Charles Bowden, visionary writer and crusading muckracker, died in Las Cruces, NM this past Saturday. Bowden joined us here in Marfa for the inaugural Marfa Dialogues, a program that looked at the culture and politics of the U.S./Mexico border which Bowden reported on in with his “surrealist fever dream” prose, capturing the sadness and madness of the drug war in equal measure. Marfa Dialogues co-founder Hamilton Fish talked to Marfa Public Radio’s Tom Michael in remembrance of this irreplaceable American hero:

He had a gruffness and he had a weathered, Western affect,

but it belied a gentleness, a tenderness, an emotional vulnerability and a sensitivity to the human condition that contributed to making him one of really great figures in American journalism in the last era. It’s a great loss.

 

Find more of Marfa Public Radio’s coverage of Bowden’s passing at marfapublicradio.rog. 

As part of the closing celebration for Quiet Earth, we presented musicians C. Spencer Yeh and Messages on November 21, 2013 at the Rauschenberg Project Space in New York, New York. Quiet Earth closes this Saturday, November 30; more pictures here.

All photographs by Elena Rott.

In the end it was another head to head victory for UNLV against programs operating with at least three times the Rebels’ budget

As we approach the deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), we are proud of the progress made for Goal 5, to improve maternal health.
Une nomination effroyablePar Laura Maï Gaveriaux

PlumeChristiane Taubira rêve d’une société qui travaille 32h/semaine : une utopie remarquablePar Audrey Kucinskas

Médiatrice du PlusVIDO DU SOIR.

On July 2, the New Standards Chan Poling on piano, Steve Roehm on vibes, John Munson on bass bring their smart, eclectic, humorous show to Orchestra Hall with the musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra.

New Air Jordans followed annually in assorted colors and there have been a myriad of special releases along the way.

Randolph was the early favorite to get the job; he had been RichRod’s defensive line coach at West Virginia and was viewed as one of the game’s rising coaching stars.
Heartburn drugs such as Prilosec and Nexium may disrupt the makeup of bacteria in the digestive system, potentially boosting the risk of infections and other problems, a small new study suggests.

A letter to the editor from Fairfax Dorn and Hamilton Fish, from the July 25, 2013 Big Bend Sentinel:

To the many friends and supporters of the Marfa Dialogues in the high desert – We have exciting news: the Marfa Dialogues project is hitting the road and will be opening this fall in New York City with a series of programs on climate change and the arts that will expand on the symposium held in Marfa last September. It’s been our dream to build on the work we started here in 2010, and to export the Marfa Dialogues model of engaging the arts with social and political concerns to communities around the country.

With the support of our partners at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation we have created a two-month long Marfa Dialogues calendar of events in New York, beginning in October. More than 20 leading New York cultural, academic and public interest institutions are participating in this city-wide public conversation around climate change. Like our Marfa project, but on a larger scale, the Marfa Dialogues/New York program will feature community forums, public panels, an exhibition curated by Ballroom Marfa at the Rauschenberg project space in Chelsea, an online magazine, public sculpture projects, theater performances, cabarets and film exhibitions – and in the enduring spirit of Marfa, we also have an environmentally conscious food truck as one of our program partners.

Through your participation as co-sponsors, audience members and supporters, the Marfa community has helped shape this initiative. We are hugely grateful for the collaborative efforts of Tim Johnson and Caitlin Murray of the Marfa Book Company; Robert and Rosario Halpern of the Big Bend Sentinel; Tom Michael and the staff at Marfa Public Radio; Farm Stand Marfa; Cochineal; Maiya’s; Rob Crowley, Gory Smelley; The Crowley Theater; Thunderbird Hotel and The Capri; Padre’s; Robert Potts of The Dixon Water Foundation; and to the Food Shark and chef Rocky Barnett for all of their amazing creations. Add to that all of the camera people, copywriters, graphic artists, publicists and the very long list of all of you who contributed so much to the success of our first two Dialogues.

Even as we are expanding the horizons of the Marfa Dialogues project, we will continue our established practice of producing a new Marfa Dialogues program every other year here in Marfa. So break out the new dress and press that shirt – the Marfa Dialogues will be returning to Marfa in the fall of 2014.

And with the Marfa Dialogues banner flying over New York this fall, we hope if you can you’ll join us there and be a part of the exciting schedule of climate change programs being organized across the city. In the next several weeks we’ll be posting more details about the calendar of events on www.ballroommarfa.org and our new website, marfadialogues.org.

With great appreciation to all,

Fairfax Dorn
Hamilton Fish, co-founders, Marfa Dialogues

For more information on Marfa Dialogues past and future, visit our archive.

