Ray Bradbury’s animated version of The Halloween Tree, with its fantastic watercolor landscape and skies, woods and ravine, earth and space, written and narrated by Ray Bradbury himself, is based on a book of the same name, which in turn was based on the original visionary idea for a film, and the book’s events transpire [...]
Here you can watch the Thunderbolts Project’s latest video telling the story of catastrophic electrical changes between Mars and Earth, the cosmic thunderbolts, hurled stones, that appeared in the stories of ancient peoples, such as the Babylonians and considering why the moon of Mars has the chemistry of Mars itself and who was the warrior [...]
I had never heard of the Society for Industrial Archaeology, but Birmingham is certainly a great location for its Southern Chapter, and I was interested to learn about the Birmingham Rails website, owned and operated by John Stewart, a civil engineer with a fascination for Birmingham railroad and industrial history. The April field trip of [...]
The United States leads the world in rates of incarceration with about one-tenth of the US population in prison. Critics argue this is due to long prison sentences for non-violent – particularly drug-related – crimes in a climate in which crime rates overall have declined. Alabama has 31, 965 prisoners, up about 1,000 from the [...]
Don’t get dizzy! David Donaldson’s fisheye lens shows three views of 20th street the way we may experience it. In 1924, Robin Hill, a British plant biochemist, developed a fisheye camera for study of three-dimensional cloud patterns. Researchers use these “whole-sky lenses” for the study of solar radiation in plant canopies and in shooting landscapes [...]
Charlie Stripling Tribute Fiddlefest and Fish Fry Where: Belk Community Center, Sponsored by Alabama Folklife Association When: Saturday, November 13, 2010, from 12:00 pm to 8:00 pm The Alabama Folklife Association is celebrating the life and music of Charlie Stripling, a master fiddler at local dances and championship fiddler’s conventions in West Alabama from the [...]
The Kentucky Enquirer endorses Rand Paul today, which is exciting news! The Kentucky Enquirer is the Northern Kentucky edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer, which itself has a colorful history. Washington McLean, its editor prior to the Civil War period and a prominent Ohio Democrat, was known as a member of the so-called “Copperheads” – democratic [...]
Odetta was born in Birmingham, Alabama on New Year’s Day in 1930. Her father, Reuben Holmes, who died when she was a small girl, was a steel worker, and her mother, Flora Sanders Holmes, was engaged in domestic service. She did not grow up here, but in Los Angeles, and is known for singing the [...]
The Southern Foodways Alliance is a glorious source of southern food information. It’s a member-supported (800 strong) group with an excellent website… publications, cookbooks, events, documentaries, tourist “trails” that are well-mapped out – try the Southern Barbecue trail across the South! Here’s a great article by Gillian Clark called “Fabulous Fat!” View a film, The [...]
The Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival is definitely the place to be this very weekend, October 23 and 24, 2010, at the Historic Malco theater in downtown Hot Springs. This is actually the tail end of a phenomenal 10-day festival – one which is apparently the oldest solely documentary festival in America. The film festival [...]
Jimmie Reed’s Big Boss Man… Luther Dixon and Al Smith wrote this song in 1960, and Jimmie Reed’s version was released in 1961; it’s supposed to be on the list of the 500 songs that most influenced Rock ‘n Roll (Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame). Jimmie Reed, the great blues musician and songwriter, was [...]
The Alabama Surface Mining Commission (“ASMC”) – and it’s not exactly clear who they represent, as they are not a governmental body, to my knowledge – has issued a permit to Shepherd Bend, LLC to begin strip mining a portion – 34 acres – of the 286 piece of land in question on the Mulberry [...]