A Tale of Two Mountains

Who gets to name things?

Two western peaks named for the confederate president work their way through a bureaucratic name-changing process.

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Doso Doyabi (left) Wheeler Peak (right), Nevada: Public Domain via NPS

Doso Doyabi (left) Wheeler Peak (right), Nevada: Public Domain via NPS

Da-ek dow Go-et, California

Da-ek dow Go-et, California

“Language deficit is attention deficit. As we further deplete our ability to name — describe particular aspects of our places — our competence for understanding and imagining possible relationships with non-human nature is correspondingly depleted.” - Robert Macfarlane, Landmarks

 

“Once, from eastern ocean to western ocean, the land stretched away without names. Nameless headlands split the surf; nameless lakes reflected nameless mountains; and nameless rivers flowed through nameless valleys into nameless bays. Men came at last, tribe following tribe, speaking different languages and thinking different thoughts. According to their ways of speech and thought they gave names, and in their generations laid their bones by the streams and hills they had named. But even when tribes and languages had vanished, some of those old names, reshaped, still lived in the speech of those who followed.” - George R. Stewart, Names on the Land

Denali. // Photo: Tim Rains, Public Domain via National Parks Service

Denali. // Photo: Tim Rains, Public Domain via National Parks Service

Irvin Jim Jr.  with son - Hope Valley, CA

Irvin Jim Jr. with son - Hope Valley, CA


Salted Caramel - Black Twig PickersMountains - Yclept Insan

Topics, Tags and Mentions: Doso Doyabi, Da-ek dow go-et, da ek dow go et, jeff davis peak, jefferson davis peak, california, nevada, great basin national park, sentinel rock, usbgn, united states board on geographic names, nevada board on geographic names, california advisory committee on geographic names, confederate monuments, confederate name change, anthony oertle, thomas mitchell, irvin jim jr, washoe tribe, wašiw tribe, wašiw language, shoshone tribe, shoshone language, names on the land, george r stewart, landmarks, robert macfarlane, robert greene ii, Denali, Mt. McKinley, Mckinley name change, ralph regula, alaska, name change, naming mountains, naming

A Hobo, A Tramp, A Bum

What is the difference between a Hobo, a Tramp, and a Bum?

Em Jiang and I head down to the train yard to ask around.

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YOU ARE WHAT YOU DO BUT SOMETIMES THAT LINE MOVES, THEN BLURS.

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buZ Blurr Colossus of Roads

Bill Daniel’s Who is Bozo Texino?

Em Jiang co-produced this episode and wrote + performed the poem in the middle. And a huge thanks to Luka Starmer, whose encounter with buZ in Elko Nevada, subsequent acquisition of his book, gifted to myself at the Santa Fe Hotel in packaging masquerading as a postal delivery gave me the idea to conduct the interview via USPS. Picons on me.

Further reading:

Night Ride V30 with Wes Modes / Trainhopping

Railroad Semantics by Aaron Dactyl

Whiskey Texas - Zines #2-#6


Freight trains, trainhopping, train hopping, hobo tramp bum, hobo, tramp, bum, difference between hobo and bum, american railroads, buz blurr, who is bozo texino, hopping trains, train art, train graffiti, train monikers, freight hopping, hitchhiking, down by the tracks, em jiang, fil corbitt, colossus of roads, buz blurr, bill daniel, monikers, freights & monikers, train yard, sparks nevada, train yard sparks, cc2020, existential crisis, existential crisis while on train, who are we, is our sense of self fluid, can we be multiple things at once, what if my identity is not individual actions but instead the blurring of said actions seen at high speeds, #trainhopping, #podcast 

They/Them

How gender neutral language is working for non-binary people,

and how it’s developing in English, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Portuguese and Hebrew.

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I started using the term Non-Binary for myself a couple years ago. I knew a few people who identified that way, but for a long time my assumptions about those words made me think they didn’t apply to me. But once I started to embrace the vocabulary, so many things began to make sense. The language directly changed the way I understood the world. And still, that language is unfamiliar to a lot of people, and it’s constantly evolving.

Guests:

Cara Nguyen - Website and Instagram

Avery Hellman - Where the World Begins

nwaobiala

Blue Broderick - Diners

Dan Everton - New Bedford lgbtq+ Archive

and Queer Arts Council of New Bedford

Dana Ysabel Dela Cruz - Website and Instagram

Em Jiang - Instagram

Jaq Victor - VimeoWebsite

Lior Gross + Eyal Rivlin - Non-binary Hebrew Project

Tuck Woodstock - Gender Reveal (Podcast)  

Also, a huge thank you to Miriam Berger whose

article for The Washington Post helped inform this episode, and to Kelsey Penrose.



Topics, Tags and Mentions: non-binary, they/them pronouns, gender neutral pronouns, cisgender, transgender, trans rights, genderqueer, neopronouns, gender neutral pronouns in english, gender neutral pronouns in Tagalog, gender neutral pronouns in Portuguese, gender neutral pronouns in Vietnamese, Chanh, Cam pronoun, gender neutral pronouns in Hebrew, Filipinx, diaspora, gendered language, non-binary podcast, non binary podcast, nonbinary podcast, language.

Frontier Music

Western Films as America’s origin story, and why they sound the way they do.

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The Western is a historical genre that generally takes place between 1850 and 1900, somewhere in North America west of the Mississippi River. Neither of these parameters are impenetrable — borders rarely are — but that general time and place gives us somewhere to start.

…the way we, as a country, approach the West says a lot about our view of ourselves.  It seems to have become our origin myth, although what happened to everything before the Civil War?  I can’t answer why we have Western music and Western writers but no such category for the century before, or the one before that.