For the 10th anniversary of her “arrival” at the Tom Dispatch online journal, Rebecca Solnit contributes “Too Soon To Tell: The Case for Hope, Continued“, a deeply inspirational essay. An excerpt …

“If you take the long view, you’ll see how startlingly, how unexpectedly but regularly things change. Not by magic, but by the incremental effect of countless acts of courage, love, and commitment, the small drops that wear away stones and carve new landscapes, and sometimes by torrents of popular will that change the world suddenly. To say that is not to say that it will all come out fine in the end regardless. I’m just telling you that everything is in motion, and sometimes we are ourselves that movement.”

It’s a moving piece of writing from a thinker with such a wide range of influence that she’s credited as one of the leading lights of the anti-war movement, contributed profound essays to photographic catalogs by Richard Misrach and James Evans, and is cited as possible inspiration for the christening of Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s daughter. She’s also the author of such modern-day classics as A Field Guide to Getting Lost, A Paradise Built in Hell and Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas.

Solnit was a participant in the 2012 edition of Marfa Dialogues: You can listen to an interview with her while she was visiting us out here in the Big Bend at Marfa Public Radio. Her new book, The Faraway Nearby, comes out on June 13.

Michael Pollan’s new book, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation, is now available for purchase, and the self-described “nature writer who writes about this particular part of nature that we don’t think of as nature” is popping up all over the place, from The Colbert Report to the Field Lab.

In September of 2012 Pollan joined us here in Far West Texas for the second Marfa Dialogues symposium. He and Hamilton Fish had a sprawling conversation in front of a packed house at the Crowley Theater, the entirety of which is available for your viewing pleasure up above.

The move comes as lawmakers are looking to rein in Medicaid spending

The Wildcats took a 42 38 halftime lead, having held UCLA to just 38.

Zardari is saying do not expose our corruption otherwise we will expose yours.
Cameron also comes with the bonus that he knows new offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan’s scheme because Shanahan was the Browns’ offensive coordinator last year.
Super Bowl XXXVI was the most memorable Super Bowl for Patriots’ fans, and for patriots in general.
8 yards per attempt; passer rating of 106.

Outlook: Third team All Area catcher Christiana Roberts is a big graduation loss, but considering the Spartans return, virtually, all the rest of last year’s squad, things are looking quite promising for Immaculata.

As part of our continuing Ballroom en Español project, we bring you this Spanish-language version of the 2012 Marfa Dialogues program. Stand by for more news about our plans for 2013’s Marfa Dialogues / NY.

Many thanks once again to Ballroom intern Cristina Garcés for her translation.

Ballroom Marfa, junto con el Washington Spectator, The Big Bend Sentinel, Marfa Public Radio y Marfa Book Company, se complace en anunciar la segunda bienal de Marfa Dialogues, un simposio de tres días que incluye charlas en torno al cambio climático y la sostenibilidad y en los que contaremos con la presencia de artistas, performers, escritores, científicos y empresarios – entre ellos Michael Pollan, autor de Botany of Desire and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, y Rebecca Solnit, distinguida crítica y autora de A Field Guide to Getting Lost y A Paradise Built in Hell. Otros participantes destacados serán David Buckland, Hamilton Fish, Hopkins Cynthia, Liverman Diana, John Nielsen-Gammon, Robert Potts, Rand Tom y Bonnie J. Warnock.

Marfa Dialogues 2012 comienza el viernes, 31 de agosto con la inauguración de Carbon 13, la exposición de Ballroom Marfa para el otoño 2012 que presenta trabajos recientes de artistas que proponen una respuesta creativa al cambio climático. Comisariada por David Buckland, fundador y director de Cape Farewell, en Carbon 13 intervienen ocho artistas internacionales que acompañados de científicos se han aventurado hacia algunos de los puntos de inflexión geográficos, lugares donde el calentamiento global destaca profundamente. El trabajo de estos creadores tiene como objetivo estimular un compromiso más amplio con el debate sobre el clima.

Seguir leyendo …

In her new diary entry for the London Review of Books, writer and Marfa Dialogues 2012 moderator Rebecca Solnit takes a deep look at the effect that the rise of the Bay Area’s tech industry has had on San Francisco, and “what was once a great city of refuge for dissidents, queers, pacifists and experimentalists.”

In classic Solnit fashion, she takes the analogy between the tech boom and the Gold Rush to its likely — and usually overlooked — end. “San Francisco’s tech boom has often been compared to the Gold Rush, but without much discussion about what the Gold Rush meant beyond the cute images of bearded men in plaid shirts with pickaxes looking a lot like gay men in the Castro in the 1970s.”

The essay is available in its entirety on the LRB website and is well worth a read.

[via Arthur Magazine]