"we are all just stars that have people names"

.

okay then it is rec list time! (you will notice that few if any of these have a year of publication that begins with a 2, because fucking Toby Keith and Alan Jackson and their fucking 9/11 songs changed the entire genre.)

Johnny Cash, "Man In Black"

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down

Living in the hopeless, hungry side of town

I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime

But is there because he's a victim of the time

Reba McEntire, "The Night That The Lights Went Out In Georgia"

That's the night that the lights went out in Georgia

That's the night that they hung an innocent man

Well, don't trust your soul to no backwoods Southern lawyer

'Cause the judge in the town's got bloodstains on his hands

Carrie Underwood, "Two Black Cadillacs"

Two black Cadillacs driving in a slow parade

Headlights shining bright in the middle of the day

One is for his wife

The other for the woman who loved him at night

Two black Cadillacs meeting for the first time

Alabama, "Five O'Clock 500"

It's that five o'clock 500, and I run it every day

Pick-up trucks, cars and buses, all in my way

We've got Darrel, we got Dale

Richard, Mark, Rusty and Jeff

Oh, the boss just dropped the green, we're on our way

It's that five o'clock 500 every day

Charlie Daniels, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia"

Johnny, rosin up your bow and play your fiddle hard

'Cause Hell's broke loose in Georgia and the Devil deals the cards

And if you win you get this shiny fiddle made of gold

But if you lose the devil gets your soul

"Sixteen Tons", originally by Merle Travis; this cover is by Southern Raised; see also covers by Tennessee Ernie Ford, Johnny Cash, Geoff Castellucci, and LeAnn Rimes and the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt

Saint Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go

I owe my soul to the company store

Dolly Parton, "9 To 5"

9 to 5, yeah, they got you where they want you

There's a better life and you think about it don't you

It's a rich man's game no matter what they call it

And you spend your life putting money in his wallet

Trisha Yearwood, "XXX’s and OOO’s (An American Girl)"

Phone rings baby cries TV diet guru lies

Good morning honey

Go to work make up try to keep the balance up

Between love and money

Martina McBride, "Independence Day"

Well she lit up the sky that fourth of July

By the time that the firemen come

They just put out the flames and took down some names

And sent me to the county home

Now, I ain't sayin' it's right or it's wrong

But maybe it's the only way

Talk about your revolution

It's Independence Day

Shania Twain, "Man! I Feel Like A Woman"

I'm going out tonight

I'm feelin' alright

Gonna let it all hang out

Wanna make some noise

Really raise my voice

Yeah, I wanna scream and shout

No inhibitions

Make no conditions

Get a little outta line

I ain't gonna act politically correct

My favorite of the “I killed my husband/boyfriend/best friend’s husband and I regret nothing” energy songs (also known as revenge country) is Goodbye Earl by the Dixie Chicks:

And “My mother wore her miniskirt to a PTA meeting and DRAGGED the biggest names in town for slutshaming her” is a reference to Jeannie C. Riley’s smash hit Harper Valley P.T.A.:

There's a resurgence in all these things in country already, if you know where to look! A lot of it is avoiding the Toby Keith and godawful 9/11 energy by virtue of approaching the genre from country's roots in folk and bluegrass, which are usually the genres I follow a little more closely than country qua country. Leftist country as a tradition has retreated into bluegrass and folk in particular over the last couple years and is now coming back and stepping into the more rock and pop-ish corners of the genre. Pop country has certainly had a conservativism (and soullessness) problem for some time, but there's plenty of good music that's been simmering in the background the whole time. You just won't find it on the radio, mostly.

Fuck, this is making me want to make a playlist for one of my students, who loves country but has glumly resigned herself to the notion that absolutely no one around her is going to share her tastes. And sure, good ol boys don't have a lot of appeal for me--but I bet you she might see the appeal of some of these artists, too.

NARF (native american rights fund)

AISES (advancing indigenous people in stem)

NIWRC (national indigenous women’s resource center)

PWNA (partnership with native americans)

COPE (community outreach and patient empowerment)

the association on american indian affairs

first nations development institute

american indian college fund

CARE (diné citizens against ruining our environment)

hopa mountain

indigenous values initiative

native american disability law center

people’s partner for community development 

Historically, polytheistic cultures, upon encountering other polytheistic cultures, would just assume that those gods are those people’s local gods and so on. It wasn’t a threat to them. But even among monotheistic religions, it’s really mostly just xtianity and Islam. Judaism does not care about making non-Jews Jewish; there are some basic moral principles Judaism expects non-Jews to adhere to, like not murdering, but in orthodox Judaism it is still customary to turn away potential converts three times before even considering them. The Druze religion is even more tightly closed. In order to be considered Druze, both of your parents must be Druze, and conversion and proselytism have been expressly forbidden for almost a thousand years. I’m not sure what the Bahá’í view on proselytism is, but they generally believe that the other world religions have the same core truths.

Many, probably most by number, world religions are ethnoreligions, not universal religions. That means that religion and culture are tied together. Judaism and the Druze religion are examples of ethnoreligions. That is why a person can be, say, an atheist Jew. Most indigenous/folk religions don’t care about what other groups believe and have no interest in making other people outside their culture conform to their beliefs. By number of religions, the idea that you hold an absolute truth that you must make other people believe (and the idea that you must do this because if you don’t they will not be “saved” and will suffer punishment) is very uncommon. It’s just that this belief has enabled a small handful of religions to dominate through colonialism and war and so those are the ones people think of when they think about “what religion is.”

who some of you might know better as…the Free Real Estate guy

but anyway, that’s not why I’m making this post.

this is why I’m making this post:

Doug, looking at the empty place in the family that Stede left behind:

It wasn’t a religious thing, he just desperately wanted to believe that meat was conjured from the ether and had no connection to the world, and if you threatened that illusion it would enrage him. He refused to eat free range eggs from the neighbors because they had too much reality clinging to them.

I’m not vegan, or even really vegetarian, but that pissed me off so much. If you’re going to eat animal products I feel like there’s an ethical obligation for gratitude and acknowledgement to the creature or thing you consume, even in just an abstract sense. I guess I found this guy so repulsive because it was clearly something he found profoundly shameful and wrong and yet made no effort to stop or change his relationship to meat in any way… the cowardice of that disturbed me.