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March 12, 2008
DJ Spooky performs multimedia “Rebirth of a Nation” at Richmond’s Modlin Center
From the Modlin Center’s show details: “… An audio and visual re-imagining of D.W. Griffith‚Äôs groundbreaking and polarizing 1915 classic The Birth of a Nation, the work combines DJ Spooky‚Äôs celebrated skills as a club DJ, multimedia storyteller and social critic to transform the silent-era epic into a mesmerizing commentary on political corruption and racism. Rebirth of a Nation has drawn acclaim around the world, from the Herod Atticus Theater at the base of the Acropolis in Greece to the London IMAX, Europe‚Äôs largest movie screen.”
The performance will be March 19, 7:30pm. Tickets are $30 for adults.
Paul Miller [DJ Spooky] will hold a talk-back session after the show.
Click here for more details or tickets.
Oh, Great. What’s next? Failure of the Will?
You tryin’ to cause trouble?
?
Well, this seems to tie together with the unfortunate inability of two differnt camps to see eye to eye on american history when the subject of resurrecting the forgotten mahone has come up. The man was forgotten for a reason. The reason is he got involved with politics, and he didn’t take the politically correct (for the time) stance. He’s lucky the lost causers didn’t try to pin the fall of petersburg on him, considering what they did to long street, et al.
Birth of a Nation provided me with one service, it showed me, in my film history class back in the late ’80s, that there was an “alternative” viewpoint about the klan. Further examination revealed a grain of truth — there really WAS a law and order problem after the Emancipation having directly to do with legions of uneducated, sometimes hostile ex-slaves. Further examination of the history reveals that MOST of the serious law-and-order problems had to do with the ku kluxers themselves, and the judicial system that allowed juries sympathic to the klan to let go the few klan members who were arrested, for crimes that included invading the homes of southern whites at night, hacking them to death — men, women and children — all because the man of the household was working with the republicans. And the more intellegent and independent-minded blacks was more wholesale. But because you couldn’t get an impartial jury, it was hard to get a conviction. Even if you did, it could be overturned, or the judge killed.
BOAN opened up my mind that the Klan were many people’s heros, at least in the first part of the 20th century.
BTW, I didn’t like that you challenged my count of faces and then closed discussion. I counted acey from brickhouse, the dread-headed basist, and the reupholsterer.
The idea that there possibly should be more is valid. But bad facts should not be defended.
A sentence above should read: And the MURDER of the more intellegent and independent-minded blacks…
I read and post when I am waiting for things, and really should review the mess before posting! Such errors!
a) in the other thread, I was merely pointing out that a miscount need not imply motives per se, but just incomplete info. Check tg4360’s comment 11 for persons you may have overlooked. As for closing the thread when/where I did, sorry you didn’t like the timing. Maybe others would have preferred that I do so earlier, and yet others not at all. Can’t please everyone. Guess all I can say is: don’t take it personally, and roll with it when/if it happens (alternatively, folks can always start other sites where things are managed differently).
b) I simply posted an event at University of Richmond’s Modlin Center that may be of interest to some members of our community. Any motive attributed to my doing so is one’s own interpretation. But if you really want the full boring history of how this post started: it had nothing to do with other threads; rather, it had to do with the fact that a) this a.m. I saw the ad for Eighth Blackbird at top of the left column, which I clicked on, and while reading about them I saw on Modlin’s site something about DJ Spooky, and never hearing of him before I clicked on that link… etc etc etc… and b) the event is next week — had it been in May, you’d have not seen the event posted on this site until closer to date.
For those just tuning in (e.g., RVANews readers)… most of Shawn’s comment #3 refers to this discussion.
I was just kidding about trying to cause trouble.
Sorry if it sounded like I was snippy about being cut off. I was being snippy that you said you disagreed with me about the numbers, then cut off comment. None of those faces I saw were on washington, all on sycamore. I don’t think I’ve looked on washington. Were you trying to say you saw MORE than three?
Yes, there are at LEAST three “petersburgs,” it must be hard to navigate all the differing sensitivities. As G. says: “Good job.”
I tried to take photos last Friday of all in the display (plus the other cool display pieces giving attribution and thanks and such), to post for the sake of out of towners, but the glare was godfreakinawful in the late afternoon. I may get out there one night and see if I can do better w/o any sunlight. But not this week. Or maybe Mel Talley — the display photographer extraordinaire — can hook us up.
(The ‘display’ references this.)
hey - i’m interviewing “dj spooky” for RVANews.com and if any of you folks have questions that relate to rebirth of a nation etc you might have some angles that i am unaware/haven’t thought of. shoot me an email or leave a post with some thoughts.
