book here

Review of The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

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book review, Rifkin

First, I agree with other reviews that I have read that author Rifkin often has a “Gatling” approach to supplying facts, and a tendency to offer the same theory over and over in a piece of writing, which can be quite tiresome after a bit-all true.

Even so, his contribution here that pure capitalism is in a transition to a hybrid economy, made up of part capitalism and part collaborative commons, is valid and worthwhile enough to pick this up. He reminds us that the feudal system transitioned to the market economy starting in the ninth century and then with The Great Enclosure Movement of the 16th-19th centuries, built a legal system that protected private property just as the Industrial Revolution began in earnest. Now, he predicts that another shift is happening: capitalism has begun to share the global stage with one that uses collaborative data, has free or almost free goods and services available (because the cost of producing more goods is zero when produced on demand online) and allows for more efficient (or sufficient) use of natural systems.

How businesses will make profit in this future economy is certainly undecided; economists from Keynes to Marx wondered about it too. In other words, there are some scary unplanned moments ahead. It’s also important to discuss how the collection of Big data (which is almost always used as a negative in popular media) has allowed the emergence of shared information for distribution systems, food production, human health, social revolutions and of course communication and is allowing for more interdisciplinary scholarship and maybe most importantly a reduction in ecological impact.

All of this should be interesting to anyone who hears the argument against the collaborative commons almost daily. My experience is that people’s concern is based on the legal implications of (in Rifkin’s words) how we are “moving from exclusive ownership to conditional rights.” His statement that “markets are giving way to networks and ownership is less important than access” is also beguiling language for any community activist and as a farmers market partisan, I already believe in the power of the commons and see every day how informal relationships can build a new economy. I also regularly see fear and mistrust of this type of collaborative production or virtual distribution as it is believed to impair adding or improving infrastructure. I might argue that we need to reduce our dependence on that as our main economic driver in municipal or civic systems anyway.

Do I worry about loss of privacy from all of this new activity? Some, but less so from my neighbors and fellow citizens. Those transactions and interactions are bound by networks of social capital and conversely, whenever there is a lack of shared networks, I am warned against sharing information or goods. Anyway, these virtual networks are less important than my existing (more important) physical networks and maybe that is one of the lessons of community food systems too. In any case, there is a constant need for privacy upgrades, whether it be shared networks or swiping your credit card. And as the Collaborative Commons continues to grow, the activity around privacy and safeguards will continue as well.

Rifkin’s theory is that this will not be a total eclipse, but only a partial one and will allow for more diverse relationships and systems in other sectors while still retaining some capitalist characteristics when valid, like maybe in durable goods production. It may also reduce the possibility of monopolies or at least reduce their length, since technological innovation is harder to stifle in collaborative systems. As for Rifkin himself, I like his quirky way on these subjects, but he should never be your only theorist on economic systems. If you are interested in reading someone who expands his thinking and has long embraced the need to address the ecological impacts of modern life, you need to read this.

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Working in the Big Easy: The History and Politics of Labor in New Orleans-Review

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African-American organizing, book review, gig, hustle, job, labor organizing

Working in the Big Easy: The History and Politics of Labor in New Orleans by Thomas Jessen Adams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Picked this up on for a Tuesday flight out of town and finished it by Thursday. My speed is partly due to the bumpy flights to Portland but more credit should be given to the interesting essays included. Most of these writers research labor or New Orleans as their work, starting with Eric Arensen, the well-known labor writer and author of the landmark book “Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class, and Politics.” Arensen encapsulates that history here again while taking the time to credit other history and labor writers and researchers in this update. In his essay and in the entire book, a prime topic is the bifurcation of race in New Orleans that has meant black and white class struggles remain separate and rarely equal.
Matheny’s essay on how the two local musician unions (one black and one white) struggled for cohesiveness during the Civil Rights era is a telling story about how cultural connections can often be stretched but how political power remains less elastic. Additionally, the subjugation of new ethnic minorities in the city can be seen in Murga’s excellent day laborer essay that centers on the growing Latino population who toiled at the thankless jobs that grew in those toxic days directly after the 2005 levee breaks, and in the Schneider/Jayaraman ROC essay on the shocking statistics of the restaurant and construction workers. These essays should encourage us all to stand with our sistren and brethren in active support or at least, to tip VERY well and stop honking at those work trucks in front of us. Both of those essays include the researchers process for the data collection which is a nice addition.
The labor and organizing essays are almost all well-researched and definitive, but the historical pieces on work are the choice meat. Ugolini’s piece on African-American women and the market economy, Roberts’ piece on Voodoo economics (not the Reagan version here, but those New Orleans spiritual entrepreneurs) were both engrossing, as was the praline mammy story and its accompanying myth. Writer Nunez presents the last so skillfully that the full shame of those mid-century life-sized dolls chained to the front of the shop door can be felt by even modern readers. I also appreciate the addition of historic terms such as “higglers” (Ugolini) and “hoodoo” (Nunez) which will send me back to the New Orleans WPA guide for further research (is Nunez asserting that hoodoo is a term that denotes voodoo mixed with capitalism? love the idea if so).
Dillard professor and author Nancy Dixon offers a parallel review of the service industry using its appearances in New Orleans literature over the last 200 years (as befits her experience as the editor of the recent anthology N.O. Lit), interwoven with her own personal recollection of waitressing and bartending in some of the infamous holes across town while she worked through college. Her empathetic view of the unequal nature between black and white workers gives another example of the racial segregation that continues to this day.

The last nod of approval goes to the late Michael Mizell-Nelson and his examination of the short-lived unity among the (white) streetcar and (black) gas workers in the 1920s, as well as the sad story of their later resegregation. Having his writing on New Orleans blue-collar work contained in this book gives it an added level of authenticity and hopefully in future editions (Mizell-Nelson passed away in December of 2014), the editors will add a posthumous postscript for New Orleans’ own Streetcar Mike.

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