- Carter Burwell via Email

To score the frontier, this wide open place, you use those so called intervals of 4ths and 5ths. And big long leaps in the melodic lines… jumps and leaps to suggest the vast openess of the western space. And these Harmonies, these modal harmonies… that kinda becomes part of the nomenclature: this is what constitutes what sounds western.

- Kathryn Kalinak

…through our history there is so much we don’t know, so much we misinterpret. So many things our children and grandchilderen will look at and think “they got that really wrong.” — Just as we look at our ancestors and say they got it wrong. I think it’s sort of a metophorical representation, the Wildlands, of the darkness, of the unknown. Which is beautiful because there’s still stuff to discover. But there can be a whole lot of ugliness in our ignorance…

-Rion Amilcar Scott

Guests

Kathryn Kalinak How the West Was SungMusic in the WesternRichard Hageman

Rion Amilcar ScottInsurrections • The World Does Not Require You

Jeff GraceThe Artist’s Wife Meek’s CutoffIn a Valley of Violence

Gary Farmer Dead ManPowwow HighwaySmoke SignalsFirst CowWinter in the BloodGary Farmer and the Troublemakers

pick your corporate poison:

Spotify • Playlist of Western Film Scores

Youtube • Playlist of Western Film Scores

 

If the western is our origin story, we must deconstruct it. Every story we tell about this country is built on this foundation, and if we are to understand who we are and where we’re going we must first fully understand how we got here.

List of films watched for this episode:

  • A Fistful of Dollars

  • Yojimbo

  • A Few Dollars More

  • The Good the Bad the Ugly

  • Once Upon a time in the West

  • Rio Bravo

  • The Searchers

  • Magnificent Seven

  • Seven Samurai

  • Butch Cassidy + the Sundance kid

  • El Topo

  • True Grit (2010)

  • The Big Country

  • The Shootist

  • Silverado

  • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

  • Meek’s Cutoff

  • Ravenous

  • There will be Blood

  • The Revenant

  • The Hateful Eight

  • In a Valley of Violence

  • Joe Kidd (1972)

  • Stage Coach (1939)

  • Django

  • 3 burials of Melquiades Estrada

  • Winning of the West

  • The Bronze Buckaroo

  • The Lone Ranger (2013) (oof)

  • Virginia City

  • Tombstone

  • Dead Man

  • High Noon

  • No Country for Old Men

  • Morricone Doc BBC

  • Death Rides a horse

  • First Cow

  • Rango

  • My Darling Clementine

  • Lone Star

  • A Man Called Horse

  • Powwow Highway

  • Smoke Signals

  • Billy Blazes Esq

  • Johnny Guitar

Further Reading:

Native Film Talk - An excellent podcast + more source material for this episode.

Kathryn Kalinak - How the West Was SungMusic in the Western

Janet Walker - Westerns: Films Through History

Richard Slotkin - The Fatal Environment , Gunfighter Nation, Regeneration Through Violence

Sarah Winnemucca - Life Among the Piutes

Rion Amilcar Scott - The World Does Not Require You


Topics, Tags and Mentions: Westerns, Western films, Carter Burwell, Richard Slotkin, Ennio Morricone, Clint Eastwood, Sergio Leone, John Ford, John Wayne, Smoke Signals, Dead Man, Stagecoach, The Big Country, Frontier, Frontier Thesis, Gary Farmer, Rion Amilcar Scott, Jeff Grace, Kelly Reichardt, Kathryn Kalinak, Dead Man, The World Does Not Require You, Meek's Cutoff, In a Valley of Violence, How the West was Sung, Music in the Western, The Revenant, There Will Be Blood, El Topo, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Jim Jarmusch, Neil Young, Magnificent Seven, Seven Samurai, Elmer Bernstein, A Fistful of Dollars, Rio Bravo, John Wayne, John Ford, A Few Dollars More, The Good the bad the ugly, Richard Hageman, Dimitri Tiomkin, Diegetic Music, Western guitar, western sound, Gary Farmer interview, Jeff Grace Interview, Rion Amilcar Scott interview, Kathryn Kalinak Interview the american west, movie podcast.

Prologue

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Hey all, Fil here. Excited to share The Wind with you. I’ve been working on it for about a year, spending a lot of time outside listening to the sound of the wind blowing through the trees and a lot of time listening to music and language with a similar amount of detail and wonder. As you’ll hear in the Prologue, I moved up to the mountains early this year and built a desk out in the woods where I’ve been writing and recording the show.

After sitting at the desk, I typically come home and sit in this little cedar sauna and listen to music, podcasts or audio art. So I wanted to take this space to list some of the stuff that inspired this show.

Belt Buckle - Mystery ShowRunning After Antelope - Scott Carrier / Home of the BraveAscent to K2 - Joe FrankHave you heard George’s Podcast?HowSoundVoicing - ConstellationsNo Title - The AllusionistCowboy CrossroadsWhere the World BeginsNative Film TalkBellwether + TalkgroupField Recordings - And I’m sure I’m forgetting some.

Lastly a huge thanks everybody who helped get this show off the ground: Erica Wirthlin, Joey Lovato, Lauren Baker, Sierra Jickling, Em Jiang, Emily Pratt, Mark Nesbitt, Eleanor Tullock, Mike Corbitt, Sam Greenspan, Anjeanette Damon, Anton Anger, Luka Starmer, Dallas Taylor Sam Schneble Casey Emmerling and Soren Begin at Twenty Thousand Hertz, everybody who came over from Van Sounds and so many more.

Thank you for being here, subscribe and review if you’d like, and remember to listen closely.