[moderator's note: I reformatted the email above to make it harder for spam-bots to find.]
Quote:
“Guess all I can say is: don‚Äôt take it personally, and roll with it when/if it happens (alternatively, folks can always start other sites where things are managed differently).”
I have to plead ignorance. How is does the whole PEOPLES News work. Is there really only one person who posts all of the articles and then the people comment? Who decides what is post worthy and how do they decide? I just never noticed that brenda was the only poster.
It seems somewhat like the SNL bit of “Princess of Wales, whales are aquatic mammals and have no royalty. Discuss.”
I jest but…I was just wondering. Is this basically just another blog instead of a community message board/forum?
Its a community blog by a person who CARES about Petersburg… and I’ve never met this person! Offer topics and news of interest… I bet she will headline it. One of the best services to Petersburg I have seen. I think that at the end of this year we ought have a PPN party in a great venue in Old Town and celebrate the fact that some of us are alive and interested in the welfare of this city.
Short answer, for those who may have been more familiar with the Vibe:
PPN is not a message board, it is a blog.
The much longer answer:
From the ‘About’ page:
“We are not a newspaper or magazine. We have no staff reporters or editors. Rather, we are a neighborhood blog, a space for members of the community to share news/events and engage in dialog. If you or your organization have announcements that you wish to share with the community, please feel free to submit them for publication.”
A bit of history: I came here from Church Hill, where the trend-setting, award-winning, Richmond-Magazine-loving Church Hill People’s News has been alive and kicking for 4+ years now. When I got to Petersburg and looked around, I noted a lack of a good internet-based calendar aggregating things cultural, civic, etc. So I trotted up to Church Hill and asked the CHPN moderator (John M) about how to do a community blog. The long/short of that conversation is that PPN (i.e., Petersburg People’s News LLC) was born. If you check CHPN out, you’ll note that I didn’t reinvent the wheel in terms of layout, site name, etc. Of course, CHPN content is CHPN-specific, and PPN content is PPN-specific. (Since then other ‘hoodblogs have come on line… see the “Community Blogs” list on the right column.)
On the subject of content, as admin/moderator I am presently the only person that posts content to the site. The content comes from various sources… school-related content comes from the school’s information officer, Cliff Davis; Chamber stuff comes from the Chamber; FFTA stuff comes from Dulaney; Ron Moring’s photos come from Ron Moring; etc. I then take the info submitted to my little inbox and format it for posting to the site for the community at large to enjoy.
To the extent folks want to comment, that’s cool within a few limited/fuzzy guidelines (e.g., snarky, bullying, or ad hominem remarks may or may not have a short lifespan on the site). The implementation of any such guidelines is inherently imperfect, but from my observations of blogs generally, moderators find that a very few limitations are necessary to foster community. The alternative is not pretty.
For an interesting/lengthy conversation elsewhere about moderation, click here. For those not interested in linking somewhere else, I repeat here just two observations a long-timer moderator had to say:
In other news, I have invited someone who, in contrast to me, is not new to town to be a co-publisher of posts. That individual is presently considering whether to accept or run the other direction with rockets on their heels. :-)
Signed your loving Admin, Brenda P. ;-)
[again, hat-tip to John M for bringing the Flame Warriors link to my attention some time ago]
Cool - check comment #10, which went up after some of the others — Matt White will be interviewing DJ Spooky — send him any questions/angles you want to hear about.
And I really like the PPN party idea!!!
On content (part II) — I post the majority of what I receive; occasionally something in the inbox is overlooked in plain simple error or b/c of lack of time on my part. And of course some posts I manage to come up with myself; depends on if I feel like procrastinating with respect to something else I’m supposed to be doing. :-D
Thanks for the explaination to how it works, I appreciate it. I guess I just feel kinda weird if someone mentioned something on one thread and wanted to start a topic/discussion about it and would have to worry about it being totally OT. I am more used to discussion board/forum format personally - but that’s just me.
I hope I didn’t sound negative that wasn’t my intent at all. I can tell from the site that it takes alot of effort but, there seems to be only a handful of regulars that comment *shrug* I just didn’t know if the format might be something that keeps them in “lurker” status.
Chuck,
I think we are just reaching the “tipping point” where there are enough commenter that other visitors who are just reading or new will quickly grasp the idea that, unlike a newspaper, you can comment on just about every item. Most of us are of an age where we still see media as ‚Äúone way.‚Äù
The more folks who comment and discuss as we are now the more a sense of community will cause the snowball effect.
If you take a look at Church Hill (the progenitor of this site) you can see how things have progress to the point that even local police officers are reading and assisting in problem solving in the neighborhood.
It’s only been a year and things will probably only get better here.
Hey Chuck, yours is a reasonable question/concern. Ok, I’ll try to share my thinking about when I might ‘moderate’ (so as to try to reduce uncertainty about that).
Note that the GOP dinner name thing played itself out in quite lively manner with no deletions or other such interventions. In that thread, a) the anonymous and sometimes not anonymous commentors appeared to be enjoying themselves, and b) there was some educational merit to all that was going on. Cool. But if folks appear to be merely trying to score points off of someone else, hiding behind anonymity in doing so, I’ll start considering whether to take a comment down, shut down the thread, or similar. There are other behaviors that also fall into the ‘no-no’ category, but they are really obviously bad things that haven’t been an issue on this site so I won’t go into them.
Oh, and if folks aren’t clear about what’s an ad hominem remark, this may be helpful: there is a difference between “Hey , I think that point of yours is wrongheaded because…” and “Hey , you are a ____, you ____.”
The long/short is: if you are respectful/civil, you should be fine, and if you go the more lively/anonymous route, you better have some really good point to make that focuses on the issues.
So that’s my thinking today. And my thinking does evolve on this subject. Gotta love that.
Exception to all the above: I do moderate my other half quite a bit. The guy likes to provoke me, what can I say.
BTW - nothing against anonymity per se. There are good reasons for folks to use such, which this site respects.
Hey I will be working at this, coincidentally! I work at the Modlin Center selling stuff for shows! Worlds collide!
Hey Susan — in that case, may actually get to meet ya in the near future. Woo-hoo.
Hey Chuck — did I answer a question that you didn’t ask? When I first read your #17 above, I thought you were concerned about the potential for comments to be ‘taken out’ having a mitigating effect on discourse — it just occured to me that you might have really meant that per the current structure, some commenters may have stuff to say, but with no thread to attach same to their commetns may be ‘off topic.’ If that’s what you meant, then James said it best: “Offer topics and news of interest‚Ķ I bet she will headline it.” We may figure out where/how in the current structure something like a user-generated thread stream can work, but that would be a summer project as it would take some code building.
I’ve obviously got too much going on this week…forest…trees…
“Hey Chuck ‚Äî … it just occured to me that you might have really meant that per the current structure, some commenters may have stuff to say, but with no thread to attach same to their commetns may be ‚Äòoff topic.‚Äô If that‚Äôs what you meant, then James said it best: ‚ÄúOffer topics and news of interest‚Ķ I bet she will headline it.‚Äù We may figure out where/how in the current structure something like a user-generated thread stream can work, but that would be a summer project as it would take some code building.”
BINGO! Yeah, I’m just used to being able to reply to a comment or start a thread so that I don’t ‘jack’ someone’s topic. BUT eh, I’m trainable!!
My old neighborhood (Woodland Heights see Hills & Heights News) had a nice Yahoo! Group where people could post things like plumber, carpenter, electrician recommendations; crime activities; yard sales; yada yada.
So maybe suggest a “Referrals” Topic or “Crime Log” or summink??
see I’m totally off topic as far as DJ Spooky goes, sorry Spooky (whomever ya are) =(
re: some of the specific themes you’d like to see show up –
* you can post yard sales in the classifieds section for free at any time.
* re: referrals, I can start such a thread (this weekend if not today)
* re: crime “log”… several things. If there’s something going on that you want to give your neighbors a head’s up about or you want to ask your neighbors about, cool — let me know and I’ll beam up your message on that topic (see, e.g., this thread). Not sure about a thread that is just a random log of stuff. Let’s wing it. Here’s some *really good news* though. The local police have in works plans to develop a way to share crime data such that PPN can offer the community a ‘crime’ page in the menu bar at the top of the site, much like CHPN or RichmondCrime.org link with Richmond’s publicly available crime data to give folks, e.g., this or this (I envision having a way to filter by at least date range and type of crime, and if we really get lucky, by ward, neighborhood, etc….). That most wonderful and exciting tool is still some time off though, but the important thing is heads are working on it.
And yes, apologies to DJ Spooky. You see, carpetbagger was causing some trouble… :-)
I have actually heard of DJ Spooky, since I was very interested in the “trip hop movement” in the ’90s. I have never heard his music, but noted with interest that he worked with the former drummer of Slayer, a band I was very interested in back in the early eighties. (my apologies)
The drummer was known for his very distinctive use of double bass.
My film histoey teacher told us no score was written for birth of a nation, as the movie house pianist was supposed to extemporize themes like “damsel in distress,” “enter bad-guy,” “enter hero on horseback,” etc. So spooky is basically licenced to do as he wishes with the kentucky confederate’s innovative film, score-wise.